Migrant Farmworkers Research Articles

Allied Interpreters: Exploring the Role Perception and Ethics of Uncertified Interpreters Supporting Migrant Agricultural Workers in British Columbia

Uncertified interpreters enable migrant agricultural workers in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program to access key resources and connect with community. Through providing a range of services, including support work and advocacy, interpreters assist migrant workers at risk of exploitation and injury in Canada. This article explores how uncertified interpreters navigate the power dynamics between migrant workers, interpreters, and other actors. Moreover, this article investigates how uncertified interpreters perceive their role and the ethical values that guide their communicative methods. This study’s research findings show that interpreters may adopt a pro-worker role perception as they gain knowledge of the disempowerment experienced by migrant workers. Arising from this role perception, interpreters may also adopt pro-worker ethical values that renounce interpreter neutrality in favour of accessibility and an explanatory communication style. Ultimately, this article contends that uncertified interpreters may reject some traditional interpretation guidelines to adopt a role perception, ethical framework, and communicative style perceived to be more well-suited to supporting migrant farm workers in British Columbia.

Digital Inclusion for Farmworkers in a Pandemic: The North Carolina Farmworker Health Program Internet Connectivity Project, 2020‒2021.

The North Carolina Farmworker Health Program (NCFHP) implemented an emergency program in response to North Carolina migrant and seasonal farmworkers' urgent need for Internet access for health information, family connections, and telehealth services during COVID-19 isolation and quarantine. This article describes the NCFHP Internet Connectivity Project implementation and evaluation from June 2020 to December 2021. The project placed 448 devices across the state and provided Internet access to more than 3184 farmworkers during the 2021 peak farming season. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(11):1551-1555. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307017).

The Immokalee Community Health Coalition: Operationalizing Trust.

The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected migrant farmworker communities in the United States in case rates and deaths. In rural Immokalee, Florida, human rights, health care, and social support organizations with different strengths joined together to form a coalition that provided health information, tests, vaccines, and social supports. This report offers practical advice on how similar coalitions can overcome barriers to care, improve outcomes, and overall increase trust in the health system.

From Rights to Collective Action. A Way Out of Labour Exploitation

Abstract This article critically assesses the criminal law approach to labour exploitation and challenges the assumption that its limited effectiveness depends on the hesitation and unwillingness of migrant workers to collaborate with competent authorities. It adopts a legal mobilisation approach to explore how law and litigation can effectively play a role in fighting labour exploitation. It does so by focusing on the experience of collective mobilisation of migrant farmworkers in the Agro Pontino in Italy. In accordance with the findings emerging from the case study, the article makes an attempt at rethinking strategies for fighting labour exploitation in Europe, based on the needs and expectations of exploited workers as described in the 2019 FRA Report on labour exploitation. It proposes therefore an exercise of “legal imagination” that aims to identify under EU law the provisions that would allow to translate these needs and expectations into legal claims.

COVID-19 Pandemic Response in a Migrant Farmworker Community: Excess Mortality, Testing Access and Contact Tracing in Immokalee, Florida.

Background:Migrant and seasonal farmworkers face enormous barriers to health and have been a particularly vulnerable population during the COVID-19 pandemic, but their pandemic experiences and potential inequities have not been well studied.Objectives:We aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 in Immokalee, Florida, a community with a significant population of migrant and seasonal farmworkers. We evaluated for differences in pandemic experience by language, a known barrier to healthcare, to inform and strengthen future public health efforts.Methods:First, to estimate the burden of COVID in the area, we conducted a descriptive analysis of data on COVID-19 deaths for Collier County from May-August 2020. We then surveyed a cross-sectional, randomized representative sample of 318 adults living in Immokalee from March-November 2020 to assess socio-demographics, workplace conditions, sources of information, ability to follow guidelines, and experiences with testing and contact tracing programs. Results were compared across language groups.Findings:Average excess mortality in Collier County was 108%. The majority surveyed in Immokalee had socio-demographic factors associated with higher COVID risk. Non-English speakers had higher workplace risk due to less ability to work from home. Haitian Creole speakers were less likely to be tested, though all participants were willing to get symptomatic testing and quarantine. Those participants who tested positive or had COVID-19 exposures had low engagement with the contact tracing program, and Spanish-speakers reported lower quality of contact tracing than English speakers.Conclusions:The community of Immokalee, FL is a vulnerable population that suffered disproportionate deaths from COVID-19. This study reveals language inequities in COVID testing and contact tracing that should be targeted in future pandemic response in Immokalee and other migrant farmworker communities.

The Labor Angle: Reflections on the History of the Working-Class and Radical Press

The Labor Angle: Reflections on the History of the Working-Class and Radical Press

Fluid Intake and Hydration Status Among North Carolina Farmworkers: A Mixed Methods Study.

Agricultural workers are disproportionately at risk for heat-related morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this study was to explore how sociocultural and occupational factors, and environmental heat stress influenced fluid intake and hydration status among Latino farmworkers working in eastern North Carolina. A community-informed, mixed methods research study was conducted in partnership with staff at a federally qualified health center. In summer 2020, we recruited Latino farmworkers at migrant camps. Twenty-eight male, migrant farmworkers participated in focus group discussions and 30 completed surveys and provided urine specimens. Wet bulb globe temperatures were measured in fields where workers labored. Content analysis and parametric analyses were performed. Data integration was completed using a meta-matrix. Prior to work, 46.7% of farmworkers' urine specific gravity measurements indicated dehydration, which increased to 100% after work. The farmworkers spent between 2 and 7.5 hours of their day working in conditions above the recommended limits for workplace heat exposure. Farmworkers described exposure to extreme heat and inconsistent occupational policy compliance. Farmworkers expressed the opportunity to drink water but accessibility and poor water quality limited hydration. The integrated data supported congruent findings of extreme heat, few work breaks, and substandard housing. Farmworkers are dehydrated at work, placing them at higher risk for heat-related illness (HRI). By engaging with agricultural stakeholders, occupational health nurses can combine efforts and advocate for effective health and safety work policies to reduce HRIs and deaths among farmworkers. Legislation stipulating cooling and hydration practices would support safer work environments.

Rotten asparagus and just-in-time workers:

In early stages of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian farming industry expressed panic that travel restrictions could disrupt the arrival of migrant farmworkers from the Majority World. In this Perspective essay, we consider how farm industry lobbying successfully framed delays to hiring migrant farmworkers as a threat to national food security. After demonstrating how migrant workers have long been situated in spaces of legal exceptionalism, we argue that framing migrant farmworkers as essential for the national public good of domestic food production conceals how they are also essential for private capital accumulation in agribusiness. In the haste to hire migrant workers quickly, Canadian federal and provincial governments largely failed to prevent farmworker COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths predicted by researchers and activists. We conclude by underscoring the need to fundamentally transform temporary labour migration programs in ways that uphold migrant dignity beyond exceptionalism.

Understanding Migrant Farmworkers' Health and Well-Being during the Global COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada: Toward a Transnational Conceptualization of Employment Strain.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada imposed certain international travel bans and work-from-home orders, yet migrant farmworkers, declared essential to national food security, were exempt from such measures. In this context, farm worksites proved to be particularly prone to COVID-19 outbreaks. To apprehend this trend, we engaged an expanded and transnational employment strain framework that identified the employment demands and resources understood from a transnational perspective, as well as the immigration, labour, and public health policies and practices contributing to and/or buffering employment demands during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied mixed methods to analyze administrative data, immigration, labour, and public health policy, as well as qualitative interviews with thirty migrant farmworkers employed in Ontario and Quebec. We concluded that the deleterious outcomes of the pandemic for this group were rooted in the deplorable pre-pandemic conditions they endured. Consequently, the band-aid solutions adopted by federal and provincial governments to address these conditions before and during the pandemic were limited in their efficacy because they failed to account for the transnational employment strains among precarious status workers labouring on temporary employer-tied work permits. Such findings underscore the need for transformative policies to better support health equity among migrant farmworkers in Canada.

Focus groups revealed how community health workers in North Carolina find, verify, and process health information for migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

Community health workers (CHWs) bridge the gap in health and social services delivery for marginalized communities, providing critical health information to those with limited access to health resources. The purpose of our study was to understand CHWs' approaches to identifying salient and credible health information for migrant and seasonal farmworkers in rural North Carolina (NC). Two focus group discussions were held with CHWs in eastern NC and one in western NC in February 2020. CHWs seek health information on chronic health conditions disproportionately experienced by farmworkers such as diabetes and high blood pressure. They search for information from existing resources in their possession, via the internet, and through consultation with health professionals. CHWs also verify the information and transform the content into resources that are accessible to farmworkers. Our findings suggest that CHWs possess a strong set of information literacy skills that could be enhanced through additional training in crediting sources, creating new materials, and organization and storage. This study adds to the very limited body of knowledge about how CHWs seek and transmit information to their communities and sheds light on their information need and literacy abilities.

The daily struggle

Previous research on migrant farmworkers’ resistance efforts in the US focuses on collective organizing but often fails to adopt an intersectional lens that considers farmworker women’s everyday acts of resistance. This study looks at Mexican farmworker women’s resistance in response to the call by scholars for more nuanced portrayals of migrant farmworker’s struggle. Immigrant women of color and low-wage workers have mothering experiences marked by intersectional oppression that shape their food labor. I argue that farmworker mothers engage in everyday acts of resistance via their food labor in their agricultural work and at home feeding their families. An intersectional lens provides an essential perspective on the systemic transformations needed to improve farmworker’s lives in the US.

“Ugly, coarse, and brutal”: James M. Buchanan on The Grapes of Wrath andthe Political Economy of Farm Labor Migration

Abstract In 1940 James M. Buchanan, a future Nobel laureate in economics, wrote a book review of The Grapes of Wrath for his college newspaper in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Buchanan’s review of the work of his fellow future laureate, John Steinbeck, provides a unique case study of how Steinbeck influenced young readers. This article describes Buchanan’s review The Grapes of Wrath and contrasts the experiences of the Joads with Buchanan’s own experience farming in central Tennessee. It then moves to Buchanan’s analysis of the political economy of farm labor migration during his doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, which both echoes and contrasts with Steinbeck’s work. While Steinbeck focused on the treatment of migrant farm workers who had already made their journey to California, Buchanan analyzed the barriers that prevented successful migration for poor farmers in the South.

A Lifeline in troubled waters: A support intervention for migrant farm workers

AbstractWe implemented and evaluated a service delivery intervention (support model) to address the challenges faced by migrant agricultural workers in British Columbia, Canada. Three factors were identified that contributed to the effectiveness of the intervention: (1) face‐to‐face support and in‐person outreach towards connection; (2) accounting migrant workers' hierarchy of needs and addressing their basic needs first towards comprehensiveness; and (3) role clarity and communication between partners involved in supporting this population towards coordination. A final factor, wider constraints, referred to the wider context of migrant workers' lives including their temporary status, tied work permits, and lack of access to rights. These wider constraints, which were exacerbated by the COVID‐19 pandemic, underscore that until greater policy action is taken to address these workers' precarious status, support services can only offer a lifeline in troubled waters.

Educación in Our Own Terms: Survivance Amongst Latinx Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers in K-12 Schools and Beyond

ABSTRACT The author examines how Latinx migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFW) engaged in survivance, active presence and resistance, in transition from K-12 schools to a High School Equivalency Program (HEP). Ethnographic methods were used to understand the educational experiences of Latinx students from MSFW backgrounds while pursuing a General Educational Development degree (GED) in a Midwest HEP program. Findings illustrate how K-12 schools produced inequities for MSFW students to pursue a GED as a form of survivance. This study reframes the deficit discourse surrounding MSFW’s departure from K-12 schools to one focused on agency and collective survivance.

Situated Learning and Transnational Labor Migration: The Case of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program.

Grounded in an analysis of interviews with migrant farm workers in Canada, this article explores how learning in the everyday contexts of temporary transnational labor migration is implicated in both migrant identity formation and the social reproduction of an established and growing labor migration regime. The article focuses on thinking through how workers negotiate the intergenerational workplace tensions that permeate life in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. The findings suggest that through their sustained participation in the everyday social practices that develop through dormitory-living, transnational laborers learn to become migrant workers. This formation of migrant worker identities in turn contributes to the reproduction of the social relations that support the ongoing practice of circulatory labor migration in the Canadian agricultural industry.

Work-Life Stress during the Coronavirus Pandemic among Latina Farmworkers in a Rural California Region.

Objectives: To examine the type and severity of stressors experienced among Latina farmworkers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A survey containing the Migrant Farmworker Stress Inventory was administered to 77 female-identifying Latina farmworkers working in a US–Mexico border region. A sub-sample of five participants participated in key-informant interviews. Data collection occurred in Summer 2021. Results: Nearly 40% of Latina farmworkers reported high stress levels indicative of clinical mental health risks. Health and safety concerns and experienced stressors identified included visible substance abuse and poor bathroom conditions at the field site, language barriers, and balancing work and home life demands. Conclusions: Latina farmworkers have unique health and safety needs, and COVID-19 has contributed to the experienced stressors. Understanding the familial and working environment sources of stress specific to female agriculture workers is imperative to implementing culturally and gender-responsive strategies to better support the health and safety of farming populations in future pandemics.

Refining the Migrant Farmworker Stress Inventory among Latino Migrant Farmworkers in Rural Nebraska.

The Migrant Farmworker Stress Inventory (MFWSI) was developed to measure the distinct stressors faced by migrant farmworkers. The most appropriate measurement and factor structure, however, has been primarily examined with exploratory methods with no studies of confirmatory factor analyses to date. The current study built on prior exploratory factor analytic approaches using the MFWSI by applying confirmatory factor analyses and other tests of validity to better delineate the component parts of migrant farmworker stress that contribute to anxiety and depression. Participants were 241 Latino migrant farmworkers recruited from rural farmworker campsites in Nebraska. Neither of the previously identified factor structures fit the data well initially. Following model respecification, only three factors remained from the original exploratory approaches. These models produced both common and unique factors, which were combined to produce a four-factor model. Results suggest that rural migrant farmworker stress may operate with at least four distinct domains: 1) economic difficulties, 2) immigration and legal status, 3) parenting and child difficulties, and 4) social isolation and related challenges. Finally, only economic difficulties predicted depression and anxiety scores, such that those reporting more stress around economic difficulties reported higher depression and anxiety symptoms. Results point to the need for additional measurement and construct refinement to inform empirical, clinical, policy, and social advocacy work.

(Not That) Essential: A Scoping Review of Migrant Workers' Access to Health Services and Social Protection during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Migrant workers have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To examine their access to health services and social protection during the pandemic, we conducted an exploratory scoping review on experiences of migrant workers in three countries with comparable immigration, health, and welfare policies: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. After screening 961 peer-reviewed and grey literature sources, five studies were included. Using immigration status as a lens, we found that despite more inclusive policies in response to the pandemic, temporary migrant workers, especially migrant farm workers and international students, remained excluded from health services and social protection. Findings demonstrate that exploitative employment practices, precarity, and racism contribute to the continued exclusion of temporary migrant workers. The interplay between these factors, with structural racism at its core, reflect the colonial histories of these countries and their largely neoliberal approaches to immigration. To address this inequity, proactive action that recognizes and targets these structural determinants at play is essential.

Community Health Workers’ Role in Addressing Farmworker Health Disparities

ABSTRACT Community health workers (CHWs) are uniquely positioned to connect migrant and seasonal farmworkers to health promotion and clinical services. However, research on CHWs’ experiences, particularly related to their provision of health education to farmworkers, is limited. To explore CHWs’ practices and challenges in conducting health education outreach, we conducted three focus group discussions with farmworker health CHWs (N = 28) in North Carolina in the spring of 2020. We analyzed the focus group transcripts, and we compared the code outputs, thematic code summaries, and memos maintained throughout the analytic process to examine the experiences of CHWs in acquiring and disseminating health information and resources, including use of technology. We identified three themes related to CHWs’ experiences providing health information to farmworkers. First, CHWs described short-term preparation, immediately before providing health outreach, and long-term activities, devoted to maintaining and improving their capacity to provide relevant health information to farmworkers. Second, they described their use of health education delivery methods, including open-ended questions, participatory and interactive approaches, and non-verbal aids. Third, participants described their current use of technology and related challenges, as well as the technology needed to enhance health outreach, including internet access. Findings reveal opportunities to improve farmworker health education through professional development for CHWs, identification of preferred methods of health education delivery to farmworkers, and provision of technology to farmworker-serving organizations. Establishing rural internet access and equipping outreach organizations with technology would position CHWs to be maximally effective as they strive to reduce farmworkers’ health inequities. Abbreviations: CHW: Community health worker; FGD: focus group discussion; NC: North Carolina.

Grower influence during a participatory project with farmworkers

Scholars argue that growers occupy a special place in the US imagination, which grants them and their priorities power in policy spaces and disrupts efforts at addressing injustices that farmworkers experience. While farmworkers have successfully organized and made structural changes on their own behalf, there is a critical need to find new spaces where farmworkers can address claims for justice. Organizations that serve and advocate for farmworkers implement participatory projects to increase opportunities for farmworkers to discuss and address injustices. However, little research interrogates how growers could influence organizational capacity to support meaningful participation, processes that foster agency and provide avenues for tying grievances to action, for farmworkers. This paper begins to address this gap. Results draw on five months of ethnographic fieldwork (semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document review) with the Valle Vista Farmworker Ministry, an organization that serves farmworkers in the rural southeastern US. Valle Vista was implementing a participatory project with the farmworkers. In addition to creating leadership opportunities for farmworkers, stakeholders aspired to create a direct relationship with growers and enhance organizational capacity to advocate on behalf of farmworkers. Results show that fears and risks of upsetting growers hindered Valle Vista’s efforts towards fully creating meaningful participation with farmworkers. Given these findings, this study posits that in addition to having power in policy spaces and the US imagination, growers also hold this influence in participatory spaces created by organizations. The study concludes with recommendations for scholars and organizations that would like to implement participatory projects with migrant farmworker populations.