Seasonal Migrant Workers Research Articles

“A Desolate Voice”: Poetry and Identity among Young Afghan Refugees in Iran,1

At the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, it may be said that Afghans began to form exilic communities in Iran rather than simply intermittent groups of seasonal migrant workers. The binding institutions of these communities, in particular the community of Shi‘a Afghans in Mashhad, were political parties and groups of mojahedin, religious centers and leaders, and cultural figures—notably poets. Poetry (both oral and written) in court Persian and local vernacular, has a long tradition in Afghanistan—much of which is shared with Iran—and continues to be the most respected and most widely practiced of the arts. It has also always had a direct, but not always approving, relationship with power and politics. Among refugees, it has been a vehicle for political commentary and incitement to jihad; for dialogue between Afghans and Iranians; and (in lyrical forms such as the classical ghazal or contemporary blank verse) for expressing subjective experience, thought, and emotion, particularly love or the pain of exile, with some license to criticize or subvert social convention. In this ethnographic analysis, I examine the role of poets and poetry in the cultural life of Afghans in Iran since 1979, focusing on the latest generation of young poets and tracing the influence of modernist Iranian literary developments on their work in the context of the gradual depoliticization of Afghan communities in exile, in particular after September 2001. I also argue that literary activities have been important in sustaining a separate ‘Afghan’ identity that has helped many young people transform their sense of marginalization to one of pride both in their non-Iranian origins and in their common heritage with Iranians. This article is based on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mashhad and Tehran, Iran between 2004 and 2006. 1The quote in the title comes from a poem by Elyas ‘Alavi, Avaz-e Gharib. The adjective gharib means strange, lonely, foreign, and is intended here to evoke a cry of desolation and dispossession. All translations of Persian poems and sources are by the author, with assistance and clarifications from the poets.

Diabetes Knowledge and Cardiovascular Risk Awareness of Seasonal Migrant Workers in South Carolina

Diabetes Knowledge and Cardiovascular Risk Awareness of Seasonal Migrant Workers in South Carolina

Communicable disease control in a migrant seasonal workers population: A case study in Norway.

Reliable data on the health status of migrant seasonal workers in Europe is scarce. Access to public health care for this population depends on national regulations, and their legal status in host countries. In this manuscript we describe a case study of a salmonellosis outbreak that occurred in Norway, and highlight the difficulties encountered in applying control measures in a population of seasonal migrant farm workers. Surveillance and control of infectious diseases need to be supported by legislation which makes implementation of control measures possible. Efforts have been made to improve the rights for migrants in Europe with regard to healthcare, but seasonal migrant workers still remain largely outsiders where these measures are concerned. Special attention should be given to this disadvantaged group in terms of social rights and healthcare. Preparedness plans should be improved to deal with contagious pathogens involving the seasonal migrant population.

Rural Work, Household Subsistence, and the North American Working Class: A View from the Midwest

This essay examines seasonal rural work as part of the survival strategies of rural and urban households and individuals in the Midwestern United States. Using workers' memoirs and data from government investigations, the lives of so-called “hobo” workers are examined in relation to communities, labor markets, gender and sexuality, and class formation. “Hobo” was a colloquial term for seasonal migrant workers; most were young, immigrant and US-born men of European ancestry employed in crop harvesting, logging, mining, railroad construction, and other short-term jobs. The seasonal labor market drew together a heterogeneous workforce including farm owners, farm laborers, displaced industrial workers, and young men seeking adventure, as well as criminals, marginally employable drunkards, and disabled men. The essay traces the lives of individual workers, explains labor market structures, and places the mostly-male seasonal workforce in the context of families and communities. The history of rural work in the Midwestern US confounds notions of class formation that posit a one-way trip from peasant to worker, and suggests the ways in which theories of class formation have leaned too heavily on an unexamined image of rural life.

Who goes? Who stays back? Seasonal migration and staying put among rural manual workers in Eastern India

AbstractIn Barddhaman District, West Bengal, India, large numbers of rice transplanters and harvesters are seasonal migrant workers, who are unable to make a living in their home areas. They often come from households where other members have stayed put. This paper illustrates the interdependence between those who move and those who stay. It also shows that structural factors, such as age, gender, class and ethnicity, though important, do not determine who migrates or who stays put in a particular season. Indeed, the paper raises questions about the very categories ‘migrant’ and ‘person who stays put’ in relation to seasonal migration. This is because such migration inevitably involves doing both; and because for some of those who move and stay for longer, lifeworlds are ‘stretched’ between places. Moreover, whether a person stays put or migrates varies over the life course. Ironically, perhaps, migration for arduous manual work away from home can be part of a struggle to be able to afford to stay put. © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Migration Behavior and Seasonal Migrant Workers

Migration Behavior and Seasonal Migrant Workers

Linking Home and Market:Towards a Gendered Analysis of Changing Labour Relations in Rural West Bengal

Summaries This article identifies changing labour market relations in West Bengal agriculture and argues that these cannot be fully explained without extending the analysis beyond paid work to the questions of who does what work and why inside labour-selling households. The pragmatic approach to employer-worker negotiation adopted by the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) at the local level is built on an implicit understanding of agricultural worker households' unwaged work. While unwaged work may enable labour-sellers to negotiate higher wages, it also adds to employers' capacity to contain wage rises. Moreover, ascribed ‘responsibility’ for unwaged work to certain individuals within a household means that those people are less able to enter contractual arrangements involving prior commitments. At the same time the withdrawal of women in status-aspiring groups from involvement in paid work contributes to the increasing incidence of seasonally tied labour arrangements. Thus, workers' actions are both contingent on and constitutive of the wider structures in which they operate. Understanding the meaning of the closing wage gap between men and women in West Bengal, and the paradoxical continuity of a low proportion of women among agricultural workers requires analysis of how those structures, including ideologies of gender and caste as well as contractual arrangements (for both local and seasonal migrant workers) and the practices of political parties, change over time.

Knowledge, attitudes and perception of AIDS in rural Senegal: relationship to sexual behaviour and behaviour change.

To describe the determinants of 'at risk' sexual behaviour and perception of AIDS-related prevention messages in rural Africa. A rural area in Southern Senegal. Cross-sectional study using a standardized questionnaire administered by local interviewers to 240 men and 242 women aged 15-59 years, randomly selected among the general population. Twenty-eight per cent of the sexually active men and 27% of the sexually active women declared at least one casual sexual partner in the 12 months preceding the interview. Among these, 27% of men and 30% of women declared having used a condom in most acts of casual intercourse. Seasonal migrants and divorced or widowed women were more likely to declare casual sex. Causal sex was motivated by material needs for 66% of the women who experienced it, and those of the women who reported casual sexual intercourse were less likely to feel at risk of AIDS [odds ratio (OR), 3.9; P = 0.01] and were more optimistic about their future (OR, 3.6; P = 0.03). For men, the motivations explaining a change in sexual behaviour in order to avoid HIV infection included the perception of AIDS as a health problem (OR, 11; P = 0.004), the perception of the disease as serious (OR, 5.4; P = 0.001) and the feeling of personal risk of becoming HIV-infected (OR, 3.2; P = 0.02). Perceived skill in changing one's behaviour was strongly associated with declaration of past behaviour change for both men and women (men: OR, 3.4; P = 0.02; women: OR, 6.3; P = 0.0001). Men and women exhibit two different patterns regarding their behaviour and perception towards AIDS. Material needs appear to be of importance for women, whereas perception of a real threat lead men to adopt protective behaviours. In the very area of this study, widowed and divorced women as well as male seasonal migrants are particularly exposed to HIV infection. They are characterized by a higher risk behaviour, a low rate of condom use and seldom declared any protective measures to avoid HIV infection.

Testing for Disequilibrium in the Hired Farm Labor Market: Comment

In a recent article, Duffield and Coltrane use an econometric model to test for disequilibrium in the hired farm labor market. Cusum and cusum of squares tests show that the estimated parameters are stable. Estimated shortand long-run elasticities of adjustment suggest that the national hired labor market adequately adjusts to changes in farm and nonfarm wages, of farms, farm prices, and family labor. The methodology used is sound and appropriate for testing for disequilibrium in a market. However, we have three comments. The first is to question whether their model using time series data from 1948 through 1989 successfully captures the dramatic structural changes that occurred in the farm sector over this period. Among the many changes affecting farm labor are mechanical innovations, production system modifications, and child labor laws. The authors include a number of farms variable and a trend to reflect these structural changes, but it would have been preferable to test for significant differences between blocks of time, and then use a shorter, recent time period for the analysis, say, since 1975. The second is to ask if the results of this model are subject to the Lucas critique (Lucas). The parameters of the model were estimated over a period when the government was continually interfering. Between 1948 and 1989 we've seen the Bracero and H2A programs and special agricultural programs under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). These government programs affected employment levels of hired farm labor. In fact they were designed specifically to increase or maintain the supply of agricultural labor (Heppel and Amendola). So how can this model be used to indicate how well the market adjusts without government interference? The third and probably most important comment is to question the appropriateness of using aggregate U.S. data to model the hired farm labor market. The bulk of the hired farm labor force is found in a handful of states: In California, three-fourths of the farm work force is hired; in Florida, 68%; while in the Cornbelt, only 15% is hired (USDA, NASS). Aggregate U.S. data wash out the heterogeneity of U.S. agriculture and the diversity of farm labor use. The contrast between a salaried hired worker on a Wisconsin dairy farm and a seasonal migrant worker from Mexico who picks California grapes could not be more striking. How meaningful is it to lump them together to analyze an overall labor market? There are many labor markets in the nation, differing markedly by crop and region of the country. In some of these labor markets, for example, where a high minimum wage is enforced, the observed labor quantity may be on the demand curve and there would be a surplus of labor. In other markets where farmers demand more labor than is supplied at the prevailing wage, the observed quantity may lie on the supply curve meaning a labor shortage. In still other markets where temporary workers are attracted at the prevailing wage, a downward supply shift could lead to the observed quantity hired being at or near the intersection of supply and demand. The point is that aggregate U.S. data homogenize these interesting differences. Evidence of labor market equilibrium nationally clearly is not evidence for local equilibria where regional differences are pronounced. Further, it is not true that labor moves easily from shortage to surplus areas. In a recent survey of farmworkers in Oregon (Mason, Cross, and Nuckton), we find that workers don't even shift readily between crops located in close proximity, such as between strawberries and Christmas trees in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Rather, they develop skills in one (or a few related) crop(s) and follow that crop through the production season. Given the heterogeneity of the U.S. farm labor markets, we question the author's use of aggregate U.S. data over four decades to draw the particular policy conclusions for the early 1990s that they suggest (p. 419):