IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v12y1995i4p18-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Farm labor contractors: The processors of new immigrant labor from Mexico for Californian agribusiness

Author

Listed:
  • Fred Krissman

Abstract

The deteriorating living and working conditions suffered by California's farm workers and their families is associated with the escalating proportion of the agricultural labor market ( ALM) provisioned by the state's farm labor contractors ( FLCs). The increasing use of FLCs is the result of a restructuring strategy undertaken by Californian agribusiness to reduce the cost of labor, as well as responsibility for work place, labor, and immigration laws. The FLCs' rise to prominence as the bulwark between growers and workers within the state's ALM has been ensured by the internal dynamics of contractor firms. During almost three years of binational fieldwork in both California's San Joaquin Valley and rural Mexico I found that FLC management agents cultivate sociocultural practices and provide socioeconomic services that diffuse management-labor conflict within the agricultural sector. However, the existing literature concerning the FLCs focuses upon the firm, not its labor agents; therefore, FLC heterogeneity is emphasized, while ubiquitous management characteristics and practices are overlooked. As a result, recent legislation has had the unintended effect of augmenting the role played by management agents in “processing” an unending flow of new immigrant workers through the “revolving door” ALM, leading to the deterioration of conditions in rural California. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1995

Suggested Citation

  • Fred Krissman, 1995. "Farm labor contractors: The processors of new immigrant labor from Mexico for Californian agribusiness," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 12(4), pages 18-46, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:12:y:1995:i:4:p:18-46
    DOI: 10.1007/BF02218565
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF02218565
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF02218565?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Theodore P. Lianos & Quirino Paris, 1972. "American Agriculture and the Prophecy of Increasing Misery," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 54(4_Part_1), pages 570-577.
    2. Andre Gunder Frank, 1978. "Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-16014-3.
    3. Mines, Richard & Anzaldua Montoya, Ricardo, 1982. "New Migrants vs. Old Migrants: Alternative Labor Market Structures in the California Citrus Industry," University of California at San Diego, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies qt7f47m6wf, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UC San Diego.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richards, Timothy J., 2018. "Immigration Reform and Farm Labor Markets," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274165, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan F. Cogliano & Roberto Veneziani & Naoki Yoshihara, 2021. "The Dynamics of International Exploitation," Working Papers 2021-02, University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department.
    2. Roberto Veneziani & Naoki Yoshihara, 2017. "Globalisation and inequality in a dynamic economy: an axiomatic analysis of unequal exchange," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 445-468, December.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James Robinson, 2005. "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 546-579, June.
    4. Cintia Rodrigues de Oliveira & Rafael Alcadipani da Silveira, 2021. "An Essay on Corporate Crimes in the Post-Colonial Perspective: Challenging Traditional Literature," RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), ANPAD - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração, vol. 25(4), pages 190144-1901.
    5. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A., 2005. "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 385-472, Elsevier.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2002. "Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1231-1294.
    7. Andrews, Abigail L., 2016. "Legacies of Inequity: How Hometown Political Participation and Land Distribution Shape Migrants’ Paths into Wage Labor," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 318-332.
    8. Roy Smith, 2019. "Options and Choices in Relation to Adopting Healthy Lifestyles in the Pacific Islands Region," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 35(1), pages 62-82, March.
    9. Honorata Howaniec & Marcin Lis, 2020. "Euroregions and Local and Regional Development—Local Perceptions of Cross-Border Cooperation and Euroregions Based on the Euroregion Beskydy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-21, September.
    10. Shawn F. Dorius, 2018. "Socioeconomic Status Mobility in the Modern World System: Growth and Allocation Effects," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 1049-1074, August.
    11. Rochin, Refugio I. & Castillo, Monica D., 1991. "Immigration, Demographic Change, And Colonia Formation In California: A Crosssectional Analysis Of Rural Communities With High Concentrations Of Latinos," Working Papers 225859, University of California, Davis, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    12. Alan Freeman, 2010. "Crisis and “law of motion” in economics: a critique of positivist Marxism," Research in Political Economy, in: The National Question and the Question of Crisis, pages 211-250, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    13. Bhattacharya, Prabir, 2019. "India in the Rise of Britain and Europe: A Contribution to the Convergence and Great Divergence Debates," MPRA Paper 97457, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. F. Stuart Jones*, 1985. "Britain and the Economic Development of Tropical Africa, Asia and South America in the Age of Imperialism (Review Article)*1," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 53(3), pages 172-185, September.
    15. Lloyd, Jack & Martin, Philip L. & Mamer, John, 1988. "The Ventura Citrus Labor Market," Information Series 251905, University of California, Davis, Giannini Foundation.
    16. Ugur, Mehmet, 2010. "Institutions and economic performance: a review of the theory and evidence," MPRA Paper 25909, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2010.
    17. Ainsley Elbra & John Mikler & Hannah Murphy‐Gregory, 2023. "The Big Four and corporate tax governance: From global dis‐harmony to national regulatory incrementalism," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(1), pages 72-83, February.
    18. Mario Davide Parrilli & Khalid Nadvi & Henry Wai-Chung Yeung, 2013. "Local and Regional Development in Global Value Chains, Production Networks and Innovation Networks: A Comparative Review and the Challenges for Future Research," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(7), pages 967-988, July.
    19. Ryan E. Galt, 2013. "The Moral Economy Is a Double-edged Sword: Explaining Farmers’ Earnings and Self-exploitation in Community-Supported Agriculture," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 89(4), pages 341-365, October.
    20. Ainsley Elbra, 2020. "Fool’s Gold: Business Power and the Evolution of the Conflict‐free Gold Standard," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 11(3), pages 336-346, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:12:y:1995:i:4:p:18-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.