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The embodied precarity of year-round agricultural work: health and safety risks among Latino/a immigrant dairy farmworkers in New York

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  • Kathleen Sexsmith

    (Penn State University)

Abstract

This paper analyzes how industrial agricultural production and an exclusionary immigration regime produce an embodied form of precarity among an undocumented immigrant labor force in the New York dairy industry, a much-celebrated engine of rural economic growth. In this industry, immigrant workers settle for years at a time, forming ethnic enclaves from which employers source workers for low-wage, exhausting, dangerous, year-round jobs. While much of the literature on migrant worker precarity has focused on temporary, insecure, flexible, and informal workers, this paper adds to this literature by analyzing how the permanence and regularity of dairy farming shape the embodied dimensions of worker precarity. The analysis shows how ‘everyday deportability’ (De Genova in Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annu Rev Anthropol 31(1):419–447, 2002), a weak regulatory structure, and the particularities of the production process combine to shape severe forms of physical risk to immigrant working bodies in the dairy industry. Findings are based on a qualitative study with current and former Latino/a dairy farmworkers between 2011 and 2015. This paper contributes to theorizing worker precarity in agricultural workplaces under the ongoing neoliberal restructuring of the global agri-food system.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathleen Sexsmith, 2022. "The embodied precarity of year-round agricultural work: health and safety risks among Latino/a immigrant dairy farmworkers in New York," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(1), pages 357-370, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:39:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s10460-021-10252-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-021-10252-8
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Maloney, Thomas R. & Bills, Nelson L., 2011. "Survey of New York Dairy Farm Employers 2009," Research Bulletins 121569, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    2. Walter, Nicholas & Bourgois, Philippe & Margarita Loinaz, H., 2004. "Masculinity and undocumented labor migration: injured latino day laborers in San Francisco," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(6), pages 1159-1168, September.
    3. Seth M. Holmes, 2020. "Correction to: Migrant farmworker injury: temporality, statistical representation, eventfulness," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 249-249, March.
    4. Seth M. Holmes, 2020. "Migrant farmworker injury: temporality, statistical representation, eventfulness," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 237-247, March.
    5. Diego Thompson, 2021. "Building and transforming collective agency and collective identity to address Latinx farmworkers’ needs and challenges in rural Vermont," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(1), pages 129-143, February.
    6. Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland & Teresa Mares & Daniel Baker, 2020. "Health by mail: mail order medication practices of Latinx dairy worker households on the northern US border," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 225-236, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Fabiola M. Perez-Lua & Alec M. Chan-Golston & Nancy J. Burke & Maria-Elena De Trinidad Young, 2023. "The Influence of Organizational Aspects of the U.S. Agricultural Industry and Socioeconomic and Political Conditions on Farmworkers’ COVID-19 Workplace Safety," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(23), pages 1-19, December.

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