How Good Are Networks for Migrant Job Seekers? Ethnographic Evidence from North Carolina Farm Labor* Camps

Abstract

Migrant farmworker networks are vital components in their job seeking and underemployment minimization strategies. Yet, farmworker cultural, physical, and institutional isolation along with the itinerant and clandestine features of farmwork have become major obstacles in the development of robust lateral communitywide network ties that would otherwise favor reciprocity and resource sharing. Thus, contrary to the positive social capital assumption, we argue that the paucity and fragmented features of farmworkers’ lateral ties have increased their vulnerability and locked them in exploitative relationships in a hostile social environment that makes impractical or impossible the formation of alternative ties. Our study is based on participant observation through a 6‐week stay in three North Carolina farm labor camps. On‐site evidence shows that the two larger groups of solitary male farmworkers and farmworking families break up into smaller groups, each group in pursuit of its own short‐term goals. We conclude that, even though farmworker networks help them to find and ensure temporary jobs, their inability to use the networks to share resources is ultimately detrimental for participants’ long‐term socioeconomic prospects.

Housing and Neighborhood Characteristics and Latino Farmworker Family Well-Being

“…For example, Raffaelli and colleagues [64] report that poor community climate among Latina mothers is associated with decreased life satisfaction, financial well-being, and food security. Balderrama and Molina [65] show how lack of outward orientation reduces Latino farmworkers’ ability to use social networks to find and share resources.…”

Beyond the agricultural “suffering slot”: Structural agency in U.S. farm work

“…Much attention has been paid to the most vulnerable farmworkers, including farmworkers with unauthorized (or perhaps more accurately, “informally authorized” (Plascencia, 2009)) immigration status (Holmes, 2013; Mares, 2019; Sexsmith, 2016) or temporary guestworker status (Griffith, 2006), racial‐ethnic minoritized workers (Holmes, 2013), the lowest‐ranking field workers who face some of the worst working conditions (Duke, 2011; Holmes, 2013), and workers employed by multi‐layered networks of exploitative labor brokers (Balderrama & Molina, 2009; Horton, 2016). This somewhat disproportionate focus on the most structurally vulnerable farmworkers has occurred amidst (and perhaps has been encouraged by) the anthropological turn to the “suffering slot,” through which “the figure of humanity united in its shared vulnerability to suffering” (Robbins, 2013, p. 450) became the primary subject of anthropological inquiry.…”

Agricultural Labor in Midwestern United States specialty cropping systems

“…Finally, although the differences between grower and labor contractor employers are important in other areas of the country and for many farm workers (Balderrama and Molina II 2009 *Note that the original NAWS codebook contains more levels for several variables than are reported here or in Table 3.4. For example, additional options for birth country include South America and the Caribbean.…”