Making labor visible in the food movement: Outreach to farmworkers in Michigan

Abstract

While the food movement includes many critical positive initiatives, it shows little recognition of the labor contributions of the farmworkers who produce the food. A visit to a few local towns in western Michigan revealed farmworkers are invisible in “farm to table” tropes. A study was undertaken to explore farmworkers and their living conditions, and the links between their local invisibility and historic, political, and global processes. Using ethnographic fieldwork, the author visited housing camps, spoke with farmworkers, rode along with outreach workers, and volunteered at migrant summer schools. A framework of structural violence informed the analysis. The findings include descriptions of migrant housing camps, in which migrants face substandard and overcrowded conditions, and their placement in hard to access locations. The study describes how outreach is conducted, highlighting strategies and methods outreach staff/interns use to connect with farmworkers in labor camps, taking information and services directly to them, sensitive to their circumstances, which include limited time availability and communal living conditions. The study also highlights the invisible faciality of farmworkers locally and in international agribusiness restructuring and concludes with a discussion on the role of social work in increasing farmworkers’ visibility in the food movement and practice.

Outreach to farmworkers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This study used ethnography and a more extensive methodological description is found elsewhere ( Saldanha, 2020 ). I spent four summers (what farmworkers call growing seasons) shadowing outreach workers.…”

“…This article is not focussed on specific details of findings on outreach such as descriptions of migrant camps and farmworkers living in them, which are published elsewhere ( Saldanha, 2020 ). Instead, it offers a synthesis of best practices of outreach gathered over multiple visits, including the training, preparations, and planning for outreach.…”

“…Although they arrive tired at the end of the workday, they still need to perform household chores, cook meals, and pack a lunch for the following day and retire so they can rise early. The staff I shadowed in the first two seasons conducted outreach in the evening hours ( Saldanha, 2020 ); the group in the fourth season conducted outreach in the afternoons. Staff conducting evening/night outreach are careful not to stay out late as many camps are in rural locations.…”

Community health worker outreach to farmworkers in rural North Carolina: Learning from adaptations to the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic

“…19,20 Other studies have also reported that community health workers played critical roles in distributing PPE supplied from government aid packages to farmworkers. 9,21 In addition to a lack of access to PPE, large portions of the Hispanic population in the United States faced food insecurity during the pandemic 22 due to isolation, transportation issues, and economic hardship. Porch drops from the community health workers who participated in our study provided needed food and prescriptions to farmworkers who were isolated in rural housing sites.…”

The intersections of migration, app-based gig work, and career development: implications for career practice and research

“…Research from several disciplines such as social work (e.g. Saldanha, 2020 ; Zaviršek, 2017 ), public and industrial relations and policy (e.g. Australian Government, 2019 ; Goods et al, 2019 ; Biagi et al, 2018 ; Victorian Government, 2020 ), business and economics (e.g.…”