The meatpacking industry’s corporate exceptionalism: racialized logics of food chain worker disposability during the COVID-19 crisis

“Keeping Things under the Rug”: Racial Dynamics in the Context of Large Immigration Raids in Rural Mississippi☆

“…For example, studies of the 2008 large immigration raid in Postville (Iowa) show how this event created unprecedented social trauma and economic crisis for this community (Camayd‐Freixas 2013; Grey et al 2009; Juby and Kaplan 2011). Like Postville, the raids in Central Mississippi caused significant social and economic problems, later worsened by the COVID‐19 pandemic that disproportionally affected communities of color in the meat industry (see Alkon et al 2020; Dempsey, Zoller, and Hunt 2022; Ramos et al 2020). Although there are no studies about the impacts of these raids, there have been numerous works revealing how immigrants in the food system experience significant challenges, especially under strong immigration enforcement environments.…”

“…Latinx immigrants in the food system and in rural areas are often situated at the bottom of racial hierarchies—symbolically and materially. For example, during the COVID‐19 pandemic, meatpacking and meat processing plants across the rural U.S. experienced outbreaks, disproportionally affecting Latinx workers who became essential and disposable, but were deprived governmental resources, such as stimulus checks (see e.g., Alkon et al 2020; Dempsey et al 2022; Ramos et al 2020). The lack of governmental control of labor and human rights, and fear of large immigration raids (increased during the Trump administration), have situated immigrant workers of this industry in powerless, vulnerable conditions (Dempsey et al 2022).…”

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“…FS worker health was known, pre-pandemic, to be disproportionately affected by the cumulative precarity resulting from overlapping vulnerabilities. These encompass the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and workers who are financially and socially vulnerable due to factors such as low pay, occupational exceptionalism, 1 temporary or precarious job situations, shift work, immigration status, limited English proficiency, lack of health insurance, and discrimination and systemic racism (Dempsey et al, 2022;Fan & Pena, 2021;Flynn et al, 2014;Flynn, Cunningham et al, 2015;Flynn, Eggerth et al, 2015;Gelatt, 2020;Gravel & Dubé, 2016;Parks et al, 2020;Ramos et al, 2020;Rodman et al, 2016;Rolland & Kim, 2021;Sajjanhar & Mohammed, 2021;Thomas et al, 2021). These pre-pandemic and pandemic vulnerabilities have been extensively linked to increased and excessive morbidity and mortality among FS workers during the pandemic compared with some other essential and non-essential workers; the impacts were even greater for workers in certain FS work settings and for those from some racial/ethnic minority and immigrant groups (Billock et al, 2022;Bui et al, 2020;Chen et al, 2022;Cummings et al, 2022;Dyal et al, 2020;Hawkins, 2020;Lusk & Chandra, 2021;Obinna, 2021;Rubenstein et al, 2020;UCLA Labor Center, 2022;Waltenburg et al, 2021).…”