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Episode 1: Migrant workers and structural racism in agriculture, with Dr. Seth Holmes
77 Plays3 months ago
In this episode, anthropologist and medical physician Dr. Seth Holmes from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Barcelona shares his two decades of experience studying the role and importance of agricultural farm workers in our current food system. He discusses the structural racism they face and the health issues they endure to put food on our tables.
Having lived alongside Triqui Mexican farm workers during his research—from the mountains of Oaxaca to the illegal crossing of the US border through the desert, to harvesting berries with them in Washington State and California—Dr. Holmes presents a unique perspective on the injustices faced by these essential workers.
📝 Show notes:
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies (Book): www.ucpress.edu/book/978052039863…uit-broken-bodies
First Time Home (Movie): www.firsttimehomefilm.com/
Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities: immigrantinfo.org/resources/binati…ous-communities/
Coalition of Immokalee Workers: ciw-online.org/
United Farm Workers: ufw.org/
Familias Unidas por la Justicia: familiasunidasjusticia.com/
Jornaleras en Lucha: jornalerasenlucha.org/
Codetras: www.codetras.org/
Fair Food Program: fairfoodprogram.org/
👋 Let's connect!
Instagram: @tierraylibertad_podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Sustainable Agriculture and Social Justice
00:00:13
Speaker
around the world. We explore the sustainable transition of the agricultural and food system while looking into social and racial justice, land concentration, the impact of agricultural technologies, and the dangers of green capitalism.
Meet Dr. Cess Holmes: Anthropologist and Advocate
00:00:35
Speaker
Today, we are welcoming Dr. Cess Holmes. Cess is an anthropologist and medical doctor. Currently, he is a professor at the University of California Berkeley and principal investigator of a European Research Council project at the University of Barcelona. He has dedicated years to working collaboratively with agricultural workers who help feed Western countries.
00:00:56
Speaker
In 2013, and updated in 2023, SES published a book called Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, based on 18 months of full-time, multistated ethnographic research.
Exploring Migrant Workers' Lives and Resistance
00:01:06
Speaker
The book received multiple national and international awards, including the Margaret Mead award for bringing social science to broad publics.
00:01:14
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The book provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives, suffering and resistance of transnational migrants in our contemporary food system, with a particular focus on Mexican tricky and indigenous workers. During his research, Sestre can destiny with his companions threw the desert into Arizona and was even jailed with him. He lived with indigenous families in the mountains of Huachaca and in farm labor camps in California, Oregon and Washington state.
00:01:40
Speaker
During his study, he planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries and blueberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals. Seth's work shows how migrant injuries and illnesses are unexpected and systematic results of transnational food systems based on capitalism, structural racism, colonial and imperial histories. Hi, Seth. Thanks a lot for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Thomas. To get started, can you tell us a bit more about you and your work?
00:02:09
Speaker
I'm ah trained as a sociocultural anthropologist and focus a lot on health and healthcare care and the social forces that impinge health and healthcare that make it more difficult systematically for certain categories of people. And I also trained as a medical physician. um And I'm running a research project that's joint between Spain, based mostly in Barcelona and Germany and California that's looking at the ways in which different social systems affect the health and health care, both of migrant farm workers and of supply chain workers and of the people who eat the food.
The Essential Role and Challenges of Migrant Farm Workers
00:02:54
Speaker
To set the context for this conversation, can you explain what is the role of migrant farm workers in the US? How important and necessary are they to the current agricultural system? In the US, similar to many parts of Europe, the migrant farm workers are the main people who harvest our fruits and vegetables. So um the vast majority of farm employees in the US are immigrants, most of whom in the US s were born in Mexico and most of whom are
00:03:26
Speaker
um
00:03:29
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unauthorized or irregular migrants. They don't necessarily have work visas, etc., but they're doing extremely important work that provides food for the whole society. In 2013, you published a book called Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, which has more recently been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, and Italian. Can you tell us more about the meaning behind this impactful title?
00:03:56
Speaker
The title and the book was just republished in 2023 with some updates. The title is meant to show that there's a kind of exchange going on where the nourishment that many people in society gain from the labor of migrant farm workers allows those people to have the health that they need by eating fruits and vegetables.
00:04:22
Speaker
at the same time that that labor impacts the health of the migrant farm workers in these negative ways, being bent over all day, harvesting all day in many parts of the U.S. migrant farm workers' work every day of the week. And there's a high rate of injury, musculoskeletal injury and other pesticide exposure and other things that affect the health of migrant farm workers. So the title is meant to show this.
00:04:48
Speaker
relation between everyone in society and the migrant farm workers who provide food for them at the same time that that relation is very unequal. It provides health on one side and sort of um injury and sickness on the other side. So talking about health of farm workers.
00:05:10
Speaker
One belief supported by people and lawmakers across a broad political spectrum, not just the far right, is that migrant workers threaten the long-term viability of the healthcare and assistance systems. Based on your observations and research, to what extent are migrant farm workers benefiting from subsidized healthcare and government assistance in the US? In the US, most migrant farm workers don't have access to healthcare.
00:05:39
Speaker
um And so most of the things that I would go to the clinic for, um they don't go to the clinic because they don't have access to health insurance. um In some places, there are nonprofit clinics that have sliding scales that were set up to provide health care for poor people. And some of those were set up to have translation services in Spanish or Haitian or other languages.
00:06:09
Speaker
specifically in order to provide health care for migrant farm workers. There have been sociologists and economists who have gone through kind of detail by detail everything provided by um undocumented immigrants in the United States. And they've shown that undocumented immigrants, not just migrant farm workers, but all provide more to the society than they receive. And some of that goes down to very economic details, like every time they buy anything, they pay sales tax. Every time they get paid from the check, their tax is taken out. But then at the end of the year, because they're many are unauthorized or irregular migrants, they don't receive any um
00:07:02
Speaker
reimbursement for the taxes that were taken out of their their paycheck. Most of them make money less than the amount where the taxes that were taken out would be returned to them, but they don't receive any of those returns. and They pay into the social security system at the same time that they will not qualify for social security when they're older. so Some judges who I met and spoke with even said that they thought that our social security system would have already um gotten much closer to bankruptcy or gone bankrupt if it weren't for undocumented people who are paying into social security who then can't receive it later. So um part of the reason I gave the title of Fresh Fruit Broken Bodies was also to
00:07:52
Speaker
encourage people who are reading it to see that if these people are providing food and helping you be healthy and they get injured and sick in the process, then it's because you're in this relationship where they're providing you food and that that labor is making them sick.
00:08:09
Speaker
In many ways, we, you reading it, and we as a society are responsible and kind of owe them the best care that they can get and the best working conditions they can have, whatever kind of farm they work on.
Legal Rights and Anti-Migrant Sentiments
00:08:25
Speaker
Despite what you are telling us about the importance of migrant farm workers in supporting our food system, anti-migrant rhetoric is unfortunately gaining popularity in the US and various parts of the world. However, it appears that even some conservative farm owners are in favor of easing the legal situation for migrant farm workers. Can you tell us more about the legal rights of undocumented seasonal farm workers, how you've seen this evolve since you began working on the topic, and how you see them evolving in the future?
00:08:56
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In the United States, all workers have labor rights, and those should protect them if they're injured directly on the job, if they're not paid the minimum wage, if their work contract is not um met but on the side of the employer, regardless of their immigration status. As workers, they have workers' rights.
00:09:23
Speaker
um and that's important to to keep in mind and kind of keep separate to some degree. um There have been groups like in Florida, there's a migrant farm worker organization called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and they have successfully taken several employers to court who had migrant farm workers living on the farm, not allowed to leave the farm, and where the migrant farm workers had to live in housing and pay for housing, eat food and buy food, um get clothing for their work all from their employer. And the lawsuits were technically of slavery and those lawsuits won. So the coalition of Immokalee workers and others have successfully
00:10:18
Speaker
um raised awareness about literal slavery going on in the US where people are ah not allowed to leave and have to treat their employer as kind of the person in charge of their entire lives. um And that's raised awareness about some of the conditions that migrant farm workers live in. um There are movements of other migrant farm worker groups and solidarity groups pushing for better working conditions, less exploitation,
00:10:50
Speaker
and and kind of collectively migrant farm workers knowing their rights more. um In general, what I've seen in my research, both in the US and in Europe, is a little bit depressing the way many migrant farm workers are treated and where they live and what their work is like. And um the number of times I've heard and seen um regulations about pesticides or regulations about pay,
00:11:20
Speaker
The broken is depressing. um The hopefulness on my side is that there are these increasing migrant farmworker groups and and solidarity groups with migrant farmworkers who are pushing for better conditions and in some cases winning large lawsuits.
00:11:39
Speaker
um making the state have to protect these groups more um and these groups kind of having more of their own voice in letting society know how they're treated and what what is fair and what's not fair for them. And how do you see the illegal situation, particularly in terms of visas, improving?
00:12:04
Speaker
Right now there haven't been important movements towards the possibility of regularization that I have been following. There have been farm workers along the West Coast and some other places have pushed for immigration changes, and immigration law changes so that it would be easier for their workers to arrive and work for them and not be at risk of being deported or being put in detention centers, which is obviously bad for the worker and also is bad for the farmer and the possibility of society having food. um What I've seen more of is that the government has approved more of these temporary worker programs where they get workers directly from Mexico or something and bring them and then send them directly back.
00:13:01
Speaker
and um That's a different a topic that's also important. Some of those temporary worker programs have been highly debated in the US and Canada, for example.
00:13:14
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partially because of the way they're set up in which the power hierarchy before between the employee and the employer is so extreme because they're coming to the US or Canada only with the right to work on that particular farm. So if that farm um is mistreating them or breaking the law in some ways, they may be likely more nervous to point out that something is wrong because if they lose that job, they also lose their permission to be in the country.
Economic Policies and Forced Migration
00:13:50
Speaker
Thank you for this insight. Some short-term fixes can be counterproductive. In your book, you discuss the distinction made between economic migrants and political refugees, with the later being generally more accepted by society and able to obtain legal residency more easily.
00:14:09
Speaker
You argue that we shouldn't make such a distinction as most economic migrants are in their position due to political decisions. Can you elaborate on this? Yeah.
00:14:22
Speaker
I've noticed in multiple times, both in the US and in Europe, that people who are categorized as economic migrants, who supposedly made a choice, a free choice to migrate, are less um have fewer legal rights and kind of less societal compassion than people who are understood to be refugees who didn't have a choice.
00:14:46
Speaker
But when I've tried to kind of drill down and really understand, okay, who's considered a political refugee and who's considered an economic migrant, and when are economics not political, and when are politics not affecting economics, and who really is feels like and is experiencing making choices, it's really hard to unpack it actually.
00:15:11
Speaker
So the people who I work with, um the U.S. would consider economic migrants, even though um there are there's a great deal of violence happening in the region, some of which is related to the history um of the drug war from the US. Some of those funds from the US to combat narcotics have also been used by police forces in Mexico against indigenous people. um And so that's a confusing reality that isn't clearly about economics, but is political and is causing people to be nervous about living there.
00:15:58
Speaker
um And then all of the, for example, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is a policy that was strongly pushed and advocated by the US, is one of the strong reasons why many of the people I work with have left their hometowns, their home villages in order to go to the US to work on farms because no longer could they survive in their home villages anymore by growing corn and selling corn and growing beans and eating them at home.
00:16:27
Speaker
um And so someone in their family needed to migrate away in order to send money back so they could continue to survive where they live. So this all of these economic things come from politics and policies that are pushing um people to feel like they don't have a choice. When I did interviews with the indigenous Oaxacan migrants from southern Mexico who I work with,
00:16:56
Speaker
They told me that they don't have a choice, that the only option for them is to migrate, otherwise they won't survive. So they don't experience we're economic migrants making this choice to go somewhere for for a slightly better life. They experienced this, well, this policy was made that affects us and we have no choice, but we have to do this in order for us to survive.
00:17:17
Speaker
so I'm not sure that the distinction between chosen migration and unchosen migration and economics and politics really is easily kind of teased apart. Can you elaborate on why the North American Free Trade Agreement prevents these Mexican growers from making a living by selling their corn?
00:17:39
Speaker
So the North American Free Trade Agreement made it illegal for all countries involved, Canada, US and Mexico, um to have ah taxes on goods from a different country. But it didn't make it illegal for those countries to have kind of a reverse tax, which is a subsidy on their own goods. And so instead of being able to kind of protect their people within their country by having taxes on goods somewhere else. The North American Free Trade Agreement in many ways is just protecting the market and protecting the inequalities in the market. So the countries that are relatively more wealthy can make subsidies, but the countries that are relatively less wealthy cannot have taxes, which are basically the exact same but in reverse.
00:18:31
Speaker
And so the US, since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, has increased subsidies on corn, for example, by well over 300%, whereas Mexico hasn't and doesn't have the funds to do that. But Mexico can't have any taxes on corn coming from the US. So this large amount of corn from very large industrial farms, many in the Midwest that grow one kind of usually monocrop corn are sold in Mexico much cheaper than the
00:19:10
Speaker
different varieties of corn that people grow at home that might be red and blue and yellow and orange and white or mixed. And so they used to grow the corn that they would eat and beans they would eat and other things they would eat and then they would sell extra corn in the markets. And that would allow them to pay electricity bill and buy the uniform for their kids to go to school and buy some eggs and fruit on the weekend at the market in town.
00:19:40
Speaker
um But then that with the North American Free Trade Agreement, that became much more difficult because corn was so much cheaper coming from the US than the corn that they grew. And so at that point, that is roughly when most of the indigenous Oaxacan people I know began to migrate both to Northern Mexico to work in strawberry fields, to Baja California and to the US. Okay.
00:20:09
Speaker
So there are people who became economic migrants due to political decisions. Exactly. Yeah. You explained how increasing competition in international markets might force growers to remain complicit in a system of segregation where pickers are the main victims just to stay in business. So while farm owners and senior management should be held accountable for what they can change, it is also important to acknowledge the systemic issues.
00:20:36
Speaker
Ignoring these issues creates the risk of farmers firmly opposing any new social or ecological regulations, as they might feel that all the burden and responsibility are placed on their shoulders. So, when looking at the living conditions of migrant farm workers, it would be easy to blame the employer, the owner of the farm, without considering the systemic reasons behind this.
00:20:59
Speaker
It is obviously a very complex topic, but I'd like to ask you two questions. First, what are the systemic conditions that prevent farm owners from paying and treating their workers more fairly?
Systemic Pressures and Racism in Agriculture
00:21:10
Speaker
And second, what changes do you believe are within the farmer's control?
00:21:19
Speaker
Those are both good questions. And I think you summarized it well there. Of course, farmers, owners of farms and greenhouses need to be responsible for and accountable for the ways that they treat their workers at the same time that they don't make the overall political and economic context in which they function. And many farmers in different parts of the world are also dealing with and
00:21:57
Speaker
globalized markets that make it more and more difficult for them to for their farms to survive. They're dealing with more and more industrialized farming and large corporations that function as middlemen or large grocery store chains that determine how much their fruits and vegetables will be sold for or how much if if it's a large middleman company or a supply chain company, how much they can sell their fruits and vegetables to that company and then that company has more power in relation to the grocery stores. So what I saw in my research, the farms that I did my research on were
00:22:40
Speaker
large family farms. So they're sort of a mix of industrial farming that's still run by a family and they're kind of trying to maintain the family farm aspect in a way when while they're also trying to compete with large, to large industrial farms. And what I saw, which you can even see in aerial maps of the U.S.,
00:23:06
Speaker
um Over the decades, you can see that these small family farms, you you can just see them by kind of the color of the landscape, you know what's being grown there, et cetera, become larger and larger and larger because more and more of these little farms that are family farms that might have been partially worked on by the family and they hire some neighbors and they hire some migrants. And some of those migrants are probably exploited and mistreated, um but they go out of business because they can't compete with the bigger bigger industrial farms. So then their farm gets sold to an industrial farm that therefore becomes bigger and bigger. So many of the
00:23:50
Speaker
Farmers, I came to know, were had this strong anxiety about you know how long will we be able to do this? We want to do this. We're farmers. We care about the soil. we you know We care about our family. But this whole system is becoming more and more industrial and corporate. And um many of the companies that are involved are are more and more transnational.
00:24:16
Speaker
and um have a lot more say than the farmers do in how much money flow there is, whether that's because of a grocery store chain or a middleman company like Driscoll's or a supply chain company, et cetera. In the farm where you have been working, for instance, what changes do you believe are within the farmer's control?
00:24:39
Speaker
The farms that I've seen, part of the aspects that were the um most hopeful in a way were the times when the farmers like kind of literally sat at a table and listened to farm workers and talked with each other. Whether it was representatives who were chosen by the farm workers overall or or just whoever was there and kind of setting up a table of
00:25:11
Speaker
um a system where the farm workers had a say in what was going on, where the farmer had to hear them say, this is how we're treated by this supervisor and this is how this certain policy or practice going on on the farm is affecting us.
00:25:28
Speaker
um Some of those farms that kind of table discussion became an ongoing union that it hadn't existed before, that pushed the farmer to be more in kind of for the power differential not to be so extreme. um And the farmers, they they have a fair amount of say both in specific policies and practices on their farm about who gets
00:26:02
Speaker
um promoted to certain kinds of jobs and who doesn't because oftentimes what I've seen is that the farm owner has several supervisors of different crops, for example, and then those supervisors have several managers under them and the managers have several team leaders under them and maybe the person who decides who gets which cabins in the labor camp is one of the team leaders and the person who decides who's promoted from strawberries to the processing plant where they're paid per hour instead of paid per weight, maybe that person's a team leader. So the farmer doesn't always realize that some of these promotions are happening in a way that is systematically
00:26:52
Speaker
um kind of structural racism or institutional racism where certain people are always being promoted and other people aren't, not because of anything about how nice they are or how much they smile or how fast they work, but because the person promoting them has certain ideas about who's a better worker and who who isn't that come from social and cultural forces, including racialization and racism and assumptions about different cultures, etc.
00:27:23
Speaker
um so any way that the Agriculture can be more truly democratic, where all the people including the most exploited actually have a say listening and talking with each other or having a union and collectively negotiating all of those things that I think are super important. When only the farmer is trying to do the right thing, they might not always realize everything that's happening kind of through the the system that they're part of, but they do have some say in how people are promoted, what the living conditions are, um how strictly everyone is paid at least minimum wage, et cetera, and whether they as a farmer are open to and supportive of unions or not. um In the US, we don't have, a lot of workers don't have unions. Most migrant farm workers are not part of a union.
00:28:20
Speaker
And many of the farmers I met are very anti-union. Many people in the US s are very anti-union, which relates to history and capitalism and neoliberalism and individualism, etc. So the farmers have a say in all those things. That's part of what I'm thinking about. Since you mentioned unions, it leads me to another question.
00:28:45
Speaker
I can imagine that it is extremely difficult for workers living in precarious situations, often not speaking English or even Spanish, as it is the case with the tricky workers you spend time with to fight for their rights.
Advocacy and Achievements in Labor Rights
00:28:57
Speaker
What are these migrants advocating for? Can you give examples of successful actions you have undertaken?
00:29:07
Speaker
In the second edition of Fresh Fruit Broken Bodies that came out in 2023, I worked with a tricky historian of indigenous social movements. um And he and I, I did interviews with all the people from the book, kind of the the characters in the book.
00:29:29
Speaker
about what they have been involved in for the last decade. And he did interviews with some of the social movement leaders, both with some unions, with some indigenous Oaxacan Mexican rights groups, with some bi-national indigenous organizations. And we wrote about four things in the in the update chapter, the epilogue. One was that um Two of the people who are very prominent in the book, Samuel, I work with and quote a lot, and his wife and his son, they got involved in going to the capital of California, Sacramento, and pushing for
00:30:18
Speaker
basically for migrant farm workers to be included in more labor laws. So in the US, we have what many of us would call agricultural exceptionalism, where there are labor laws that say you're allowed to, if you work more than this many hours, you should be paid overtime. If you work in this certain way, you should have health insurance, all the these different laws that apply to certain categories.
00:30:45
Speaker
but And throughout history, many of those labor laws have not applied to agriculture and have not applied to migrant farm workers. So he went to Sacramento to push for the overtime law to apply to migrant farm workers so that if they work more than 40 hours a week, then they get paid. I think it's 1.5 what they would normally get paid for any additional hours. um And the United Farm Workers, the largest farm worker union in the US was who he got involved with going to Sacramento and kind of giving testimony about his experience working. And this happened over the course of two years and the second year it was passed. So now the state of California, there's no difference in the overtime law between other workers and migrant farm workers. Now everyone is covered by the overtime law. Since then, many farmers and
00:31:45
Speaker
um kind of supervisors of workers have found ways around that law um and have broken the law and cheated the workers. by I have heard multiple people tell me that um when they get close to 40 hours, the farmer or the supervisor tells them if you want to work more hours, you have to give us a different name.
00:32:08
Speaker
and then now we'll pay you the regular amount still. So it's important that the law has changed and there needs to be better enforcement and following of the law and respect for the workers. But that was one thing, another thing, his nephew David, he and his mom with the bi-national center for the development of Oaxacan indigenous communities.
00:32:35
Speaker
um that organization went to Sacramento to push for the health insurance for poor people in the state to include all were all people regardless of immigration status.
00:32:49
Speaker
to include irregular immigrants, unauthorized immigrants, et cetera, and they won. And that actually has been a huge change. Some of the people I know have type 2 diabetes, which is relatively easy to treat and be completely healthy with. But if you have no access to healthcare, care it it can be a terminal, it can be a really serious disease.
00:33:15
Speaker
And so all of a sudden, everyone I know in California have access to healthcare, care not in every state in the US, because that was a state decision, but in California, everyone has access to healthcare. care And that's a big deal. um All the farm workers I know, if they get injured, they have access to see someone in the clinic. The third thing was one of the people involved, actually the person on the cover of the book, um she got involved with the a long ongoing strike on um some of the farms up in Washington State, up in the Northwest of the US, and they became their own union that was ah primarily indigenous led by Oaxacan people.
00:34:01
Speaker
And it became more than a union. It became a sort of solidarity group with ah migrant farm workers picking strawberries in Baja California and Mexico. And they've started other programs kind of developing a farm that would be run by um indigenous Oaxacan farm workers.
00:34:21
Speaker
and they soothe the state of Washington for um if someone is paid per a pound that they bring in of fruits and vegetables, the way that that um is practiced makes it really difficult for those people to ever have bathroom breaks or breaks to drink water or breaks to eat food because all that time counts towards how much yeah All the weight is divided by the time that they work. So that lawsuit, that new union won the community organization and union. And now the whole state of Washington, if you work in the state of Washington, you have to get separate bathroom breaks and lunch breaks and water breaks from the time that's counted towards how much weight wait you bring in. And during those breaks, you're paid per time instead of per pound. So that's also a big deal.
00:35:12
Speaker
And then the fourth thing we wrote about is there are four second generation tricky farm workers from those farm worker families who made a film about their lives and their families and their families experience and um and they kind of in a way tell their own story to society. And so there are these collective movements, both the bigger ones with big unions, newer unions, bi-national organizations, and also just groups of young people who want to say, you know, you have assumptions about us, but let us tell you who we really are. And all of those are hopeful at the same time that, of course,
00:35:59
Speaker
globalized capitalism and neoliberalism and industrial farming and and the way that racism maps onto capitalism globally, all those things are continuing and have strong support from powerful parts of the world. um These other movements are are important and and making big differences in real people's lives and are inspiring in many ways.
00:36:26
Speaker
Is the documentary you mentioned available online? It is available online. It's called First Time Home and the website is firsttimehomefilm.com and there's a link there. It's being shown for free by the public broadcasting system in the US.
00:36:46
Speaker
um so someone can go there and just stream it and talk about it and hear those people. And there's even an email address there that's checked periodically that maybe they could get in touch with the four people who made it and ask them questions or invite them to a discussion or something like that. Thanks. We can add something to the show notes later. Great.
00:37:11
Speaker
In your book you mentioned that fruit pickers, who demonstrate a high level of efficiency and technical skills, are classified as unskilled. You worked as a fruit picker during this study, so you can tell us about your experience.
Skill Recognition and Class Discrimination in Agriculture
00:37:27
Speaker
And during the COVID-19 pandemic, many jobs considered as unskilled were suddenly recognized as essential. isn Could you share your own experience with fruit picking and do you think this perception of lawmakers has changed since the pandemic? So while I was doing my full-time fieldwork, I did full-time fieldwork with tricky migrant farm workers for about a year and a half.
00:37:53
Speaker
And when we were on farms, I lived in labor camps with them. And I picked strawberries and blueberries with them once or twice a week. And then the rest of the week, I observed what was happening in the clinics nearby with migrant farm workers. I interviewed the farm owners and crop supervisors and managers and team captains and all the different people to try to understand what was going on.
00:38:22
Speaker
um and and went with them to their home village and did the whole migration circuit with them. For me, um I got faster and faster picking strawberries and blueberries because I learned things just by doing it and I learned things by people I knew teaching me. No, you can't use two hands to pick one strawberry. That's way too slow. You have to use each hand separately and you pop the top, the green part off the strawberry this way with your thumb.
00:38:53
Speaker
Otherwise you have to do it too slowly. And they both taught me and over time I started to learn how to get a feel for where the strawberries were instead of having to always look at them because that slowed me down too. And even though I learned more and tried really hard, I actually never picked the minimum weight. And if I hadn't been a white US citizen who didn't really fit in, I would have been fired and I would have been kicked out of the labor camp.
00:39:24
Speaker
But because I have this kind of social capital as a white US citizen who's unique and interested in what's going on and trying to learn about it, they let me stay and live in the labor camp and still pick berries even though I wasn't fast enough.
00:39:41
Speaker
My work as a medical doctor by most countries in the world is considered skilled work because I went to university or because of class assumptions about if you're from a certain class, you're skilled and if you're not, then you're not skilled. And my work as an anthropologist, you know, reading and writing things and interviewing and hanging out is considered skilled.
00:40:10
Speaker
But this work, that's the very work that feeds all of us, that's incredibly difficult to do, that I tried really hard and gained some skills in, but I only did it for two seasons.
00:40:23
Speaker
um is not considered skilled. And so the work of the people who literally feed us is not valued enough to be protected by the legal category of skilled labor. um Even though it's very much skilled, I mean, you look in the dick dictionary about what the word skilled means, skill me guilt means, there's clearly skill involved. you know I was gaining it, but I i hadn't done it long enough.
00:40:50
Speaker
um And so this label of skilled work versus unskilled work is partially this class discrimination and showing what our societies value and we value. We don't value the work of the people who feed us, which is um ironic and sad and something we need to take a deeper look at why that is.
00:41:21
Speaker
um During COVID, governments became more aware of the living and working conditions of migrant farm workers. There were newspaper articles about it. There were radio shows sometimes. And that is important for people to know. I think there's more awareness of how migrant farm workers are treated.
00:41:42
Speaker
um What I haven't seen is big changes in policies and practices and programs for how migrant farm workers are treated and where they live. I think the awareness is important, but the awareness has to be kind of harnessed by collectives who are pushing for for actual change. In Europe, there's the common agricultural policy of the EU.
00:42:10
Speaker
And I've looked through the Common Agricultural Policy and it's very long pages and pages and pages. And there's a lot of details about how often if animals need to be given water and how many centimeters of space each different kind of animal should get.
00:42:30
Speaker
But there isn't, the common agricultural policy doesn't have information about how workers should be treated or how migrant farm workers should be treated, even though we know that fruits and vegetables are harvested and planted and tended to by migrant farm workers.
00:42:48
Speaker
Not that they should be treated as animals in any way, but the agricultural policy seems to value the specifics of how the animals and plants should be treated even more than the workers.
00:43:02
Speaker
and so We need to take a deep look at ourselves and why we are so careful about protecting the lives of plants and animals in a way and their wellbeing and not the lives and wellbeing of human beings who happen to have been born somewhere else or happen to have a different color skin or happen to speak a different language um and are are part of the system that is feeding our all of our societies.
00:43:32
Speaker
You just mentioned Europe. What similarities and differences do you see between the situation of migrant farm workers in the US and Europe? So I've most of my research has been in the US, California, a little bit Oregon, a little bit and and Washington State on the West Coast.
00:43:50
Speaker
And um ah I've done a little bit of work on the East Coast in North Carolina and Florida, but not as much. um And what I've seen in the US is that migrant farm workers are mostly coming from Mexico and Central American countries.
00:44:08
Speaker
um mostly speaking Spanish, some speaking indigenous languages, some speaking Haitian, and living in labor camps where the conditions are pretty bad, hot and cold, and um and not the kind of living environment that many people in our society live in. um And in right, ah I'm trying to remember what year that was,
00:44:37
Speaker
um It was the end of the first year of COVID. I came and did um preliminary field research in in Europe, many parts of Spain, um some in France, ah some in Germany, some in Romania. And the conditions of migrant farm workers that I saw was depressing to me.
00:45:05
Speaker
Because I expected that Europe, which I think of as having a stronger social system, a stronger social safety net, being a bit less individualistic and a bit more aware of the collective would treat workers better.
00:45:25
Speaker
um And many of the conditions that I saw workers living in and working in were horrible. And I don't know if I could say they're better or worse than in the US, but they were depressing. I was depressed. um Maybe some of the conditions were actually worse. And some of what I've seen is that farmers and other people talk about the California agricultural system coming to Europe. And in some ways, that's true. Some companies from California have come to Europe and are doing work in Europe and bringing their practices. At the same time, I wonder if sometimes European farmers or policymakers almost blame California for the exploitation that they themselves as Europeans
00:46:20
Speaker
might be doing even worse. And they say, well, this industrial farming with this kind of treatment of migrant farm workers is the California way to do it. Almost saying like it wasn't our idea, it's not our fault, we're just following them.
00:46:34
Speaker
um
00:46:37
Speaker
I'm still thinking about that, but there's that's been troubling for me to hear. um Many of the workers But this this changes over time, so in different parts. I was i was in Portugal a few weeks ago, and um some of the workers in Portugal have come from former Portuguese colonies um in Africa. um More recently, some are coming from different parts of Asia, and and some small towns in Portugal have a number of people from a different part of Asia or South Asia.
00:47:16
Speaker
And in Spain, it's similar. There have been historical, even temporary worker agreements with Ecuador, for example. um But then more recently, there have been more people coming from Morocco and from Sub-Saharan Africa and other places. um In Germany, a lot of the people working in Asparagus have been coming from Eastern Europe. so But these things change over time. And in one sense, we need to keep our eyes on this system over the long term, even if the groups that are coming change so that the exploitation isn't kind of restarted and reinvented each time a different group arrives.
00:48:00
Speaker
Given the complex and systemic nature of the topic, what policies do you think lawmakers could support to improve the conditions of migrant farm workers while considering the challenges of the farmers?
Collaborative Policy Making for Migrant Worker Improvement
00:48:13
Speaker
That's a really good question.
00:48:16
Speaker
in i mean What I would love to do is see a discussion where migrant farm workers and farmers and consumers are sort of sitting and talking about what they each are worried about and try to figure out the best way forward. I'm not sure that industrial agriculture is the best way forward.
00:48:39
Speaker
because I'm not convinced it's the most healthy for the farmers or for society or for all of us who are eating the industrially grown food. um There's less transparency often in that system. At the same time, in the US, there's a sociologist who's done detailed research into the work and working and living conditions of migrant farm workers on large corporate farms and on small family farms and on organic farms. And she's found actually, sadly, ironically, that the treatment of migrant farm workers on the small family farms and the organic farms is just as bad, if not sometimes worse than on the larger industrial corporate farms.
00:49:30
Speaker
Part of that I would think is probably because the state is more likely to investigate what's happening on a large farm and make sure that their papers are in order and they're treating people well and they're less likely to do that with all the small family farms and some of the smaller organic farms. um But i don't we don't really know why that's happening. So we can't just assume that if we had family farms that were all organic, all the workers would be treated really well because unfortunately,
00:50:05
Speaker
family farming and organic growing practices don't get rid of, for example, racial capitalism or xenophobia. um So in the US, part of what we need is more enforcement of the laws we already have because we have some good laws that protect workers, but we don't have much enforcement. And if we have a government a president, for example, who doesn't believe in protecting workers' rights and doesn't believe in protecting the environment, then all the people appointed to those posts to do that job will actually try to um destroy or undo those systems that are meant to be protections. So that's a partial answer, but that's ah that's a very important
00:50:59
Speaker
point. Part of the reason I think in the book, part of the reason we wrote the epilogue, the new chapter, the way we did was to highlight what the workers who I know themselves are saying are the priorities. And part of what I take away from that is that they care a lot about access to healthcare, care they care a lot about the working conditions they have, and they care about um kind of being able to be part of the public conversation and and actually be listened to and sort of um share their own experience. Do you have other examples of progress made in the living conditions of migrant farm workers since you started your study and wrote your book? I think one depressing thing is that the ways that racism and capitalism overlap continues to exploit and
00:51:55
Speaker
and mistreat migrant farm workers, even though many people have shed light on it in different ways. um But I have been inspired by the work of many migrant farm worker collectives, including um partially from the coalition of Immokalee workers that I mentioned in Florida, but many other groups. They've started a program called the Fair Food Program And that program includes um enforcement. So if you, your farm or your grocery store or your restaurant joins the Fair Food Program, you can say we provide fruits and vegetables that are from the Fair Food Program. But that also means that the Fair Food Program investigators can come to your farm or your restaurant and make sure that you're actually doing what you said you're doing.
00:52:52
Speaker
And some of the leadership of the Fair Food Program are migrant farm workers themselves, including some people who with indigenous backgrounds. So they have a say in kind of what the regulations or requirements are for different grocery store chains or fast food restaurants even, or um to join the Fair Food Program. And that on a larger level um in the US, that's been a hopeful move.
00:53:21
Speaker
and And that Fair Food Program now, I don't know how many states it's in, but it's in several states. um And the fact that they're migrant farm workers who are part of the leadership and making decisions and the fact that they that um that there's enforcement involved beyond what the state has a budget for, um all that seems helpful and important.
00:53:49
Speaker
Thank you so much for your time. I found this conversation really insightful. I'd love to end this interview on a positive note, like the example you've already provided.
Empowerment Through Activism and Fair Consumer Choices
00:54:01
Speaker
How do the people you worked and lived with find joy in social struggle and activism?
00:54:11
Speaker
The people I've worked with have, I think at first when they came to the US, as indigenous people who spoke triki and many of them spoke some Spanish and were learning Spanish but didn't speak English, i many of them shared that they were feeling kind of isolated and they would go to a certain grocery store and be a little anxious that someone might say something racist or xenophobic to them and then they would go home and then not interact very much. And I think because of some trusted community organizations like the United Farm Workers, like the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, like
00:54:57
Speaker
Familias por la Frusticia, which is the new, relatively new union and community organization in Washington state. They have gotten involved in pushing for things like overtime pay, in pushing for things like health insurance coverage. And in doing that with other people, they have um gained kind of the confidence to speak out and say this isn't fair because they did it together because they had
00:55:33
Speaker
community leaders who are with them um and they saw that it worked. They also saw that farmers and lawmakers and other people then find ways around it. So then they realize, oh, we ah you know this struggle has to continue. We can't just win overtime pay and then we'll get it. We also need to figure out, okay, now how do we get that actually enforced so that people aren't cheating us and pretending they're doing overtime when they're not.
00:56:03
Speaker
um But seeing them get more and more involved in ways that they're confident to share their hopes and priorities has been really inspiring. The other thing that's been inspiring to me is many of the things they fought for like the overtime pay, it's not just we want overtime pay, it's kind of this system needs to be more fair. Like workers get overtime pay, all workers should get overtime pay. And with the health insurance, it wasn't just we want health insurance, it was everyone should have health insurance. Everyone who lives here should have access to health care. And so part of what's and been inspiring to me is that there
00:56:47
Speaker
What I've heard from them about their hopes and priorities for the future are actually a better world for everybody, not just something they need, although that's very helpful, but also they have this vision of a better society for everyone, a better system for everyone where everyone looks out for each other and has access to care if they get injured, et cetera. So that's been moving to me.
00:57:15
Speaker
How can we as consumers show concrete solidarity with farm workers? Yeah, I think there are multiple ways. One is to try to buy food from farms and organizations that treat their workers fairly. That's sometimes hard to figure out in the grocery store. But if you can see, for example, you're in the US and you see something related to the Fair Food Program or something has a United Farm Workers contract,
00:57:45
Speaker
buy their food because farm workers actually have a say in what's going on there. um Try to figure out where the food comes from because the way our transnational food systems work, a lot of things are kind of hidden and not transparent. um That's one thing. Another thing is when you hear other people say assumptions, stereotypes, negative things, racist comments, um devaluing comments about immigrants or about migrant farm workers, or say assumptions about, ah, they're destroying our health system because they get these benefits and they don't pay in, you can say, actually,
00:58:29
Speaker
I have heard that there's this research that shows that they're actually contributing more than they receive and that's not fair. They should receive more. um Or I read this book where I got to know some of these people and this is how they are. They're not the way that you say. Just countering in kind of public discussion these assumptions about immigrants and migrant farm workers so that people might be more open to changing the way that they interact with migrant farm workers the way that they are a farmer themselves, the way that they vote for politicians, the way that they push for democracy. um And then I think that would be the last one right now. You know, France just had an election. The UK just had an election. In the US, we have an election in the fall. We don't know what's going to happen. But of course, electoral politics are not the only
00:59:25
Speaker
or even the most direct way that democracy happens. But um who's in charge has a big impact on real people's lives, especially real people who don't have a lot of economic or social buffer. And so voting for people who are not actively racist, voting for people who want a system that is more fair for every everyone,
00:59:55
Speaker
um voting for people who want a health system that's strong and not taken apart by um corporate interests, all those things are really important. um And for the people whom I know as migrant farm workers, those things are really important for them because they don't have jobs that provide health insurance. They don't have extra money to pay for it themselves. And and and so we need to both try to eat food from places that are fair. We need to counter narratives that are unfair about migrant farm workers and then in whatever ways we can be involved in democracy, whether both voting and in solidarity with migrant farm worker groups and campaigns, and those are the three places I see that everyone can be involved.
01:00:51
Speaker
Are there any recommendations you'd like to make to your our listeners who want to dive deeper into the topic? Sure. I think it partially depends on where people are. Part of what we have to do is find out what the migrant farm worker organizations in your region are asking for, or pushing for. you know there's near Huelva in Nondoleucia in Spain, there's the Forner de Vaz de Huelva in Lucha, and they have specific campaigns and requests. um And they're very articulate and, you know, listening to them and following what they're asking for is important. In the south of France, there's the Côte d'Etrasse, the Colectif de Defense de Travallur. And they are, have different things that they're involved with. In the U.S. we have Familia Sumidas,
01:01:43
Speaker
for La Flucicia, United Farm Workers, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Fair Food Program. Part of it I think is finding out what is happening in your region that you can be in solidarity with and and support. um At the very end of the book there's kind of the last couple few pages um my co-author and I wrote about what how we thought people could be involved without kind of overloading community organizations, trying to be in solidarity without making too many demands on them for us. So hopefully that's helpful too. All right. Thank you so much, Ses. And see you soon. Bye. All right. See you soon. Thank you. Bye.
01:02:42
Speaker
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01:03:02
Speaker
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