Search results

Employment rates fell dramatically between March and April 2020 as the initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic reverberated through the US labor market. This paper uses data from the CPS Basic Monthly Files to document that the employment decline was particularly severe for immigrants. Historically, immigrant men are more likely to work than native men. The pandemic-related labor market shock eliminated the immigrant employment advantage. After this initial precipitous drop, however, the employment recovery through June 2021 was much stronger for immigrants, and particularly for undocumented immigrants. The steep drop in immigrant employment at the start of the pandemic occurred partly because immigrants were less likely to work in jobs that could be performed remotely and suffered disproportionate employment losses as only workers with remotable skills were able to continue working from home. The stronger employment recovery of undocumented immigrants, relative to that experienced by natives or legal immigrants, is mostly explained by the fact that undocumented workers were not eligible for the generous unemployment insurance (UI) benefits offered to workers during the pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of employer-provided health benefits (EPHBs) on labor supply decisions of documented and undocumented farm workers. By establishing a significant linkage between EPHB and farm work decisions, this study provides important implications for farm employment retention and the financial sustainability of farm businesses.

Using data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey, objective (actual) and subjective (expected) employment data are used as outcome variables analyzed under an ordered probit model, with the data pre-processed using the coarsened exact matching method to reduce endogeneity issues within the estimation.

Results confirm the influence of EPHB on farm workers’ decisions to remain employed on the farm as well as on the duration of their farm employment. Comparatively, EPHB significantly influences undocumented farm workers’ decisions on actual employment duration and subjective working expectations while documented workers seem to ascribe less importance to EPHB in their farm employment decisions.

This study provides important financial and business viability implications as the value of farm labor services retained through EPHB can translate to high opportunity losses, if ineffective. Alternative labor-saving strategies, such as mechanization, can only potentially lead to serious financial challenges for agribusiness firms, especially small-scale farm operations. This study emphasizes the need for more effective employment retention incentives for the sake of sustaining farm business viability.

This study presents empirical evidence on the important influence of EPHB on farm employment decisions, especially those made by undocumented farm workers, that have not been extensively explored in literature.

Farm labor contractors operate as intermediaries between farmworkers and agricultural employers by recruiting and supplying labor to US farms. In a political economy where there are employer sanctions for hiring workers without proper documentation, contractors share risk alongside final employers. Furthermore, contractors may facilitate quick employment matches during time sensitive agricultural tasks such as harvesting. For undocumented workers, using a contractor may decrease uncertainty associated with a foreign labor market and ease language barriers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current role of labor contractors in delivering immigrant agricultural workers, particularly undocumented workers, to farms.

Determinants of labor contractor use and relationships to final worker outcomes are examined using econometric methods and a large nationally‐representative worker survey that is distinctive in that it distinguishes legal status.

Undocumented farmworkers are shown to be more likely to use contractors than are documented workers, though statistical significance is sensitive to the inclusion of crop and task indicators, and wages and fringe compensation to workers who use contractors are lower, even after controlling for legal status.

The paper contributes to limited recent academic work on the role of labor contractors in US agriculture. Future work may examine ongoing changes to this role in the context of mutable immigration policy and public opinion.

It is argued that the decline in labor contracting increases the need for employer‐level bilingual communication skills and compliance with labor regulations.

Understanding current dynamics of the agricultural labor market should be of value to scholars of rural economies, farm owners and agricultural policymakers.

This study examines the conditions that lead to workplace violations for low-wage immigrant workers, and how family life shapes their decision to speak up. I also highlight how both employer abuse and the claimsmaking process can impact individuals and their families.

This research adopts a mixed-method approach that includes a survey of 453 low-wage workers seeking pro bono legal assistance and 115 follow-up interviews with claimants. I also conduct a five-year ethnography of both a monthly state workshop provided for injured workers and a pro bono legal aid clinic in a predominantly Latino agricultural community on the California central coast.

Beyond the material effects of lost income, the stress of fighting for justice can have negative emotional impacts that intersect with complex family dynamics. While families can be an important source of support and inspiration during this time, the burden of the breadwinner can also temper workers’ willingness to engage the labor standards enforcement system. Transnational obligations can further introduce a demobilizing dual frame of reference for workers who often hide their abuse from family members abroad who depend on them.

Workplace abuse and the actual process of legal mobilization can have far-reaching effects on the families of low-wage immigrant workers, suggesting the need for a more holistic understanding of the claimsmaking experience.

This chapter tracks the challenges that workers face even once they have come forward to fight for their rights, and the multiple effects on families and children.

Purpose – This chapter explores the nature of dualism as it operates in post-Katrina New Orleans. In particular, the chapter suggests that the combination of the push toward a tourism and services dependent economy and the failure to regulate labor markets has created an especially detrimental situation for both workers and the long-term development of the city.

Design/methodology – To explore dualism in sectors and employment, this chapter applies survey methods to three areas of the New Orleans economy: food service, construction, and manufacturing. Survey methods vary slightly across sectors, due to the ease or difficulty of applying random sampling methods in each context. The surveys were applied anonymously by trained interviewers, and additional information from qualitative interviews and focus groups was also included.

Findings – Without regulation of labor markets and efforts to sustain and expand sectors characterized by decent livelihoods, New Orleans working conditions and development will continue to decline.

Originality/value – This chapter offers an original application of theories of dualism in development and labor markets. In development, dualism refers to sectoral division between high-value, cosmopolitan activities and low-productivity sectors, with few prospects for growth or employment. In labor markets, dualism characterizes the distinction between well-remunerated jobs with opportunities for decent livelihoods and other jobs that are precarious and vulnerable. The chapter also provides results from original surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

This paper is designed to provide primary research which illuminates both the motivations for Cambodian migration as well as the risks entailed in undertaking migration.

This paper gathered its information through a structured interview with 49 respondents aged between 17–29 years of mixed gender. The questionnaire comprised 18 questions in addition to a demographics section. Findings were subsequently analysed in order to extract commonalities amongst the experiences and perceptions of migrants.

The present research study found that the migration of Cambodians to Thailand is largely forced in the sense that there is a lack of economic opportunities within Cambodia. Of the respondents, 88% indicated that their preference would be to remain in Cambodia. What is more, the authors found that the migration is fraught with insecurity and risk, with a range of security issues faced by respondents including not being paid, being abused and being overworked.

This response group is not a representative sample of Cambodians who work in Thailand. The study’s respondents in Cambodia were at a deportation centre, where migrants caught by Thai authorities worked without documentation, which had a clear impact upon migration experience. Additionally, the study’s respondents in Pattaya, Thailand, were accessed via an associate of a colleague, so this too is not a representative sample of Cambodians working in Thailand.

This can have practical use for a variety of stakeholders by providing quantitative information as well as analysis into the migration of Cambodians to Thailand. Within the Recommendations section, it is illustrated how a temporary migrant worker programme can be beneficial to the host and receiving countries and individual migrants. Individual migrants can benefit from being employed by legitimate, accountable employers and hence result in higher provision of human rights for this demographic.

There is a highly entrenched culture of migration within Cambodia's bordering provinces. Through changes to the personal health, well-being and prosperity of migrants in Thailand because of reduced exploitation and increased pay. Host communities in Cambodia are also likely to receive higher levels of remittances, which can stimulate development in Cambodian communities.

Deepened understanding of the motivations for migration and highlighted lack of desire amongst Cambodians to migrate continue to demonstrate the persistent need for effective and substantial development policies within Cambodia. The proposal of a temporary migrant worker scheme is in its short-term nature and reflects the necessity of this demographic to migrate irrespective of whether they can receive official working papers.

Agricultural and fishery disasters are rather obscure emergency management research topics. However, the Food and Agriculture Sector is one of only 16 critical infrastructure sectors included in the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988, and the sector is a vital component of the United States economy. As climate change continues to increase the frequency and severity of agricultural and fishery disasters, the Food and Agricultural Sector must adapt to and cope with unprecedented levels of risk. This chapter provides an overview of federal agricultural and fishery disaster policy and explores whether such policies are consistent with Jerroleman’s (2019)principles of just recovery.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature pertaining to occupational health disparities experienced by Latino immigrant workers in the USA and to advance a general framework based on systems science to inform epidemiological and intervention research.

Using papers and other sources from 2000 to the present, the authors examined the employment conditions and health outcomes of Latino immigrant workers and critically analyzed the pervasive evidence of health disparities, including causal mechanisms and associated intervention programs.

The occupations, including the work environment and resultant living conditions, frequently performed by Latino immigrants in the USA represent a distinct trigger of increased injury risk and poor health outcomes. Extant intervention programs have had modest results at best and are in need of more comprehensive approaches to address the complex nature of health disparities.

An integrated, systems-based framework concerning occupational health disparities among Latino immigrant workers allows for a holistic approach encompassing innovative methods and can inform high-leverage interventions including public policy.

Reductionist approaches to health disparities have had significant limitations and miss the complete picture of the many influences. The framework the authors have provided elucidates a valuable method for reducing occupational health disparities among Latino immigrant workers as well as other populations.

Neoliberal globalization is not a process in which capital freely moves around the globe and exploits labor tied to families, communities and nation states. Labor often moves, wants to move and has to move in this process. Labor required by the expanding circuit of capital exists as mobile labor. However, the movement of labor is allowed in a highly selective manner, depending upon the changing needs in the spaces of capital accumulation. Nation states continue to utilize borders to control labor mobility. These borders are boundaries built upon segregation between and discrimination against people of different races, genders, nationalities and residential statuses. Whereas this “bordered global capitalism” certainly made migration more costly, uncomfortable and risky process, it could not stop the increasing flow of migration. In fact, the mobility of labor has always been central to the reproduction of capitalism while the excessive mobility of labor or “escape” of labor often threatens capitalism maintained by borders as an external expression of exclusive citizenship that gives coherence to the otherwise class-divided population. This chapter looks into the ways in which migrant labor, despite all the constraints imposed upon them by borders, struggles to form “citizenship from below” by exercising social movement citizenship and thereby ruptures the fixed notion and institution of citizenship and migrant control regimes. The chapter does so by critically engaging with existing theories of labor migration and citizenship and presenting cases of the struggle of mobile labor in Hong Kong and South Korea.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on data from interviews with six Italian migrant service providers and media stories in Italy and Australia to weave a comparative snapshot of the plight of precarious migrant and refugee communities in these two countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article draws attention to prejudicial shortcomings towards vulnerable migrant communities enacted by the states of Italy and Australia in response to COVID-19.

While the unequal ecology of the pandemic has flared up the need for the State to strengthen participation and inclusion policies, it has also provided opportunities to foreground the disadvantages vulnerable communities face that also demand policy attention and sustained funding. Governments in migrant-receiving countries like Australia and Italy need to articulate culturally sensitive and inclusive responses that foreground agencies give vulnerable migrants, asylum seekers and refugees clear, supportive messages of solidarity leading to practical solutions.

This paper relays preliminary data from the coalface (migrant service providers) and media as the pandemic evolved in the two countries, whose support mechanisms had never before been critically compared and evaluated through the lens of racial inequality in the face of a health and social crisis.