Latinxs working in agriculture have been largely homogenized in the United States. This has both blurred and legitimated the inequalities they experience. Commonly constructed as “foreign others” within U.S. society and often lacking adequate social and economic resources, Latinx farm workers often find themselves susceptible to discrimination throughout the rural U.S. Efforts to overcome such inequalities lead to subordinate adaptation among Latinxs in which differences between each other are highlighted, resulting in the formation of subgroup hierarchies. Understanding these alternative hierarchies is critical if we wish to better understand the various levels of inequalities Latinx farm workers experience and their iterative, ongoing attempts to address such issues.
Based on participant observation – during the summers of 2017 and 2018, alongside in-depth interviews – I argue that Latinxs working piecemeal in Oregon’s blueberry fields (i.e. “pickers”) actively react to their conditions by forming work-specific hierarchies in which their need to be productive is framed as their racialized ability to be productive. Racializing their ability to pick fast allows workers to make money while visually proving their Latino-ness. Thus, their racially influenced constrains within U.S. society become racialized indications of their ability to work hard and their deservedness of reaching the “American Dream”. Physical appearance, productivity, and personal resources are all used strategically to help pickers overcome their dependence on picking while holding on to their ethnic “authenticity”.
Interestingly, Latinxs in agriculture holding higher employment positions appear to form a border between what I call, “the picker hierarchy” and broader, mainstream racial hierarchies. As such, they too are partially responsible for reducing or reproducing inequalities in the workplace. While symbolic interaction as a methodology allows us to study the effects that micro, day-to-day interactions have within agriculture, the theory of racial formation allows us to critically analyze how structural inequalities have been created and are ultimately maintained. Thus, structural level changes (not merely place-based changes) are needed in order to truly address the inequalities that Latinx farm workers experience within the United States.
