RE: Migrant Farm Workers in the United States: Photo Essay
This is so incredibly interesting. I spent a good part of the last two years working with my old research collective on circular migration in India. We mapped the patterns of movement of seasonal labourers between the city and the village and how their dwellings in both places reflected the lifestyle in another.
One of our arguments was always that in any census count, migration is measured in absolute terms - in migration and out migration. There is no methodology or means to account for those who come in and go out depending on the season. If we had to take a step back from the seasonal migration patterns of just agricultural workers and look at the changing work patterns of the world, we see that a growing number of the population travels between places for various reasons: work, marriage, family, etc.
We need to have a framework to account for this ebb and flow in a city if we want to truly benefit of this manpower that is actually responsible for running the city.
I'd love to read more about your experiences of living in a farm community! As always, great post and I look forward to reading more on the subject.
Thank you. As you can tell from my post, this is an issue that deeply affects me. While I wrote, I was very conscious of migration as a global phenomenon, particularly in those areas most severely affected climate change.
I thought, showing pictures would reach people in a way that words cannot. Migrant workers are among the many, many invisible, who, as you say, are actually responsible for keeping the machinery of society oiled. I'm not surprised that these under-counted and unseen are visible to you.
Your work with the research collective sounds fascinating. You might want to write about that sometime.