No Soy Welferero: Undocumented Latino Laborers in the Crosshairs of Legitimation Maneuvers

Abstract

California urban and agricultural centers rely heavily on Latino migrant laborers, regardless of their legal documented status. In the delivery of social services, and in the mass media, popular consciousness, and formal legal understandings and arrangements, Latino laborers are viewed as either legitimate voluntary low-wage workers or illegitimate undocumented workers not entitled to the same civil rights as US citizens. Their de facto second-class status becomes a central component of their social identity, with the structural conditions of their lives internalized, resulting in limited agency and poor social and health outcomes. The lived experience of structural vulnerability prefigures the actions and efforts of undocumented Latino contingent workers. In this article, the capacity for Latino laborers to maneuver and negotiate the travails of everyday life is explored.

Sexual health of Latino migrant day labourers under conditions of structural vulnerability

“…With the above definition in mind, we would assert that sexual health is inversely related to a population’s degree of structural vulnerability or position in society characterised by productions and reproductions of harsh living and working conditions that challenge sexual health by way of compromising health and well-being in general (Organista et al 2012; Quesada et al 2011). Such is the case for Latino migrant day labourers (LMDLs), a unique population of Latinos that experiences dislocation and discontinuity in their lives as a result of migrating to the U.S.A. in search of work to support families and interests back in Mexico and Central America.…”

Immigration as a Social Determinant of Health

“…Deservingness refers to how some groups, but not others, are considered worthy of attention, investment, and care, particularly against the backdrop of the retrenchment of the welfare state and increasing health care costs (28,53,81,90,109,119,133,143). Conceptions of deservingness are distinct from formalized entitlements as well as from pragmatic questions of access.…”

‘Boots for mySancho’: structural vulnerability among Latin American day labourers in Berkeley, California

“…Jornalero's precarious labour conditions make them especially vulnerable to accidents, employer abuse and, ultimately, poor health outcomes related to substance abuse (Worby 2007) and high-risk sex practices (Organista 2007). Ethnographic and other qualitative studies of day labourers have also called attention to the detrimental effects that these conditions have on the men's emotional stability and sense of self (Purser 2009;Quesada 1999, 2011). Pinedo Turnovsky (2006 has illustrated how the street corner emerges as a meaningful social space in jornaleros lives where they share and discuss many of these issues.…”