Beyond the agricultural “suffering slot”: Structural agency in U.S. farm work

Abstract

Ethnographic research on Connecticut farms reveals that workers in the agricultural sector experience a wide range of working and living conditions. While legal precarity, poverty, and oppressive social dynamics confine all farmworkers to positions of structural vulnerability, some acquire a kind of “structural agency” that enables them to exert influence over their conditions of work in ways that are meaningful to their everyday experiences. Several key variables are at play in producing structural vulnerability and structural agency, including agricultural subsector, farm size, type of work, immigration status of workers, workplace interpersonal dynamics, racial and ethnic hierarchies, individual farm cultures, and local and state approaches to im/migration and labor policy enforcement. Ethnography of agricultural labor must take seriously the diversity of farm work experiences and incorporate the perspectives of individuals at multiple levels of farm hierarchies. A new concept linked to structural vulnerability, “structural agency,” can facilitate analyses of how people in broader contexts of marginalization work toward positive outcomes for themselves and others.