Anthropological Perspectives on Anti-Immigrant Policies and Food System Precarity in the Trump Era

As we go to print with this issue at the end of October 2020, the November 3rd presidential election and the indeterminate end of the COVID-19 pandemic weigh heavily on our minds. The results of this election and decisions about how to deal with the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic will affect us all for years to come. In a moment when essential workers are honored as heroes, perhaps the most essential workers in our labor system—immigrant workers who cultivate, pick, and pack food—are made more vulnerable by policies and rhetoric designed to dehumanize them. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the U.S. Justice Department recently announced that the parents of 545 migrant children who were separated from family members by officials at the U.S. border between 2017 and 2018 cannot be found. We would like to think that a change in administration in the White House could result in a dramatically different approach to immigration policy in the United States, but this result is not guaranteed. Consistent and relentless pressure for reform will always be necessary.

The articles in this special issue reflect the central role played by anthropologists and social theorists in bringing to light the issues facing immigrants, especially farmworkers, during (before, and likely, after) the Trump era. In her introduction, guest editor Teresa M. Mares pulls together the central threads that run through these articles—the forms of fear, isolation, and oppression exacerbated under Trump but also the work of various actors involved in caring for those made more vulnerable in this moment and actively resisting immigration enforcement tactics. We hope that the insights provided in this special issue collection will inform the creation of better policies that honor the critical importance of immigrants in our labor system and our communities.

Also in this issue, Nicole Peterson and Andrea Freidus investigate in detail what food security looks and feels like for American university students in More than Money: Barriers to Food Security on a College Campus. Drawing on collaborative fieldwork involving undergraduate research assistants and food bank staff, Peterson and Freidus explore the many barriers that make it difficult for students to secure adequate amounts and types of food. They argue that conventional analyses of food security often overlook these non-financial barriers, which include time, transportation, and other factors described by the students participating in the study. Together with the articles in this special issue, this contribution reminds us of the many forms of precarity within the U.S. food system.