Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom

"I look at Mexican workers that came through the Bracero program, the largest guest worker program in American history . In many ways, my book challenges notions that these workers were homogenous. Mexican guest workers came from distinct racial backgrounds. They worked out the intricacies of indigeneity and identity in this new context, as guest workers in the United States. I looked at their sexual practices, their ideas of masculinity, their attachments to family and how they pushed back against exploitation through labor organizing. They teach us that agribusiness was really good at convincing everyone that migrant workers didn’t have to have pathways to citizenship or even residency, that it was okay to create a perpetual caste of outsiders to feed Americans, a workforce that can be deported and exploited. Although they came in with contracts that were supposed to protect them, over and over what we see is that when they tried to make growers abide by the terms of their contracts, growers easily deported them or blacklisted them and barred them from obtaining future contracts. The power was held by the growers. “Migrant workers have been essential to American economic development for many generations” They also held an interesting space in American society. In the US, we have citizens, residents, undocumented people and guest workers. But this particular state-sanctioned relationship, the guest worker, is constructed to be a right-less worker perpetually living in the margins of America. Why we’ve come to accept that boggles my mind. It’s a model that has been adopted across Europe and in other countries that want agricultural workers or construction workers but don’t want permanent immigrants in their cities and their communities. Women weren’t allowed to come through the World War II guest worker programs for fear that they’d give birth to children who would be, by birthright, citizens. So, in the US, for the most part, at least during the era of the Bracero program, women were excluded. But later, as global demand for healthcare workers and domestic workers grow, we see women included in these programs. And now Mexican women work as temporary labor, in specific food production businesses, for instance in the East Coast crab industry, where women are seen as the most productive laborers. These women are persuaded to put their family lives and even their sex lives on hold. That is the most troubling part for me. This workforce also doesn’t have access to family because, by design, they can’t bring their children, they cannot bring their spouses. So, these programs are designing a workforce with transnational family ties, and where it is normal for children not to see their parents for a large part of the year. A parent might not be able to see their child off on their first day of school or celebrate their birthday."