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Mexican Contract Workers and the U.S. Capitalist Agricultural Labor Process: The Formative Era, 1942–1964 *
Author(s) -
Mize Ronald L.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
rural sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.083
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1549-0831
pISSN - 0036-0112
DOI - 10.1526/003601106777789765
Subject(s) - agriculture , factory (object oriented programming) , wage , industrialisation , agricultural education , agribusiness , work (physics) , labour economics , nonfarm payrolls , political science , economics , sociology , market economy , geography , mechanical engineering , archaeology , computer science , engineering , programming language
Rural sociologists have seemingly moved away from an active interest in the plight of migrant farmworkers and the centrality of their labor in the development of U.S. agribusiness. Answering Pfeffer's (1983) call to analyze the different forms of agricultural production, I focus on the key formative period of what I refer to as the U.S. capitalist agricultural labor process. During the United States‐Mexico Bracero Program, 1942–1964, U.S. agribusiness employed a coercive factory regime, introduced mechanization and increased work hazards, and employed a dual wage structure to keep Mexican contract workers at a serious disadvantage to advance their own collective well‐being. This study relies upon archival and oral history research to challenge the existing theoretical approaches to the labor process in capitalist agriculture and provide a theoretical explanation that more closely relates to U.S. post‐war agricultural production.