Immigrant Modes of Production in the Florida Citrus Industry

Immigrant Modes of Production in the Florida Citrus Industry is
This entry takes a Marxists perspective to examine the immigrant modes of production in the Florida Citrus industry and its effects of employer-employee relationships on the health of undocumented immigrant workers.

Marx and the Modes of Production
Karl Marx envisioned society as comprised of two hierarchically related economic components. The foundation of this hierarchy he called the base of society. The base is comprised of both the modes of production and the social relationships between the employer and the employee. The modes of production include the human resources, knowledge and skills a society has to produce labor, as well as the means of production-the tools, equipment, factories and land that are all necessary for the production of commodities. Political and economic power, according to Marx, flowed from control over the modes and means of production. It is upon this base that the second component of society is built, the superstructure. The superstructure contains all of the ideational aspects of society: the morals, ethical code, religious ideas, and worldviews. Marx theorized that the ideational aspects of society are built upon and shaped by the base.
Marx separated society into two classes divided along economic lines: the proletariat-or working class, and the bourgeoisie-or the wealthy elite, whose control over the means of production also gave them political and economic power over the working class. Under this capitalist system, workers are removed from the item they produce. Though they make or take part in making a product, they are not paid for the worth of the product, they are paid for their labor power, or ability to make the product. Labor power is valued at less than the total cost of production for the product, and much less than theexchange value for the item. This system leads to what Marx calledalienation . Workers are separated from the value of what they produce and also from each other as they compete for a scarcity of jobs.
Anthropologists often use a Marxists perspective when studying relationships of power within a society. Unequal power relationships translate into reduced access and availability of important resources like healthcare, nutritious food, quality education, safe neighborhoods and desirable jobs for the working class. Reduced access to resources restricts the ability for these individuals to accumulate wealth, which limits their capacity for social mobility. In the United States, labor laws exist that guarantee certain compensations for labor to protect workers from exploitive working conditions. However, many of these laws do not protect undocumented immigrants working in the United States. Undocumented immigrants often find themselves the victims of exploitive labor conditions. Fear of deportation or other legal action leaves them powerless to fight for labor equality or report exploitive labor practices.
=="Modes of Production and Immigrant Labor Organization in Florida’s Citrus Industry==
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Florida’s citrus and berry industry is a half -a-billion dollar a year industry. In 2006, approximately 1.1 billion pounds of grapefruit were harvested, valued in excess of $208 million on 71,000 acres, representing 69 percent of the national grapefruit acreage (Mossler and Aerts 2006). In 2007, Florida cultivated 8,400 acres of strawberries that yielded $239.14 million, and accounted for 15.8 percent of the nation's strawberry crop (VanSickle, et al 2009). Yet despite these numbers, the average income for a farmworker working the strawberry harvest in Dade City, Florida is $17.50 per day, or an annual income of $6,300 (Cowherd 2009). The delicate nature of these crops precludes the use of harvesting machines, creating a demand for large amounts of manual labor. Many of the individuals who fill this demand are undocumented Mexican immigrants. Mexican immigrants who cross the border to join the American workforce often come from impoverished areas of their own country, are undereducated and from rural areas with a high degree of job insecurity. Their lack of education and language barriers greatly limits employment opportunities to unskilled, labor-intensive markets such as the agricultural industry. The undocumented residential status of many of these individuals further restricts employment options to those employers willing to risk fines up to $10,000 per infraction (fairus.org, 2008) and offer compensation in the form of cash or other amenities. In addition, the estimated 980,000 of undocumented immigrants in Florida (fairus.org 2010) vastly out numbers the availability of jobs creating a “sellers market” where workers are faced with the choice of accepting exploitive labor conditions and impoverished wages, or loose their job to someone who will. The undocumented status of many immigrant farmworkers excludes them from protection under labor laws, furthering the employer-employee, or bourgeoisie-proletariat, power differential. These factors work in concert to create working conditions where employers are able to operate on the fringes of labor laws to exploit labor power from undocumented workers without fear of reprisal.
Labor Organization
In accordance with Marx, the modes of production in the citrus industry are organized to maximize net earnings, or what Marx terms the surplus value. The costs of production are minimized in the harvest phase by maximizing the amount of individuals working in the fields, and minimizing their wages and benefits. To further increase surplus value, the agricultural industry utilizes undocumented laborers who are not protected by labor laws. This allows them to be paid far below a living wage (farmworkers.org 2010). Although U.S. federal law prohibits the hiring of undocumented immigrants, the citrus industry organizes the modes of production to exploit the loopholes in immigration labor laws (fairus.org 2010).
Migration , Remittances and Risk Assessment
Marcoeconomic theory postulates that wages are determined by the supply and demand of regional labor markets. Therefore, if workers are scarce in one region and plentiful in another, wages will be high in the former and lower in the latter. Workers then will migrate from the low wage region to the high wage region, thus migration represents the equalizing force between the two regions. Within this analysis is the idea of remittances. Remittances refer to moneys sent home from immigrant families to their sending families (McKenzie 2006). Individuals who move from low wage regions to high wage regions do so not only to maximize their own economic gains, but also to send money home to increase the socioeconomic status of their family. At the marcoeconomic level, this analysis is supported by data. The United States holds the largest stock of immigrants anywhere in the world, and is the largest source of remittances. The United Nations estimates that in 2004, $126 billion USD were sent from immigrant workers in the U.S. back to their families in developing countries (United Nations 2002). Mexican nationals are the largest group of immigrants in the United States, accounting for an estimated 15 percent of Mexico’s working age population (Mirsha 2003).
From a strictly marcoeconomic perspective, migration has been shown to have an overall positive impact on the financial status of both the sending community and the migrating individuals through the gifting of remittances. Anthropological and microeconomic perspectives show that these conclusions are indeed an incomplete understanding of the migration situation.
According to Massey (1990), there are two misconceptions about migration an remittances that follow from a macroeconomic analysis: (1) immigration is caused by wage differential between sending and receiving nations; (2) immigration is motivated by a lack of economic development in the sending region relative to the migration region. While the financial benefits should not be completely discounted as motivating factors, research shows that migration is a social event first, and an economic event second.
Stark et al (1982) have argued theoretically and shown empirically, that decisions to migrate from developing nations are primarily made by families, not individuals; and while the hope of maximizing earnings is a factor in the decision, much more so is the hope of minimizing the risks associated with staying in their home country. Political economic and ecological conditions in many developing nations pose serious health and safety risks to the well being of entire families. Sending different family members to developed nations represents a survival strategy to increase the family income and increase the resiliency of the household to political and social unrest and natural disasters. Therefore, Stark et al theorize that migration is not driven by a desire to increase wealth, but a rather the desire to survive. This survivalist view of migration may partially explain why so many Mexican nationals are willing to risk arrest, deportation and death crossing the U.S. border illegally; because the risks associated with staying in their home country outweigh the risks of being caught in the U.S. without documentation.
Health Impacts of Undocumented Labor Conditions
Migration and remittances have been shown to raise the overall socioeconomic status of the sending household by increasing access to healthcare, nutritious food, and education (McKenzie 2006). While this evidence supports migration as a successful short-term survival solution, new evidence has shown a correlation between health disparities in Latino immigrants, nutrition, and length of time in the U.S. (Himmelgreen et al 2004). Other research shows a direct link between stress stemming from exploitive labor conditions and Metabolic Syndrome. Further, Benyshek (2007) has shown that these effects are not limited to the health of the individual, but can alter the genetic expression of biological traits in developing fetuses of affected immigrant mothers that lead to health problems in adult life.
Health among Mexican migrant farmworkers is disproportionately low compared to the general population in the United States. The National Heart Lung and Blood institute shows that Mexican Americans have the highest incidence of Metabolic Syndrome (31.9 %) compared to Caucasians (23.8 %) and African Americans (21.6 %) (http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/ms/ms_whoisatrisk.html accessed 11/13/09). These estimates are limited to Mexican-Americans with legal residential status, and do not take into account the untold hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who suffer from Metabolic Syndrome.
Metabolic Syndrome is characterized by a group of concurrent risk factors in an individual. They include: abdominal obesity, elevated triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol and high LDL cholesterol, hypertension, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and, high amounts of fibrinogen and cortisol in the bloodstream. Individuals with Metabolic Syndrome have an increased risk for a host of deleterious medical conditions associated with obesity and hypertension, such as heart attack and stroke. Causes of Metabolic syndrome vary, but are primarily linked to diet and stress. Treatment for Metabolic Syndrome involves both short and long term approaches. The immediate goal is to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes through medication and behavior modification, such as a healthier diet and the cessation of tobacco and alcohol use. Long-term approaches involve lifestyle changes to reduce stress, loose weight, increase physical activity, and making healthier food choices. (http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4756 accessed 12/4/09).
Mexican migrant farmworkers face a host of social, economic, and physical barriers that prevent short and long term treatment for Metabolic Syndrome. Political economic perspectives on migrant healthcare barriers are well documented in both medical and public health literature, but these studies often lack the ethnographic perspective offered by anthropology, and thus miss the complexities affecting healthcare seeking behavior.
Their undocumented status, language barriers, and racism all play a part in limiting their social mobility. These social factors work in concert to create what Massey (Massey) calls a uniquely disadvantage social environment in a number of ways. First, as spatial mobility is restricted by employment options, so is social mobility; without an opportunity to accumulate wealth, upward social mobility is limited. Secondly, segregated communities are isolated from the general population. This deters potential commercial and residential developers from bringing industry and housing to the area, which would create job opportunities and increase property values. This makes it difficult for documented Mexican-Americans who do own land in and around migrant communities to accumulate property wealth. Thirdly, spatial segregation isolates impoverished communities geographically. This creates a social stigma that has psychosocial and socioeconomic ramifications for both the isolated and the surrounding communities. Finally, concentrating poverty also concentrates everything associated with poverty: disease, crime, welfare dependency, substance abuse, and prostitution (Massey).
Allostasis was developed in the 1980s as a measure of cumulative stress on the body. It builds on the idea of homeostasis; as environmental stressors act upon an individual, the body reacts to regain equilibrium through the allostatic response. This response is designed for short-term deployment to mobilize the body’s energy resources to fight or flee a perceived threat. Although crucial to survival, overuse of the allostatic response has been linked to a number of deleterious health effects such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes (Stewart 2006:134).
The allostatic response is a complex interaction mediated by the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. When an individual perceives a threat, the hypothalamus signals the adrenal glands to release adrenalin into the bloodstream, signaling the body to prepare for evasive or defensive action. Adrenalin raises blood pressure by accelerating the heartbeat and constricting blood vessels in the skin to redirect blood flow to the internal organs and large muscles of the arms and legs. Adrenalin also signals the release of white blood cells and the clotting agent fibrogen, into the blood stream to prepare to fight infection and promote clotting in the case of injury. Adrenalin also dilates the bronchial tubes, increases respiration to accelerate the oxygenation of the blood, and releases fatty acids and glucose into the blood as a ready source of energy (Massey)
The hypothalamus simultaneously signals the pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotropic hormone, which in turn tells the adrenal glands to secrete cortisol into the blood. Cortisol converts excess glucose in the blood stream into glycogen and fat, replacing energy stores depleted by the adrenalin, and promotes the conversion of muscle protein into fat. Cortisol also blocks insulin from taking up glucose, extracts minerals from bone tissue, and changes the texture of white blood cells to make them more adhesive to promote clotting . Chronic activation of the HPA axis overtime causes wear and tear on the body’s systems leading to allostatic load, which has been linked to Metabolic syndrome (Massey 2004).
Compounding the deleterious effects of allostatic load are secondary coping behaviors factors that may be motivated in response to the stress. These include alcohol abuse, recreational drug use, smoking and comfort eating. Although the negative health effects of substance abuse and smoking are well documented, the link between comfort eating and allostasis has only recently been discovered. Dallman et al (2004) have shown foods high in calories and fat cause the body to secrete glucocorticoids (GC), steroids involved in the metabolism of glucose. GCs providing short-term relief from the affects of the allostatic response by inhibiting the continued activity of the HPA axis. Prolonged elevated concentrations of GCs proved to be excitatory and stimulating, which reinforces and motivates the ingestion of “comfort food” (Dallman et al 2004). Thus, stress resulting from these conditions of segregation and poverty, combined with increased ingestion of foods high in fat and calories may influence dietary patterns in post immigration individuals leading to weight gain, obesity, and type 2 diabetes (Stumvoll, et al. 2004).
This article illustrates how a marxists perspective can shed light on social relations of power, and how these relations of power can effect human health and well being. Political economic perspectives in anthropology are useful for tracing not only the exchange of goods and services, but also how control over the modes of production and avenues of exchange can differences of power that have a ripple effect to other areas of human existence. When combined with biological anthropology, political economic perspective yield insight into how relationships of power and labor conditions adversely affect human health and well being.

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