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Conference Proceedings: Structural Changes and their Impact on Hispanics Joseph Spielberg (Editor) Occasional Paper #1 Table Of Contents
Session Two: The Latin Labor Force in the Economic Recession and Recovery of the Midwest
Session Four: The Social and Political Status of Latino Women in the Midwest
Dr. Richard Navarro, Director,
This document presents the results of a two-day planning conference organized by the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University during the week of March, 1989. The central purpose of the conference was to examine the issues affecting Latinos in the Midwest and to establish a broad research agenda to address these issues. The main focus or theme of the conference centered on the impact of a changing Midwestern economy and society on the well-being and the future of the region's Latino population. A number of distinguished Hispanic scholars with past and/or present ties to the Midwest (see Appendix: Contributors) were invited to participate and deliberate the issues raised during the course of the conference. Here we present the formal presentations and commentaries of four sessions celebrated during the first day of the conference. After each presentation and commentary, other distinguished scholars in attendance also contributed their views on the subjects dealt with by the presenters. Among these were: Robert Aponte, King/Chavez/Parks Fellow, Michigan State University; Dr. Leigh Binford, University of Connecticut; Dr. John Bonnen, Michigan State University; Dr. Miguel Carranza, University of Nebraska; Dr. Church, Michigan State University; Dr. Richard Hill, Michigan State University; Dr. Bernardo Ortiz, Wayne State University; and, Dr. Julian Samora, prof. emeritus, University of Notre Dame. Unfortunately, space considerations prohibit the presentation of the lively and provocative observations and comments made by these scholars in the discussions which followed each presentation. Nevertheless, some of their contributions are incorporated in the revised papers presented here and in the conclusions section of these proceedings.
Acknowledgements The planning conference was made possible by the hard work and support of many persons. In particular, we would like to acknowledge Dr. David Scott, Michigan State University Provost, and his staff, who provided much by way of resources and encouragement for this endeavor, as did Dr. Judith Lanier, Dean of the College of Education, and several members of her staff. We are very grateful to Ms. Joan Eadie, Education Program Coordinator in the College of Education, who was instrumental in the organization of conference activities and in providing the necessary logistical support. In addition, thanks go to Ms. Tani Spielberg for her fine work in designing and producing the planning conference program. We are also very much indebted to Ms. Jennifer Boughton for her painstaking transcription of the taped conference proceedings upon which this report is based. Also we would like to acknowledge Ms. Salley Pratt for her excellent job of editing this manuscript, as well as Ms. Paulette Hodney and Ms. Heidi Senecoff who typed the final draft. Finally, we wish to express our appreciation to Diana and Juan Marinez for the hospitality they extended to the conference participants. To all of these persons we say, "muchas gracias". Introduction | Session One: The Changing Nature Of American Agriculture and its Impact on Seasonal Migratory Farm Labor | Session Two: The Latin Labor Force in the Economic Recession and Recovery of the Midwest | Session Three: Socio-economic and Cultural Factors in the Migration and Resettlement of the Spanish-speaking in the Midwest | Session Four: The Social and Political Status of Latino Women in the Midwest | Summary And Conclusions | Appendix: Contributors Session One: The Changing Nature Of American Agriculture and its Impact on Seasonal Migratory Farm Labor Refugio I. Rochin It is indeed a pleasure for me to speak at Michigan State University. I left Lansing as a doctoral candidate in Agricultural Economics in the summer of 1971 and went on to Davis, California. At that time I didn't expect to come back. It wasn't necessarily the weather. It did not know that I would be doing this type of work on farm labor. I have had many diverse interests, mostly related to international agricultural development. But I am pleased that my training at Michigan State rewarded me with the desire, enthusiasm, and skills to address these issues and participate in a conference such as this. My training here was very good. It was applied and it was very open. For example, while working for my doctorate in the Agricultural Economics Department, I also took classes in the Communications program and finished an MS degree in that field as well. So, Michigan State has been a good place for me, and I am proud to be back. I've changed the focus of my presentation because the idea of just concentrating on structural changes kind of bothered me. I don't have any excuses for leaving that focus. But I broadened my topic somewhat to talk about general changes in agriculture and employment issues of Hispanic workers. Because more changes are occurring in agriculture than just structural changes that affect Hispanics, I want to talk about a general set of changes occurring in agriculture, and especially about the importance of these changes for Hispanic workers. Part of the problem in looking at structural issues alone is that I haven't been dealing specifically with the way structure relates to agricultural employment issues. I have been dealing with other issues which have taken me into different circles--such as issues of demographics, capital formation in Hispanic communities, education and training, and affirmative action, as well as issues of the year 2000 and what types of labor markets we'll have then. I am going to talk a little bit about changes in agriculture from a global and demographic point of view. Initially, it may not relate directly to the Hispanic presence in agriculture. Later, however, I will argue that Hispanics are playing an increasing and important role in agriculture. And then I will proceed with some of the institutional and structural issues that I think this Institute and other social science researchers can work on in dealing with Hispanics in rural communities and in agriculture.
Agriculture and Employment First I want to talk about America's agriculture--our agriculture as a place of employment and a source of income for out work force. The general trend I have noticed is that despite increasing farm production and productivity, agriculture's role in the United States economy for income generation and employment continues to shrink. That is, the importance of agriculture as a source of income for people and employment is declining relative to the total gross national product (GNP). Total hired employment in agriculture has declined steadily from an annual average of about 3.7 million workers in 1960, to about 2.5 million today (Table 1). And that is a remarkable decline, especially considering the amount of output that is produced from our agricultural sector. In 1950 there were 20 states in which agricultural employment for both hired and family labor amounted to 30 percent or more of the total employment. In 1970, only 10 states had 7.5 percent or more workers employed in agriculture. Today, though, I have not been able to find updated statistics, I doubt that more than 2 or 3 states that employ 10 percent of the total workers in agriculture. It is hard to see in any state today where agriculture is a major source of employment or a major generator of income for workers.
The Farm Population Along with the decline in agricultural employment has been a steady decline in the share of people living on farms. In 1950 the farm population represented 15.3 percent of the nations' total employment. In 1970 it was 4.8 percent. In 1985 the farm population was estimated at 5.3 million people, and constituted less than 2 percent of total employment nationwide(Table 1). So people living on farms and participating in the labor force are becoming a shrinking number.
Larger and Fewer Farms Accompanying the decline in the farm population are some of the structural issues I was asked to address. The general trend is toward fewer, larger, and more efficient farms. As farms have become more specialized, and production and sales have become more concentrated, the characteristics and distribution of the farm population have also changed. Larger farms in the U.S. today (those defined by the Department of Agriculture as farms with annual sales of $100,000 per year and more) now account for a growing share of the farm population. Their share is only about 18 to 20 percent of the farm population, but that share is growing. Mid-sized farms (those that have annual sales of $20,000 to $100,000) now account for about 30 percent of the farm population, but that share is decreasing. Finally, about 50 percent of the farm population is still living on small farms, those earning less than $20,000 per year. That number stays pretty steady because, with inflation, given the way farms are defined as any economic activity producing $1,000 of annual sales per year, we get more small farms are just coming into existence. They might be growing direct market produce of radishes and carrots and lettuce and things like that, but they all of the sudden become farms because of their annual sales. So, the major trend that is apparent (although it might just be a definitional phenomenon influenced by inflation) is that the larger farms are taking an increasing share of the farm population and accounting for an increasing source of farm employment for people in the labor force. Along with this trend we find that smaller farms in the United States are not very important for hired or seasonal labor. They have practically no year round workers. Of the mid-sized farms, only 8 percent report having at least one paid employee who worked at least 150 days on the farm. Only about 4 percent of this mid-size farm category report having at least one paid employee who worked any length of time on average during the farm year. So, mid-sized farms, also, are not very important to hired labor. One thing that should be mentioned along with the decline in the mid-sized farm category is the concomitant reduction in the family-farm operation category, which had been, in part, the reason for this decline in the farm population. When the farm population, per se, declines--when the farm population loses more owner-operators of mid-sized farms--what we have is a decrease in the supply of people who will work on farms. In other words, we face today a decreasing number of people, domestic workers in particular, who would be able and willing to work on America's farms. There's a general exodus of mid-sized farm family members from agriculture and an exodus of the people living and growing up on farms that can supply other farms with labor.
Implications of Changing Farm Structure These changes in the importance of large and mid-sized farms have several implications for farm labor. If we have an increasing number of large farms being the main source of employment, then we can expect farm changes or new conditions. Farm skill requirements will gradually rise, on average, throughout the United States. Larger farms will require more skilled types of workers, workers with more specialized tasks, because these large farming operation will be more efficient, more profit driven, and more apt to search out skilled workers for particular tasks. I see this trend, in particular, in California whenever I visit farms of varying size. Another implication for farm labor is that for large farms, the work hours, pay scales, and supervision will be more structured. In many states already , the conditions of work and supervision are being monitored more closely on larger farms. Maybe there is, in this trend, either a blessing in disguise for farm labor; or maybe there is a problem for farmers themselves. But, in general as the farm reaches a higher level of size and income, it is going to be monitored and operated more closely.
Laws and Regulations Several types of new rules and regulations have been imposed upon the larger farms that employ larger numbers of workers. Several of these laws and policies affect employers and might be of benefit to farm workers on these farms. One set of measures falls under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Fair Labor Standards Act of the United States looks at minimum wages, maximum work hours, overtime, and child labor standards. Right now an issue in debate in Congress is the minimum wage. Minimum wage hasn't been changed for some time, and if that ever changes it would be put in effect through the Fair Labor Standards Act. The point to note is that large farms must comply with the Act's regulations. Small farms with few hired workers are usually exempt, but for the workers, there will be higher wages ultimately. A second act or set of policies that affects the employers and might be a help to the workers is the Occupational Safety and Health Act. These laws affect the workplace conditions, the sanitation of labor camps, and the places for labor camps, as well as the handling of chemicals and equipment on farms. As the number of employees increases on larger farms, increasing number of employees will be covered under these types of Occupational Safety and Health Act regulations. Farm labor may benefit and may find farm work more suitable for long-term employment. A third act that also has implications for employees on larger farms is the Migrant and Seasonal Agriculture Work and Protection Act. The Migrant and Seasonal Agriculture Work and Protection Act traditionally had been one focused on seeing education and training and well being of migrant seasonal workers. Increasingly, it has become the act which incorporates the rules and regulations governing the use of labor contractors on farms. I should also point out that as our farms increase in scale-- requiring more specialized labor and more workers--more farms will need to have, as part of the evolving trend, more personnel managers. That means that larger farms, requiring more workers, will leave the labor problems to labor contractors who are professionals. That is, large farms will require more contractors who can handle just the labor management problems alone. Several implications for having this type of intermediary in the agricultural scene are emerging--some implications are good and some are bad for farm labor. The good is that the labor will have an intermediary who would, in most cases, speak their language. Many of the farm laborers today, especially Hispanic origin farm workers, only speak Spanish. Second, many of these intermediaries will be able to follow the rules and the laws and will be able to deal directly with the concerns of the workers in complying with these acts. On the negative side, these types of employer intermediaries, especially labor contractors, do not have a history of good acceptance among workers and farm labor unions in agriculture. They have been known to exploit workers. They have been known to cheat workers in pay, and cause other problems for farm labor in general. Nevertheless, the Migrant and Seasonal Agriculture Work and Protection Act is in effect becoming more prominent, and is having more bearing on the conditions of farm workers.
Immigration Reform Another act that is of increasing importance, not just to large farms, is the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. As farms are getting larger and needing more workers, but finding fewer available domestic workers (because these domestic workers are leaving the mid-sized farms), the larger farms are employing increasing numbers of immigrant workers. This pattern has not been abated. As a matter of fact, the pattern of hiring alien workers has been supported and given more federal backing since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. I don't know how many of you are familiar with this Act of 1986 (called IRCA), but it not only allowed for amnesty for workers that had been living here since 1982, enabling them to apply for legal residence, but it also had two sets of provisions specifically for agriculture. One provision, called the Special Agricultural Worker Provision, assures that agriculture would havellabor. This provision allows farm workers who had worked a minimum of 90 days in perishable crops during that year a chance to legalize their status. For some strange reason, cotton was included as a perishable crop. Farmers were guaranteed that they would have special agricultural workers. Part of the conditions would be that they would continue working in agriculture until they could legalize their status. About a half-million people signed up under the SAW provisions as of the end of 1988. There may be more now because people from Iran and India, and other places, are claiming they are special agricultural workers. The process of cleaning out fraudulent cases is still going on. There is, then, this guaranteed pool of immigrant labor for agriculture for a few years. Furthermore, knowing that the SAW pool would dry up some day, IRCA contained another provision for a farmworker group called RAWS--Replenishment Agriculture Workers--which takes effect in 1990 which also will assure that we have an alien pool of workers that we can draw on to work in agriculture. And if that doesn't work, we can still draw on alien workers through an H2A provision which allows for kind-of "quasi-Bracero" program to continue in the future. So this is another act which has several implications for the conditions of farm employees. And it's special provisions for agriculture are due to the nature of the changing size of farms, and also to the importance of large farms in our agriculture. More can be said about that. Maybe I can defer some of that to Rogelio Saenz and Gilberto Cardenas, who specialize in these immigration issues to a much greater extent than I do.
Worker Compensations Another provision or set of acts that has implications for Hispanic workers are the Worker Compensation Acts. Worker Compensation Acts cover FICA or the Federal Insurance Contribution Act which funds Social Security. As farms are deemed large, or of a certain minimal size, employing certain numbers of workers, then those farms have to make provisions for the social security of workers, and that may be helpful to the future workers in our agriculture. And finally, there are major federal employment tax laws which Reagan passed that also have implications for the employers and the workers in agriculture.
Hispanic Workers Having talked about the larger farms becoming more important for workers and the structural changes related to demographic trends, plus the legal or regulatory conditions that might affect farm workers on larger and larger farms, we might now ask, what about Hispanics? Where are they in these trends? The changing structure of farms has plenty to do with Hispanic workers. The United States has a distinct racial and ethnic aspect to the employment pattern of hired labor. To understand this racial aspect we go back to the people who are available to work on farms. We see a decline in the owner/operators because mid-sized farms are going under, as well as a decline in the so called category of unpaid family workers. As a result, we see a continued demand for hired workers that are going to be specialized workers on these larger farms (Table 1). But the thing about this emerging pattern of employment is that where we see the increasing number of large farms is growing in prominence as well as the particular types of people working on large farms. We see more minorities employed on these large farms. Out West an increasing proportion of Hispanic workers is employed on larger farms doing specialized tasks (Table 2). In the South we see more minorities as well. There, we also see Hispanics and we also see more Black families working in agriculture. In the Midwest, however, where we also see the decline in mid- sized farms, are declining in number, the picture of labor is not so clear. In the Midwest we do not have a long history of having such major proportions of minority workers employed on farms. That is primarily due to the prominence of mid-sized farms. But as the Midwest adjusts to larger farms, I wonder what kind of labor are they going to hire? It is probably a research question that needs to be addressed. Are Midwest farmers going to be drawing on Hispanic workers? Are they going to be drawing on some Black workers? Or, are they going to be relying increasingly on immigrant workers provided by IRCA? High proportions of the Hispanic worker population in the United States is employed in agriculture. Agriculture is an important source of income, employment, and a training ground for the youth for social, and in some cases, economic mobility within society. If the domestic Hispanic workers and those who are being legalized are going to continue to be employed in agriculture, then we would want to look at all these acts and regulations to make sure they work. If, on the other hand, the farms are going to use more of the H2A immigrant alien workers, then we might have some competition at hand. And that competition may create problems for the domestic Hispanics, including all those who qualify for citizenship under IRCA. If we go towards that other immigrant labor force, who knows where it is going to come from, who knows what kind will be attracted into the Midwest states. In the South farm employers are still hiring domestic workers because the pool is large. I suspect in the West, agriculture will still be hiring Hispanic workers. But I am not sure what is going to happen in the Midwest. Who will be hired seasonally? Who is going to be working on the Midwest farms, especially if the farm size continues to grow larger?
Research Issues I have a list of ideas that keep coming up and changing depending on the conditions of agriculture. The Midwest is a big question mark, especially as mid-sized farms decrease in number. Who knows, farmers of mid-sized farms may be the ones more interested in mechanization, technological change, and so forth. But I think many of them, if they have a labor pool to draw from--whether it be immigrant or drawn from other parts of the United States--will still be labor intensive operations. To narrow my list, I have two general perspectives for research on Hispanics in agriculture: problem oriented and policy research.
Problem Oriented Research It is necessary, in much of our research, to better understand the nature of the problems we discuss. As part of our research we need better problem identification and problem analysis. We need effective problem-oriented research before we can have effective, applied types of policies and measures. Under the problem-oriented type of research, there are many types of problems we might consider would require number crunching, modeling, some surveys, etc. At the top of my list is continuing to do research on problems related to technological changes, a phenomenon that will be around for a while. It is not that we have a lot of technology out there that is being gobbled-up and throwing labor out of agriculture left and right. My concern with technological change is that we continue to support research in agricultural engineering and chemical industries; these fields will have labor displacement effects, but without concern for the workers. My main concern with this technological change is a lack of caring about the social adjustment costs. Thus, a problem for research is to look more at technological change from the standpoint of the direct and indirect affects of these changes on workers and those that will be lost from agricultural employment. This is an important area of problem-oriented research, especially coming from California. California Rural Legal Assistance, representing 19 farm workers, sued the University for doing research that was labor displacing. As a result, the University now has to show that the research improves agriculture but that it does have some applied good for the rural workers and communities. We also need some research that looks at whether or not farm-labor contracting is a problem for farm workers. The number of farm labor contractors on the market has been growing recently. Contractors are becoming increasingly important as labor unions, especially in California, weaken. Who are the contractors, are they fulfilling their contracts with the employees as well as with the employers, and under what conditions are they having their workers work? We need more problem-oriented research on labor immigration and the effects of IRCA. More problem oriented research might be focused on the SAW and RAW, and H2A provisions and their effects on farm labor. I would like to see more problem-oriented research that looks at the adjustment alternatives for displaced agricultural workers. Where can our Hispanic farm workers go, and what other skills and training do they have to adapt to other labor markets?
Policy Research The second perspective that should guide some of our research has to do with research that helps us develop directly better social policies and programs for Hispanic workers. While we might understand "problems" through other types of research, we need to do more to understand what can be done, directly, for Hispanics in agricultural and rural communities. We need more research on human capital formation, as well as research looking at the health, the housing, and a number of other conditions that affect the quality of life of Hispanic farm workers. More research is needed on the issue of language and the ability of Hispanic workers to learn English. I am not an "English only" advocate, but I see that under IRCA, and under emerging labor market conditions, if English fluency isn't improved, many Hispanic workers by the year 2000 will not be able to get some jobs--especially several jobs in agriculture today. They might need some added provisions to acquire fluency in English. For example, the only reason I see why Hispanic workers today don't have English fluency and lower educational accomplishments, as compared to other groups in our society, is the fact that the opportunity costs in terms of having to go to classes when you could be working. You know, if you have a family to support, you are going to go to work. You probably won't be going to language classes. If the opportunity costs for educations were lower, or if Hispanic workers were able to have subsidies or some support to get their English and some education, that would be an attractive opportunity and that they would do that. We need to test this hypothesis. More research is needed on the Hispanic's use of the labor market, job research activities, and so forth. And, I'd like to see more policy research on ways to address the poverty problems facing Hispanic workers, especially those in agriculture.
Conclusions Those are the research issues from my two perspectives. I have another set of research topics that I throw into a general type of category. We have not logged our history very well. I'd like to see more historical research done on Hispanic workers, Hispanic leaders who have contributed something to our work in society, especially in agriculture. A few books have come out on Caesar Chavez, but that is about it. We don't have many Hispanic role models written up. We don't have many lessons to derive from our leaders, and we don't have many ideas of what Hispanics have contributed to rural communities and to rural life. I would like to see more historians involved in some kind of research like this, not just for the sake of creating role models, but because of the lessons that can be learned. Look in our history books today. We have very little mention of Hispanics as leaders in agriculture, even though there are several. It just takes a lot of work. We have leaders like Julian Samora, who pioneered some work that relates to these ideas. We have Ernesto Galarza, and still others, and we don't know very much about them today. And finally, the last point, I would like to see more case studies, life histories of workers and their experiences--how they are coping in rural communities in agriculture. We need some answers to the following question: Why don't Hispanics in agriculture become farmers? Why is it that we are always looked at as laborers only? Why don't we own the resources and take control of the capital and employ ourselves in rural jobs? If we are such darn good laborers, why don't we become good farmers as well? Look around! We don't have representation as farmers. Somebody should start developing more case study research on this question. Thank you.
Commentary Rogelio Saenz Professor Rochin has provided us with an excellent overview of the changes that have taken place in agriculture during the last 50 years or so and the implications that those changes have for Hispanic farm workers. He has provided us with general trends regarding the increase in larger farms and the concomitant increase in agricultural workers, especially those working in agriculture for long periods during the year. In addition, the research agenda that he has set is one that will be particularly useful as we seek to understand the implications of the agricultural changes for Hispanic farm workers. Professor Rochin has raised a number of issues that we as researchers should deal with in the coming years. The issue that he identified regarding the impact of technological changes on Hispanic farm workers is very relevant today and will become increasingly relevant in the coming years. And, as he notes, the research that has examined technological changes has tended to focus on agricultural production, much to the neglect of issues such as the impact such changes have on the farm workers or the displacement of farm workers. He has also identified issues regarding the effects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). He tends to suggest that the increasing size of farms i likely to result in better bargaining power for farm workers in the country. It will be interesting, however, to see the effects of IRCA on agricultural labor in the coming years. The introduction of replenishment workers may indeed result in a split labor market within the agricultural-labor sector. Accordingly, documented and native Hispanic farm workers will demand higher wages, better working conditions, and better benefits. However, growers may use replenishment workers to undercut the bargaining power of the documented and native Hispanic farm workers or farm worker unions. I think Professor Rochin has identified very important issues regarding farm workers. I am going to identify some particular issues and research needs that I believe we need to address in the coming years. Since Professor Rochin has done a very good job of identifying those issues related to farm workers, my focus will be on the larger rural Hispanic community. Such a larger scope is useful since changes in agriculture have impacts not only on those individuals that are directly involved in agriculture, but also on those working in other industrial sectors. The Midwest rural communities provide a good example of what happens when a farm crisis occurs. Iowa has experienced larger scale out-migration following the farm crisis. In Texas, the farm crisis and the oil bust have affected population growth and employment in different sectors of that state's economy. One of the first needs that I see concerns basic demographic information. We need to provide ongoing demographic information on different segments of the Latino population. We need this information because there are many misperceptions regarding Latinos in this country. If you look back a couple of year ago when people were trying to estimate the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States, some overly exaggerated figures indicated that about 3 out of every 4 of us as being here illegally. Stereotypical images also exist which depict Latinos as primarily an agricultural labor force, when in fact a wide diversity of Latinos participate in industry. Latinos, on the other hand, have also been viewed as an overwhelmingly urban population that is part of the urban underclass, much to the neglect of rural Latinos. Such misperceptions exist in the mass media, the minds of policy makers, and among people in both the public and the private sectors. Ongoing demographic information needs to be provided to policy makers and people in both the public and private sectors so that they can better understand issues relevant to the Latino population. Even people within our own particular Latino communities need such information to better understand not only the particular needs of the Latino population, but also the economic, political, and social potential of the Latino population in this country. It should be stressed that such information needs to be presented on an ongoing basis. Often, today in 1989, we must rely on data from the 1980 census to assess the socioeconomic and demographic conditions of Latinos, realizing full well that there has been plenty of change that has taken place during the last nine years. Thus, one of the key issues that I see is providing basic demographic information on an ongoing basis. Another research area that needs to be addressed is the effects of rural transformations on Hispanics. We are all well aware of the important structural transformations that have occurred in this past decade. Such changes include the farm crisis, the oil bust in the Southwest, and the post-industrial transformation, where we are relying more on the service sector for employment. We need to understand how effectively Latinos have been able to adjust to such changes that have taken place in local communities. Research that has been done here in Michigan suggests that Latinos in the state have been particularly hurt by the economic woes in the Michigan economy in the early 1980s. Our research in Texas also suggests that the oil bust and farm crisis have been particularly felt by Hispanics. Between 1980 and 1985, incomes declined more significantly for Hispanics in Texas than they declined for Blacks and Anglos, after inflation had been taken into account. We also found increasing rates of poverty among Hispanics. Yet, interestingly, empirical evidence suggests that Hispanics are working. Consequently, it is not that we are experiencing declines in incomes and increases in poverty rates because we are not working or that we are lazy. We need to identify those industrial sectors that are picking up Latinos that have been displaced from extractive sectors, such as agriculture and mining, and even from manufacturing. We also need research that provides us with information regarding strategies-- such as the development of small businesses, participation in the informal economy, and the use of the extended family household structure--that Latinos have taken to adjust to structural changes. We also need research that examines the dynamics of moving in and moving out of both agricultural as well as nonagricultural sectors. How do people move into these sectors? How do they collect their information to discover the availability of employment in both the agricultural and the nonagricultural sectors? We also need to understand the impact that such rural changes have had on the particular lives of Latinos. Here I am talking about the possible impacts of rural structural transformations on levels of substance abuse, alcoholism, family violence, and so forth. Research should also focus on the structures of communities containing Latino populations. We need to understand whether or not rural communities are providing social and economic services to the Latino population. We need to understand whether or not rural communities are providing social and economic services to Latino populations, particularly since many rural communities have experienced shrinking tax resources, in many cases due to out- migration. Often, we merely identify individual characteristics that are associated with whether or not people are employed, with whether they are underemployed, and whether they are in poverty, and so forth. Accordingly, we argue that individuals experiencing socioeconomic problems do not have enough education, they do not have sufficient training, they do not have enough work experience, etc. Essentially, we isolate individual factors and at the same time neglect the examination of structural factors or conditions the particular Latino individual is living under--whether that person has the availability of both social and economic services, and the extent that local communities provide services to residents that allow them to adjust more effectively to the changes taking place in rural America. Another issue that is very important is rural poverty. A great deal of research has examined urban poverty, largely because of the large numbers of individuals involved. In contrast, relatively little research has been done in rural areas regarding poverty, particularly Hispanic rural poverty. One thing that we do know is that, in general, the rural population tends to have slightly higher poverty rates than urban residents. But research suggests that rural residents tend to utilize social programs to a lesser extent than urban residents. Part of this has to do with the more limited resources found in rural areas. Some researchers have also suggested that perhaps the stigma attached to the use of welfare, welfare dependency, use of social programs, and so forth, is more severe in rural areas. Another issue that deserves a great deal of attention, and one that Professor Rochin has identified, is the need for education and training for rural Hispanics. Chicanos and Puerto Ricans are two particularly disadvantaged groups with regard to education. Chicanos and Puerto Ricans have drop-out rates as high as 50 percent or more in some areas. Again, the problems are likely to be especially severe in rural communities, which tend to have limited resources and in many cases have experienced school consolidations. We need to provide effective programs that allow individuals to remain in school to get their educational training, and also to encourage them and prepare them to pursue higher education. We also need training programs for displaced workers to help them adjust to an increasingly complex labor force. An examination of the projected demographics for the next century clearly demonstrates the urgency for providing education and training to Latinos today. Population projections reveal the strong force that Latinos will represent in the 21st century. The Latino population is going to be particularly important in the growth of the labor force. The Latino population is growing faster than the Anglo population, faster than the Black population, and to some extent faster than the Asian population. Such dramatic growth in the Latino community requires that we train this labor force for the coming century, realizing full well that the group currently has significantly less human capital than will be required to participate effectively in the future labor force. We need to train the Latino population in order for this country to be more competitive on the world stage in the next century. Indeed, the United States cannot be expected to be very competitive on the world market in the coming decade if it fails to provide education and training for Latinos today. Also, it is imperative that we begin educating and training this population because of the fact that Latinos are increasingly going to be called on to provide the economic and social support for a larger elderly population in the next century--an elderly population that by the year 2010 will continue being largely Anglo and largely composed of today's baby boomers. You've seen the commercial, sometime back, about the automobile mechanic saying "...you can pay me now or pay me later." I think that adage is particularly appropriate in the case of educating and training Latinos in this country today. In closing, I want to stress that the development of such research agendas, as we are doing here today, is very important. But we also have to address the problem of the limited amount of data that we have available. Thus, we need to develop data sources that allow us to better answer the questions that we are posing here today. The development of state-wide surveys, community surveys, and case histories will be extremely necessary in order to address some of the issues that we have identified today. Dr. Refugio Rochin is in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Rogelio Saenz is in the Department of Rural Sociology, Texas A&M University Introduction | Session One: The Changing Nature Of American Agriculture and its Impact on Seasonal Migratory Farm Labor | Session Two: The Latin Labor Force in the Economic Recession and Recovery of the Midwest | Session Three: Socio-economic and Cultural Factors in the Migration and Resettlement of the Spanish-speaking in the Midwest | Session Four: The Social and Political Status of Latino Women in the Midwest | Summary And Conclusions | Appendix: Contributors Session Two: The Latin Labor Force in the Economic Recession and Recovery of the Midwest By Richard Santos My presentation today is not a formal academic paper. Rather it is an informal overview of my earlier work which examines the economic progress of Hispanics in the Midwest, particularly between 1970-1980. In addition I want to share some research themes and ideas related to the economic well-being of Hispanics in the Midwest. I'd like to begin going over the reasons that prompted my work on Hispanic workers in the Midwest. One was that prior to about 1970, there really wasn't a systematic way to identify Hispanics outside the Southwest. Most of the efforts by the U.S. Census to identify Hispanic workers were done by Spanish surnames, Spanish language, Spanish heritage, and primarily limited to the Southwest. In 1970 the U.S. Census Bureau changed its approach to counting Hispanic workers and started using self-identification on a national sample basis. In 1970, a unique opportunity therefore arose for identifying Hispanic workers outside the traditional areas, such as the Southwest. Furthermore, examining how Hispanic workers performed in the industrial Midwest offered a unique opportunity to compare how Hispanics performed in nonindustrialized labor markets. The Midwest states (specifically Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) were labor markets that were highly industrialized and unionized; whereas the Southwest did not have these characteristics. Another reason to study the performance of Hispanics in the Midwest was the favorable labor market conditions. In 1970, among Hispanic workers, those who resided in the Midwest earned more than those who resided in other regions. In many ways the Midwest represented the best of times because unemployment rates in 1969 were about 3.5 percent, in 1970 about 4.3 percent. Although those Hispanic workers in the Midwest did better than other Hispanic workers in other regions, those Hispanic workers that were employed in manufacturing still lagged in earnings behind other non-Hispanic Midwest workers. By 1980, what had once been the best of times in the Midwest became the worst of times. Unemployment rates for Hispanic workers, for example, jumped from about 5 percent to about 17 percent from 1970 to 1980; a substantial jump in unemployment for other workers in the region. In my paper, I primarily used government data to gauge how Midwest Hispanics performed between 1970 and 1980. For example, I used the 1976 U.S. Survey of Income and Education to measure what the impact of the 1975 recession had on Hispanic workers in this region. In addition, I used the March 1981 Current Population Survey to measure another point in time to see how Hispanic workers had fared in the Midwest. The preliminary results are summarized as follows. The first result relates to population growth; in the 1970s, it was projected there would be substantial growth of the Hispanic population in the Midwest. The projection made sense at that time because the economy was booming, farm workers were settling out, and the region offered high wages. So all of the conditions that would cause an economist to predict favorable population growth were there. In 1980, the population growth, however, did not materialize, for the obvious reason that we did not maintain the favorable employment situation that we had in 1970. In fact, while overall there was about a 62 percent increase in the U.S. Hispanic population from 1970 to 1980 due to better counting methods, foreign migration, and also because of high fertility rates---the same growth did not happen for the Midwest. Overall, the five Midwest states experienced about a 25 percent growth. More interestingly, when you analyze the growth by area, the Hispanic growth occurred primarily on the shoulders of one city and that was Chicago. In the Midwest, Chicago accounted for the major population growth of Hispanics, with a 62 percent increase in its Hispanic population. Michigan had about an 8 percent growth, but the Hispanic population declined in the other Midwest states (Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin). The Hispanic population growth did not materialize in a large measure because of the economic downturn, and because of so-called Sunbelt Growth in the Southwest. Another result from my analysis is with unemployment conditions. It was more severe for Hispanic workers than for white workers. If you look at the unemployment rates and weeks worked, the impact from the downturn is compounded for Hispanic workers. Another impact from the economic conditions between 1970 and 1980 had to do with the labor force participation rate of women. Hispanic women have traditionally lagged behind other women in regards to labor force participation rate. In general, favorable economic conditions increase the labor force participation of women. For Hispanic women in the Midwest, their labor force participation, however, remained pretty much constant between 1970 and 1980. A proportion of this constant labor force participation rate between these time periods could have been attributed to the unfavorable employment conditions in the region. By contrast, if you look at a state like Texas between 1970 and 1980, women increased their labor force participation rate. A possible reason for the increase was because the manufacturing base was expanding in the state that offered more employment opportunities for women, particularly in firms like Levi's, Farrah, and other textile industries. Another impact from the economic downturn in the region has to do with education. Between 1970 and 1980, there was no change in the median years of education for Hispanics between the ages of 16 and 64. It remained at about 10 years of education. The economic conditions, and particularly the effect that it had on families, might account for the fact that median education did not increase during this time period. Other results from my preliminary analysis has to do with the earnings gap and dependence on manufacturing. The earnings gap by race among males remained fairly constant, about 20 percent, between the time periods. Hispanic workers also became more dependent on manufacturing for employment. What this indicates is that in many ways the long run economic prospect for Hispanic workers in the Midwest is closely linked to industrial policies. In other words, industrial revitalization efforts that are being done in the Midwest could directly benefit Hispanic workers. While this may not be necessarily true, it can at least be argued that you need industrial revitalization policies to benefit Hispanic workers in the region. Several research issues emerged from my research which I would like to share with researchers interested in studying Midwest Hispanics. The first suggestion has to do with data sources. I mentioned before that 1970 marked the time that we were able to count Hispanic workers on a nationwide basis. Since 1970, the availability of data sources on Hispanics has improved tremendously. Data sources are essential for monitoring the economic well-being of Hispanics. However, data on the Midwest Hispanic population is still not of the quality or quantity that is necessary for adequately monitoring their economic progress. In 1970 when I did my dissertation with U.S. Census Bureau data, the sample aged 16-64 contained about 2200 Hispanic males and 2300 Hispanic females in five Midwestern states. The sample size gives you a pretty good database to do analysis, but the research is limited when you break down the numbers by sex, age, and Hispanic group. If you examine the 1976 Survey of Income and Education, which was a national sample, there are only 275 hispanic males, only 164 Hispanic females (age 16-64) in these five states, which limits your regional analysis. Similarly, The Current Population Survey, which is the prime data source for calculating employment status of workers, contains only 288 Hispanic males and 255 Hispanic females age 16-64 within this region. Consequently, any regional analysis on Hispanics will be limited by the sample size. The heterogeneity of the Hispanic group is another research-related issue. In the Midwest, differences among the Hispanic groups (Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexicans, etc.) have to be examined and, given the sample sizes, the analysis is not possible. Furthermore, you can't make good comparisons by gender either. A key issue therefore is to improve the data sources that we have available on the Hispanic population in the Midwest. Ironically there is, however, a considerable amount of Hispanic data in the Midwest, but not necessarily about Hispanics in the Midwest. The University of Michigan was one of the first major institutions to conduct a nationwide Chicano survey. The University of Wisconsin, likewise, has a new data source called the Survey of Income Program and Participation, which contains a substantial number of Hispanics. The National Longitudinal Surveys, a cohort database of young people at Ohio State has a substantial number of Hispanics in that sample. At the University of Chicago, the High School and Beyond Survey contains an Hispanic sample and is monitoring how our high school graduates perform in the labor market. In addition, the Center for the Redevelopment of Industrial States at Michigan State University analyzed Michgian county by county using about 1000 variables. It seems logical, given these databases in the Midwest, that this geographic proximity would give Midwest Hispanic researchers an opportunity to conduct research. What are some of the major Hispanic research issues which could be examined through the use of some of these data sources? Numerous research issues of course are possible, and I will illustrate only a few in this presentation. Education and economic well being of Hispanics is obviously and issue to examine. I will not dwell on education because there are others present who are more qualified to talk about how to educate Hispanics. Education is a fundamental prerequisite for economic improvement and we need to increase the median of 10 years of education completed by Hispanic workers. But education is not a panacea. Education by itself won't solve all the problems that Hispanic workers encounter in the labor markets. We have to look at the different kinds of rates of returns by Hispanic group and gender. In the Southwest (Texas, in particular) there doesn't seem to be an immediate payoff between those who complete high school compared to those who do not. If you live in the Rio Grande Valley, if you graduate from high school or you drop out of high school, the entry level employment prospects may be the same, i.e., the minimum wage of $3.35 per hour. Differences in the rate of returns for education during those initial years are small but the long term payoffs are there. In the Midwest, the rate of returns should be examined in the context of the wage structure. With respect to higher education, the good news is that Hispanic high school graduates, and that's a select group, are as likely to go to college as other graduates. The difference is that Hispanic high school graduates are more likely than other graduates to go to two-year community colleges than four-year colleges. We need to carefully examine the rate of returns to education investments among Hispanics. Another major issue related to the economic well-being of Hispanic workers is English fluency and literacy. A major obstacle to researching the link between language and income is the high correlation in English ability and nativity. U.S. born Hispanics are, for example, more likely to know, speak and use English predominantly than are the foreign born who are more likely to speak Spanish. Thus, is the issue about immigration or language? Training is another research area related to upgrading Hispanic workers. A substantial amount of research has been done on public sector training, such as the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). Overall, the results show that JTPA does pay off. The bad news is that while it does increase the number of weeks employed and does give Hispanics a slightly higher wage, but still only about $4.00-$5.00 an hour. Research is also needed on private sector training for Hispanics. The private sector is where most workers get their job. Most workers don't get "formal on-the-job training;" it is basically a process of osmosis and we need to know more about that process. We need to know more about how the private sector trains Hispanic workers. We need to know about the job search process of Hispanics. When one talks about this industrial shift that is occurring in the Midwest, an advance report on displaced workers by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports that among displaced workers (displaced workers being workers who were laid off their jobs between about 1983 and about 1988 and with at least 3 years of job tenure), Hispanic workers had a more difficult time in finding a new job than White workers. I suspect that this situation would be compounded in the Midwest because this region led the country in displaced workers with about 900,000 displaced workers (Noticas de la Semana, USDOL 12/19/88). The study of Hispanic employment lends itself to numerous issues which extend beyond those noted in this presentation. For example, we need to know more about trade union participation of Hispanics, health care and retirement benefits, and how the shift from manufacturing to service sector employment affects Hispanics. Two other issues are however worth noting in closing this presentation--&2scrimination and poverty. Discrimination is a term that is somewhat old-fashioned. Nobody talks about it anymore, but there are still earning gaps we can't explain. "Affirmative action"-again, an old-fashioned term-is still necessay and a concerted effort is needed to make sure that Hispanic workers get placed in key jobs. As the economy moves, particularly toward the workforce of the year 2000, we must ensure equality of opportunity that actively includes all members of our society expanding the economy. As for the "underclass" related to Hispanic or Latino workers, Roberto Aponte has already mentioned some things having to do with poverty rates. For better or for worse, "poverty" issues are back in vogue. For Hispanics, we have to examine whether the dimensions of poverty differ from other groups. Is there an emergence of an Hispanic underclass in Midwest cities like Chicago and Detroit? How many people (Hispanics) are trapped in a poverty cycle? In summary, the Midwest offers an opportunity to a wide range of research issues related to Hispanics. Hispanics are an emerging force in our economy, and much of the Midwest industrial revitalization is closely tied in to what we do with our human resources. If we don't develop Hispanic human resources, we're not going to have this economic revitalization that we're talking about in the United States. The other reason to look at the Hispanic population relates to demographics (eg. given the youthful age of the Hispanic population and national retirement trends). These trends point to an urgency for looking at Hispanic workers. Finally, the Midwest represents one of the only regions of the country where there are different Hispanic groups living together. It's the only region, with the exception of Los Angeles, in the country where Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics work together in a predominantly industrial setting. The region offers some very unique research opportunities.
Commentary Dan Kruger What is the importance of the job economy? The United States is a job economy. Ninety percent of the nation's labor force consists of employees. Therefore, finding a job, getting a job, keeping a job, and moving to a better job, are matters of crucial importance. For most Americans, even at minimum wage, their jobs are their most valuable assets. Americans need jobs, good-paying jobs. Jobs provide important economic, sociological, and psychological benefits for the job holders. Second, dramatic changes are occurring in the product market. Earlier, we talked about the dramatic changes taking place in the agricultural market. Richard Santos discussed what has happened in manufacturing, and that the nation is evolving more and more into a service-type economy. One reason that Hispanic displaced workers do not do as well as White displaced workers is that they rely on their friends for sources of information and their sources of information are limited. As I look at the problem of employment for the Hispanics, two major broad areas need to be examined. First, finding out how we can move from nonwork status into a job in a job economy is imperative. We can talk about entrepreneurial skills, and maybe we should have a small research project on entrepreneurial skills, but entrepreneurial skills will not lead many individuals to good paying jobs. The second broad question is how to move from a low paying job to a good paying job. The kind of job one has affects the kind of earnings one receives. So, the two broad questions are how to move from a nonwork status to an employment status, and how to move from a low paying job to a better paying job. Now, with respect to the first area, where are the jobs and alternative channels of hiring? Friends and relatives are not a good source of job market information these days. They were a good source when we had small labor markets. My definition of a labor market, however, doesn't correspond to the U.S. Department of Labor definition. My definition of a labor market is that it is a geographical area sufficiently broad that you can change jobs without changing place of residence. The automobile has played an important part in shaping the labor market. For East Lansing or Lansing you can draw a circle with a 25-to-40 mile radius and the circle will include large numbers of workers who work in the Greater Lansing area but who live outside the city. So the labor market has changed dramatically. We've already talked about the knowledge of English and its importance in finding a job. This is an important point. It is not only the knowledge of English; it is also how individuals use English, and the perceptions of the people who hear how one speaks. Significant changes in manufacturing employment stem from the dramatic changes in the product market. We have to really take a look at the micro labor market rather than the macro labor market. San Diego is different from Lansing, and San Antonio is different from Detroit. One of the advantages of having a Latino research unit here at Michigan State is because Michigan is a microcosm of the United States. The state has large manufacturing firms, a very large agricultural sector and a large tourist sector. It has large cities and small cities. It has pockets of wealth and pockets of poverty. We have migrants who have dropped out of the migrant stream. One can study a wide range of topics relative to Latinos in Michigan and in the Midwest. What about the second question-moving from low paying jobs to better jobs? What role do education and training play in upward mobility? One thing the Latino population has demonstrated, probably more so than Whites or Blacks, is its higher degree of mobility. Mechanization and other factors reduced the demand for farm labor. Migrants who came to Michigan via the migrant stream saw their jobs disappearing and in order to support themselves started to work in auto plants and other industries. Latinos have demonstrated that they have a propensity to move both geographically and occupationally when there is a need to do so. With respect to the better paying jobs, workers need education and training to compete for the better paying jobs. Without training and education they will not be upwardly mobile occupationally. Without education in the basic skills, the gateways to employment will be closed. One needs to find, first, a job and then use that job as a launching pad for another job-a better job. Where does one get training in the basic skills? The conventional wisdom is to answer in the schools. We need to study what large employers are doing in training and educating new entrants into the employing unit. Large employers are providing the training and education required because it appears that the school system is not providing it. The employers of the nation have become a critically important part of the nation's education and training system. From my perspective, probably by the year 2000, the major corporations of the country will be offering degree programs. College degree programs! And this will be so for the simple reason that many universities are becoming irrelevant. It is interesting how these companies are developing their own academic programs with PhDs to do the teaching, many of whom are recruited from colleges. The academics need to be concerned about the role of the university. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Upjohn, and the larger employers of this state and nation will eventually set up their own universities to meet their educational and training needs. The changing nature of the labor force with more women, Blacks, Latinos and immigrants will require not more training but different training approaches. We need to encourage more self-help activities. Twenty years ago, there were more self-help activities for the Latino population, at least in Lansing, Michigan, than there are today. Twenty years ago we were constantly getting together to find ways to manipulate the existing power structure in order to develop jobs for minorities and the disadvantaged. The unique self-help activities were extremely helpful in preparing individuals for work and to help them find employment. Self-help activities also tend to bind the community together. The reason that self-help must be emphasized is that, with such a large federal deficit, far fewer dollars will be available for programs for those in need of help. The safety net is replete with large holes. Many citizens are not being helped by the safety net now in place. Our salvation will depend on our effectiveness in reordering the nation's priorities. In other words, we need to strengthen political action endeavors. We must speak out on the importance of expanding good paying jobs. The kind of society we shall have in the United States will depend to a very significant degree on how the job economy is managed and what kinds of jobs are available. We must be concerned with what has been called the underclass. We can ill afford to have a society composed of those few who have good jobs and large numbers who have poor jobs. Such a situation will create social tensions and instability. The problems of the Latinos which require attention are manifold. The convocation of a group of scholars to focus on these problems is an important step. The establishment of the Latino Center at Michigan State University will help this University mobilize additional resources to focus on the problems and possible solutions. A small step has been taken, and we must move forward. Dr. Daniel Kruger is a professor in MSU's School of Labor and Industrial Relations. Introduction | Session One: The Changing Nature Of American Agriculture and its Impact on Seasonal Migratory Farm Labor | Session Two: The Latin Labor Force in the Economic Recession and Recovery of the Midwest | Session Three: Socio-economic and Cultural Factors in the Migration and Resettlement of the Spanish-speaking in the Midwest | Session Four: The Social and Political Status of Latino Women in the Midwest | Summary And Conclusions | Appendix: Contributors Session Three: Socio-economic and Cultural Factors in the Migration and Resettlement of the Spanish-speaking in the Midwest Gilberto Cardenas First I have to make a disclaimer. My presentation does not focus on the Midwest per se. I am going to make some comments concerning research that I am doing about Mexican immigrants and their relationship to the Mexican ethnic enclave, with certain possible applications to he Midwest. A number of years ago I was very much involved in studying the Midwest and looking at the question of migration. Some of that work has been published. I have not returned to update those studies, but I am very much interested in doing so. In our current research we had initially included Chicago as one component of the cities that we were studying, but, unfortunately, the funding source that gave us the grant to do the initial surveys did not allow us to work in Chicago, for cost reasons. But it is a very significant omission. The study I'm referring to is the ethnic-enterprise study initiated at the University of Texas by myself, Niles Hanson, and Rodolfo de la Garza. We first did a pilot study in Austin to test the research instrument and our strategy for studying the enterprises and the nature of their relationship with immigrants in Austin. Then we launched a more regional study that eventually included Houston, San Antonio, South Texas, the border area of San Ysidro/Chula vista, Los Angeles, and San Jose, California. And again, initially it was to include Chicago since we wanted areas to study that were located at the border and nonborder areas, large cities, and medium-sized cities. It is really unfortunate that we were not able to study Chicago. The policy debate about immigration has, in part, been heavily underpinned by the preoccupation with Mexican undocumented migration. As a post-Bracero phenomenon, part of the policy debate centered on the nature and the role and function of Mexican immigrants in American society and the nature of the impacts that these immigrants were having on American institutions, in particular, the economy and the labor market. The research initiated since that time, in as much as it has been part of the policy debate, has tended to accentuate the negative kinds of impact. The role and function of Mexican immigrants, for the most part, has been defined negatively and efforts were made to assess the negative impact that immigrants were having . This approach has been pretty much a one-sided approach, from our perspective. A better test of the impact of Mexican immigrants would not only include labor markets, but also product markets, and the consumer markets as well. We were taken by the policy statements by people like Senator Simpson and others, and some of the labor market analysts who were suggesting that not only were Mexican immigrants and other immigrants having negative and adverse affects on the economy and at the labor market, but that they were competing unfairly with native-born persons who were legal residents of the United States. They argued that Mexicans and other Latinos should support restrictive immigration measures; that it would be in their interest to basically advocate restrictive immigration measures that would reduce or slow down significantly the numbers of undocumented immigrants in this country who were allegedly here competing with these people unfairly. We raised a number of counter hypotheses that launched us into the study. We knew, for example, that Mexican immigrants and the Mexican-American community have a much more complex relationship that has evolved throughout the twentieth century, and was certainly even more complicated in the nineteenth century. The impact of immigration on Mexican communities has been a continuous feature throughout the twentieth century, unlike a one-shot kind of massive immigration of one particular group, such as the Thais or whatever. Mexican-American communities do not necessarily stem exclusively from an immigrant kind of scenario. That is, "immigrant" is a problematic concept when applied to understanding the social formation of Mexican communities in the United States since, certainly, these communities preceded immigration. Historically the border moved south and incorporated Mexican communities, resulting in a whole set of other complicating relationships that still affect the relationships of Mexicans in American society. Nevertheless, immigration has had a very important impact in the formation of Mexican-American communities because of the continuous nature of this type of migration. It has also had a very important impact given the nature of the dominant type of migration, which has been largely undocumented migration. This undocumented labor migration has primarily been circulating and temporary. The presence of circulating, temporary workers has been almost a quasi-institutionalized feature of Mexican-American communities itself. Normally when we talk about community, we talk about stable communities. We might look at shifting residential patterns; the kind of understanding we have about communities does not include a component of the community that is constantly in circulation. Again, this has been a very continuous feature of Mexican-American community and a distinctive aspect in the formation of the Mexican enclave in the United States. This is true not only in the Southwest, but also of the Midwest where Mexicans don't have a previous territorial history. This proximity to Mexico has also created the situation of " split families," people who are here legally and who are born here legally, and those who were born outside of the country. In terms of household composition, a tremendous amount of interaction has been transnational with respect to families residing in the United States and Mexico, as well as in terms of visitations and social networks. Given this relationship, some other kinds of impacts that immigrants have had have not been negative. In particular, we hypothesized early on in the study that Mexican immigrants would have a positive impact in Mexican-American communities, in particular for the business sector that employs immigrants within the Mexican-American communities, as well as the role of immigrants in the consumer markets on which these businesses are so dependent. We hypothesized, in the first phase of our study, that Mexican immigrants would most likely be hired within Mexican-American neighborhoods by employers who were of similar ethnic origin and that this employment would provide a source of social mobility for the immigrant population. We hypothesized that it would provide a cushion, a form of training, by which immigrants can come in and eventually, perhaps, move out of ethnic specific kinds of production or activities and into other sectors. It would enable immigrants who had a language problem for other economic sectors, to utilize their own language in ways that would be an asset to them. In turn, we hypothesized that these immigrants were providing Mexican-American employers a source of low cost labor and an opportunity to establish businesses without having to be heavily capitalized or having to be dependent upon small business kinds of loans from existing banks and financial institutions. It would, basically, enable these employers, who would otherwise find it impossible to establish a business, to do so and, perhaps, once they got their foot in the door, to expand and eventually even move out of nonethnic specific types of production or the delivery of good and services that were ethnically geared. This has been part of the pattern in the American tradition. Italian immigrants went through that phase, as did the Irish and other groups. Basically, this is the scenario that we are posing-that there are benefits both to the Mexican-American enclave, vis-a-vis, the employer and the vitality of the commercial districts within Mexican-American neighborhoods because of the presence of immigrants. We also suggest that the immigrants, in turn, would be able to receive employment and job opportunities that would otherwise not be available to them in the form that we specified. In a broader sense what we are suggesting, is that there is a direct link between the economic and social well being of the Mexican-American middle-class and the lower-class Mexican immigrant coming in and who are residing and buying from this group. We suggest that there is a symbiotic relationship that exists between immigrants and the so-called Mexican-American middle-class entrepreneurs. This could also be extended, although we did not study this phenomena, in the housing market. When we were creating a list for our sample survey of Mexican areas in Los Angeles (East Los Angeles), we found homes that were converted from single-dwelling units to multiple-dwelling units. These single-dwelling units were converted to rental properties for immigrants who came in to East Los Angeles; these units provide another source of revenue for the barrio residents. Also various kinds of informal activities accrue and provide sources of revenue for the middle class. In turn, the Mexican-American middle class provided assistance to immigrants in various ways, by organizations such as MALDEF, and others who were providing direct services to the immigrant population. In our first study, we interviewed businesses in these commercial districts that were Mexican-American owned, that were owned by non Mexicans, as well as Mexican-immigrant-owned businesses and entrepreneurs. We had a battery of questions that measured the attitudes and perceptions of employers with respect to the immigrant population, immigration issues, the operations in terms of their dependency on and recruitment of immigrant workers, their perception of the relative importance of immigrants as clientele, and the kinds of relationships that they had with immigrants. Since our study was launched at the time that IRCA was being passed, we had, in a sense, a kind of an opportunity for a before-and-after study. After IRCA was passed, my colleagues Terry Sullivan, Rodolfo de la Garza and myself received a grant from the Sloan Foundation to look at the impact IRCA might have on the profitability of these firms, on their use of and dependency on immigrant workers, and possible shifts to nonimmigrant workers. We hypothesized, in part, that IRCA would impact the Mexican-American community in an unequal manner. That these enclave businesses would be more vulnerable to enforcement and more vulnerable to the long-term consequences of IRCA than nonenclave firms. We suggested that IRCA would have a disruptive and disproportionate impact on the Mexican-American business sector as compared to non Mexican-American business firms. We found enclave firms experienced a decrease in profitability. These firms were typically the types of firms that were either immigrant kinds of ethnic firms or firms that otherwise depended heavily on Mexican immigrant workers as sources of labor or clientele. Nonenclave firms did not experience a decrease in profitability because they were not dependent on the immigrant populations for their clientele or labor force. Basically they had very little to lose compared to these enclave firms, and therefore they were very supportive of IRCA and did not really challenge any of the premises or did not report that they were adversely affected by IRCA. Those firms that reported the greatest adverse affect were those that were more ethnically-oriented, immigrant-owned, and dependent upon immigrants as workers and as consumers. What this study allows us to do is assess, in a broader manner, the economic effects of immigration in American society, i.e., in terms of the communities in which immigrants are most likely to settle, in this case, Mexican immigrants. Again, it is very unfortunate that we were not able to include Chicago in the study because it would have enabled us to have a regional comparison beyond the Southwest, and that was rather disappointing. As we move into the third and last phase of the research, we hope to be able to incorporate Chicago and perhaps Detroit. A number of research questions are very pertinent to the study of the Midwest. One is to study the volume, flow and composition of the new Latino migration to the Midwest, and to project the prospects for change in the future. It's very important to study return migration. Return migration has been a phenomena that has been a feature of the migration experience to the Midwest. We know from the Van Arsdale Studies in Los Angeles and others that a high proportion of legally admitted immigrants eventually go back. I don't know what the current situation is with respect to the Midwest, but it is certainly worthwhile to study both the flow and volume of this movement. Another extension of our research would be to assess the impact that IRCA would have on immigrant workers in the Midwest. This should be a study designed or more specifically geared to the realities of Midwestern types of employment, in particular, the importance of the manufacturing sector. How would the Midwest compare to the Southwest to other areas? The passage of IRCA was very controversial with respect to legalization and employer sanctions. Among Latino immigrants in the Midwest it would be very important to know who was legalized and who was not legalized (IRCA). Also, what are the long-term impacts of IRCA on the ethnic enclave firms with respect to the short run profitability issue, as well as to their long term future in terms of their viability. What about Chicago, the commercial districts within Mexican-American enclaves, and perhaps some of the other Latino neighborhoods where these firms obviously cater very heavily to and are very dependent upon the presence of the immigrant population? A persistent problem in the Midwest, reported in the literature concerning immigration, has been the housing issue. In general, the nature of housing, the adequacy of housing, and the availability of housing has been very problematic for Latinos in some of the inner cities, especially in areas such as the Pilsen area. This problem has been very acute for immigrants, especially for those families that are larger than the norm. A related question needs to focus on the affects of the education system on the immigrant population. Specifically, the question I would pose is: How are immigrant children doing in Midwestern schools, especially in those areas where high concentrations of the population mix are immigrants? Also, how are immigrant school children doing in the inner cities where some census tract areas such as in Chicago, are 80 to 90 percent Latino. What are the unique needs of the immigrant school children and how well does the school system deal with these children at both the primary and secondary levels. This is particularly important because the size of the immigrant population and their fertility rates. The age structure of the immigrant population is likely to result in a large influx of Latino school children in the next decade. Another important area to research is social entitlements. The rights of immigrants have been eroded throughout the policy debate initiated in 1971 when Congressman Rodino first proposed sanctions. Since that time the Congress has legislated a number of amendments that have categorically restricted the participation of immigrants in social benefit programs. Related to enforcement activities, for example, the use of Social Security and the issuance of Social Security cards has become a way of handling the so called "immigrant problem" within that type of legislation. Other kinds of enactments have occurred throughout the past 16 years prior to the enactment of an IRCA law. In some programs, immigrant families may be entitled to these benefits, even though the individual who heads the household may not. I did a study with Sydney Weintraub on social entitlements for a policy research seminar at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Texas, we looked at the fiscal impacts of immigrants on the state of Texas. A high proportion of the families we studied were families of mixed legal status. Even though there were very low utilization rates of publicly supported services, among those families that were seeking and actually getting services such as food stamps, the provision of services was available only to the extent that people within the family were eligible to receive them. But the perception is that they are "undocumented families" because the head of household may be undocumented, even though the spouse may not be. Some of the children may be undocumented, and the other children (born in the United States) are not. So the allocation of benefits, i.e. food stamps, were geared to the needs of only those persons in the family who were legally entitled to it, but not to undocumented persons of the same family. But the perception is that undocumented families are receiving government assistance. The issue of immigrants and social entitlements is very important. We need to know the nature of the contact that immigrant families have with the service-providing institutions. We need to know something about differential recipiency rates with respect to government benefit programs, and to be able to assess where immigrants have been categorically excluded. For example, related to Medicare and Medical benefits administrators in California were specifically told to turn in persons to the immigration service who were thought to be undocumented. Applicants had to sign various kinds of affidavits or documents stating that they were not undocumented and show proof of citizenship or legal status to receive these government programs. A wide variety of issues with respect to entitlement issues and immigrants have to be looked at very seriously, not only in the Southwest but also in the Midwest. Another area that needs study in the Midwest, as well as throughout the country is related to the social and psychological well being of Latino immigrants. The onslaught against immigrants throughout the last two decades has created a tremendous amount of fear among many undocumented and immigrant families. This has happened not only on a national, public level, in terms of the mass media and the hysteria expressed by many government officials, but also within local community areas. The immigrant population is a very vulnerable group to begin with. They are often preyed upon by others, not only within their own communities, but outside these communities as well. KKK propaganda is highly symbolic. These kinds of experiences basically give a message to immigrants (whether they're here legally or illegally) that they're unwelcome, to say the least. To my knowledge, this psychological situation an the psychological well being of immigrant families and their children has not been studied. We should have a different conceptual focus here. Rather than asking the question of how Latino immigrants impact society, we should turn the question around and ask how society impacts Latino immigrants? Immigrants must be considered as an important component of our population; we cannot just wish them away. They are an integral part of the twentieth century American population, whether they're here legally or undocumented. Finally, this research agenda must include an assessment of the available data from existing surveys. Empirical databases exist that might be brought to bear in studying Latino immigrants and their settlement in the Midwest. Several databases have not been adequately utilized, including the official censuses. Obviously, much more can be done with the censuses, not just the 1980 census, but also with previous censuses. Also, much more can be done with Alejandro Portes' study, Assimilation of Latin American Immigrants. About 170 families in that database resided in the Midwest at the time the study and the second phase of the study has been finished. More data can be tapped from the elementary and secondary school surveys with respect to the school composition. Economic census data will allow us to tap into the nature of businesses in Latino communities. We need also to assess the gaps in research and how we might address filling them; as well as assessing the likelihood of generating new databases through sample surveys, ethnographic studies, and case studies. Not only would these kinds of studies help us understand the distinctive aspects of Latino migration to the Midwest, but would also enable us to assess the overall situation of migration as it has occurred in the Midwest, the Southwest, and other areas. I'm always appalled, when we study South Texas and try to determine the characteristics of resident migrant farmworkers, when in fact a large number of migrant farmworkers have been displaced and settled elsewhere. So when we just study survival populations-that is the populations found in a particular traditional area-we miss a very important dimension by not obtaining data on those who had to leave. Retrospective data would obviously help us understand the phenomena of the social relations of migrant farmworkers in their communities of origin. Filling this research gap is very important; not only for understanding the Midwest, but for helping us understand Mexican-American phenomena elsewhere. I hope that the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University along with other researchers, will not only initiate this work, but also join in linking with existing on-going research efforts. Thank you.
Commentary Sylvia Pedraza-Bailey I will discuss an important theoretical issue raised by Gilbert Cardenas' research on Mexican immigrants and the impact of Mexican immigrants on the Mexican ethnic enclave. His study does not include the Midwest, but it does have important implications for the Midwest. Knowing Chicago, as I do, what Gilbert has said regarding the border states, i.e. the impact of immigrants on the Mexican-American middle class, is also true in Chicago, and maybe also Detroit. Underlying all that Gilbert has presented is the notion of the "ethnic enclave," and I want to focus on that because I think it is important that we distinguish "ethnic enclaves" from "immigrant neighborhoods" and both of them from "ghettos". The notion of the "ethnic enclave" came into sociology recently, with the first article published in 1980 by Alejandro Portes and Kenneth Wilson. The ethnic enclave concept was amplified, later, in the book by Alejandro Portes and Robert Bach Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States, published in 1985. In fact, this concept really underlies all of Alejandro Portes' work is a very good concept although not without problems. Portes' argument is really quite specific to the Cuban experience in the United States and the Cuban community in Miami. Essentially, he argues that because of the nature of the migration of Cubans to the United States, Cubans were able to set up an Cuban "ethnic enclave" in Miami and to essentially insulate themselves from the larger society, and that they insulated themselves in such a way that working in the Cuban ethnic enclave had advantages for Cubans, so that even poor Cubans, lower class Cubans, or even lower middle class Cubans derived better employment opportunities than they would have if they had worked in the outside society. That is, more or less, the essence of all of Portes' work on the "ethnic enclave." The concept of the enclave lacks precision because Cardenas' study raises the question of whether these Mexican enclaves are really "enclaves" in the sense in which Alejandro Portes proposed. In an article with one of his graduate students, Portes did make an effort to specify the concept of the enclave better, but it still remains a little too unspecified. In essence, if I read him right, what he is trying to say is that the Cuban ethnic enclave exists because of the peculiarities of the Cuban migration. The Cuban migration was a political migration that began with a first wave of middle and upper middle class people (1960-62). It was then followed by a second wave of migration (1965-1974) that was mostly working class and petty bourgeois. And, finally, a last, third wave (1980) of migration of mostly poor, unskilled, Cubans, 40 percent of whom were Black. So that now, for the first time, the Cuban population in the United States is actually fully representative of what the Cuban population in Cuba used to be. Thus in the Cuban exodus there is descent of social class (from upper to lower) across three very distinct waves of migration. Essentially what Alejandro argues is that the Cuban ethnic enclave was initially developed by the first wave of middle and upper class people, the people who had essentially been the infrastructure of Cuban society. These were the people who, in Cuba, had been administrators, executives, teachers, doctors, who ran the newspapers and the TV stations, who knew something about banking, who knew something about import/export. And afterwards every succeeding wave of migration to Miami provided the cheap labor, the lower classes with which to man the enterprises that were set up by the expertise of the wave of migration. What Portes sees as an "enclave" is a foreign territory surrounded by another country, territory where there is a great deal of vertical and horizontal integration across firms, and a very fully developed sort of institutional framework. In other words an "ethnic enclave" is not just an ethnic neighborhood or a ghetto. A "ghetto" is quite a distinct social formation. The Black American experience is very clearly one of the ghetto, where rather than being like an enclave, a separate foreign territory that provides the immigrants that are enclosed within it greater opportunities than they would realize on the outside market, it has always been something that trapped people in ways in which they could not escape and provided them with no opportunities. And somewhere between the "enclave," that gives people more than they would have in the outside society, and the "ghetto," that robs them of all opportunities, I think, is an "immigrant neighborhood" in the sense of the old Jewish neighborhood in the lower East side of New York, or the old Italian neighborhoods. They were neither the one extreme nor the other extreme, and they were brief in a generational sense, providing immigrants with cultural support for one generation. Studies that take a local focus (such as that of Alejandro Portes in Miami, or the one that Gilbert Cardenas and his colleagues are involved in at the University of Texas on the border states) are very valuable because we need to sort out that issue. We need to answer the question of when it is that people live and work in an area that provides them with greater opportunities(an enclave), or with no significantly different opportunities(an ethnic neighborhood), or are trapped, in an area that robs them of all opportunities (a ghetto). And my question for Gilbert is whether these Mexican places that he studied are indeed "enclaves" in the sense that Portes proposed. Are they places that create and provide opportunities or advantages to the Mexican immigrants and the Mexican American middle class that live and work there, or for one but not the other? The latter is also an important question because some of the critiques of Portes' conception of the enclave, such as in a recent article by Victor Nee in the American Sociological Review, have pointed out that the "enclave" provides more opportunities for employers or bosses, but not for workers, so that social classes also need to be taken into account. So, are these Mexican-American places that you studied really "ethnic enclaves" as Portes proposed? Do they provide more opportunities for bosses or for workers, as his critics have questioned? Are they "immigrant neighborhoods," somewhat neutral in the opportunities they provide? or are they closer to being "ghettos" as in the Black-American experience, providing people with no opportunities-present of future?
Cardenas' Response Well I think there's a difference between the conceptualization that Alejandro offers and the conceptualization that we've taken. On the one side the research that has been initiated by Alejandro and Bonacich and Ivan Light has been exclusively on immigrant-ethnic enterprises, and they use the terms "immigrant" and "ethnic" interchangeably. There's not a distinction there. We define the enterprise, the ethnic enterprise, in a broader sense to include both native born as well as immigrant owned. Already we're kind of operating from a different framework. If one takes the conceptualization of immigrant-ethnic enterprise, one then traces the origins of the enclave and the origins of entrepreneurship, as they occur simultaneously through immigration. Massive movements of immigrants set up their businesses and the populations in a place, and there is a take-off point. They both have the same take-off point. If, on the other hand, one takes a different conceptualization about enclaves that is not necessarily exclusively dependent upon the notion of immigration, one has a very different kind of situation developing. The complexities of Mexican-American community, or, if you will, the Mexican-American social formation within the political boundaries of the United States, where the existence of communities or the social formation is not exclusively dependent on immigration, complicate the situation even more. Large influxes of migration, plus a continuous movement of immigrants into the community, as well as an extraordinary rate of circulation of immigrant/transnational workers, all lead to complications in their relationship to the enclave. What this also does is that it suggests that these enclaves, since they're not immigrant origin enclaves, necessarily, also can be conceptualized in terms of underdevelopment, very much in the ways that Gunder Frank and other have used the term with respect to development in Latin America. That is, community areas become staging areas for migration. They become sources for exploitation, for absentee landlordship, and so on. Areas that, traditionally, have had no political representation. That's underdevelopment! Its not just a differential between an enclave and other communities, but rather one community has been essentially raped. When we have to assess the commercial districts and the relationship these districts have with immigrants, one has to take into account the complexities of the broader relationships that affect the social relations within those areas. These relationships do not necessarily occur with immigrants, per se. What we are suggesting here is an economic foundation that is already in trouble-that is in trouble because of nonimmigrant relations. It is a very different scenario in which one has to compare the communities. I don't think Alejandro Portes understands the Mexican community. I have spoken to him several times. I worked with him on the study of Latin American immigrants. We basically directed the field research on the second phase of the study in Texas. Alejandro gives too much attention to entrepreneurial motivation. Portes argues that it is present in the Cuban communities, but not present in the Mexican communities. He argues that Mexican communities are not really enclaves in Mexican communities because they lack success and because of the relatively low number of people who are entrepreneurs. All of this suggests that there is no enclave. I don't believe Portes addresses the question of Latin American money that is brought into Miami, legal money, "clean money" that is reinvested in the Cuban construction industry. We also know that there is a lot of laundering of and infusion of money from illegal sources in that area. More importantly, government assistance in terms of over a billion dollars pumped into the area within a ten-year period, has to have some effect on the economic stability of those communities. These are not addressed at all by Alejandro in his work. So I don't know how important these other factors are, but it is a question that leaves me a little troubled, and gives me great difficulty in assigning as much importance to entrepreneurial motivation. Dr. Gilberto Cardenas is in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas/Austin. Introduction | Session One: The Changing Nature Of American Agriculture and its Impact on Seasonal Migratory Farm Labor | Session Two: The Latin Labor Force in the Economic Recession and Recovery of the Midwest | Session Three: Socio-economic and Cultural Factors in the Migration and Resettlement of the Spanish-speaking in the Midwest | Session Four: The Social and Political Status of Latino Women in the Midwest | Summary And Conclusions | Appendix: Contributors Session Four: The Social and Political Status of Latino Women in the Midwest By Alicia Chavira First, I want to make something clear, I had nothing to do with the title of my talk. I received a letter very recently that told me this is what you'll be discussing and when I got it I was perplexed because I wasn't really sure how I was going to deal with this topic. I am an anthropologist. Like most anthropologists or even other Latino academics, I have studied these issues in the Southwest or in Latin America. I studied things in the Midwest and in the rural Midwest and that is unusual, but it also gives me a very focused perspective and one that is difficult for me to broaden to other places. And so what I want to do is start with the question that I am supposed to address, but break it down into something that is more easily handled. I begin with the first question, what affects the status of women? Secondly, what affects the status of Latino women? And third, what affects the status of Latinos in the Midwest? With regard to the first question. From research and observation, it is easy enough to see that what affects the status of women can be traced to at least three general areas of human interaction: work, society, and family. In regards to the second question about what affects Latinos, it is important to recognize that we are talking in terms of the political status of women as affected by their immigration status, their legal status, whether they're undocumented or documented, and also their ethnicity or their origin. Nestor Rodriguez, who has been doing some research with immigrant groups, has shown that there are different economic trends are associated with the immigration of different groups, and that they respond to global, international, national, and regional trends in different ways. Even settlement patterns reflect the different historical, economic, and social trends that affect them. So we can't really group everybody together because we have to deal with the heterogeneity aspect of Latinos. But it is important to keep in mind that socioeconomic status, cultural background, and gender cross cut each other. And that structural factors that dictate educational opportunities and occupational mobility, and so on, are also important aspects that differ between different ethnic groups and women of different ethnic groups. The third question-What affects the status of Latinos in the Midwest?--was the hardest question to answer because we really don't know very much about the Midwest. In looking over the research that has been done, our empirical knowledge is quite limited. Gender research, for example, is a very hot topic, but it's also really quite new. With regards to concerns about Latinos, it is even more new. And when you break that down further, it becomes more and more specific and so we find that less and less knowledge is available. The study of women in migration or in immigration, for example, is very recent, From that research, we know that women play a very important role in migration and in influencing the migration of their families and of other relatives. Research that would apply to farm labor migrant women, or any other kind of women migrants, in the Midwest, is almost nonexistent. Mine is among the few exceptions. This limitation of data reduces our ability formulate policy in regards to women. But the lack of understanding is not only a consequence of the lack of concern that exists in the United States about women and their role in the political economy and in society. It also represents women's, especially Latinos, social and political position because, if we do not give importance to these issues, what we're actually saying is that they're not important. So up until now, that has been a sort of an understanding and unwritten rule. Even since the 1960s when Dr. Samora's work pointed out that much of the research that needed to be done in the Midwest was being ignored because of the misconception that Latinos, or specifically Chicanos, didn't exist here in significant numbers. His recommendation that such research be undertaken has bought an increase in this research. But it has been mainly research in urban settings, even though we know that from agriculture, population tends to flow or migrate to the urban and industrial areas. So studying rural populations, or even small pockets of rural groups, would be very important in terms of understanding that relationship. In essence, the rural-urban relationship, particularly in the Midwest, and the issues pertaining to that relationship, have not really been studied or have been studied very little. And that includes, of course, women. Given the paucity or the fragmentation of such research, then, it becomes very difficult to give a comprehensive analysis of the political and social status of Latinos in the Midwest. But we can try and get a handle on this question by dealing with two things; just what are the similarities or the dissimilarities between all minorities in the United States, and between all women. Secondly, we can examine the status of women in the United States by looking at the relationship which exists between society, family and work--the three arenas which I said gave us some understanding of where women are in terms of their society. The work of Anglo feminists, or those who study Anglo Feminism, such as Sacks or Tilly or Lamphere, and many others, has pointed out the social ideology which has been called "the domestic code." This social ideology breaks down social spheres into female and male. It portrays women as involved in the private sphere of home and family, and men as involved in the public sphere which includes the political arena, business, work, and society. Consequently, this domestic code or this social ideology influences work and is reflected in work. Work is characterized by gender asymmetry or a relationship between males and females which is asymmetrical and represented by wage differentials, even when men and women perform the same tasks. Consequently, this is also reflected or mirrored in the family structure. The family structure reflects, maintains, and supports this social ideology. Yet, in contradiction to this, if we look at the history of women in the United States, regardless of their ethnicity or their racial background, women have always contributed to the United States economy. Where women were part of the family-owned farms, women provided extra fieldwork. Women have been laundresses, they have run rooming houses, they have taken in sewing. Later they worked in factories, in piece work, and also as labor reserves. Latinos, as other immigrants or minority groups, have inherited the earlier social and economic position of white women in the United States, as represented in the work that Latinos do. As white women gain economic and social independence and mobility, the services that they once performed and which, for the most part, were unacknowledged or uncompensated, are now performed by minority women and with the same social ideology. The difference though, and a very important one, is that the economic mobility and the social gains of Latinos are limited by their gender, by their class, by their immigrant status, and by structural factors which limit their educational and occupational resources, as well as those of the minority group to which they belong. Consequently, we should think about the position of Latinos in terms of what Melville has proposed-that Latinos are twice a minority. And, in some cases, depending on the ethnicity of the woman or women, perhaps twice a minority is putting it mildly. Latino feminism in general, and Chicano in particular, is very new. We're still trying to formulate just what Latino feminism is, what issues we ought to address? Where do we stand? Where do we go from here? The limited available research is still descriptive. But this descriptive and empirical research has shown something that is very important: The relationship between work and family. These two are keys or indices to understanding the social and political position of Latinos. Ybarra, for example, has shown that while the exploitation and discrimination of women occurs in all ethnic and racial groups, Hispanic and black women experience higher levels of unemployment, underemployment at every level of education, training or age. At the same time, we really don't have a reliable (and I want to emphasize "reliable") count or statistical information of the actual number of working women. This is because undocumented migrant or immigrant workers, for example, assume the type of work which is not really accounted for by the census bureau. Much of this work is work in agriculture, in the service industry, or in work that is paid under the table (unacknowledged, unreported, particularly in agriculture). They do "homework," piece-work brought to the home and paid for by item. They work as maids for pay which, again, is not reported. So that much of the work that is performed by women is really unaccounted for in the statistical data. Nevertheless, the empirical work that has been done shows that there is a dire need of Latino families to survive by the work of all able family members. It has also shown that the family's economic and social conditions, especially women's labor force participation, affects the family structure. The works by Patricia Zavella, Baca-Zinn, Melville, Curry, and my own work show that minority family structure molds itself to the material conditions it faces in society, and that family ideology reflects and supports the workplace conditions. But behavior adapts to economic reality so that two different things are going on here. While the ideology may remain very much as a social ideology within the family unit, within the family there is a more realistic representation of what is going on in society. Women must often work to ensure the welfare of the family. This is important to note because if the family reflects its larger context, when we ask about the status of women, we need to define at what level of analysis we're speaking. Are we speaking at the ideological level or are we speaking at the behavioral level? Are we looking at, ideologically, how women are viewed, how their work is viewed, how women are thought of? Or are we looking at what women actually do, what tasks they actually perform, what responsibilities they actually have, and what contributions they actually make both to society, to the family, or to the economy. It is also very important to understand, to recognize, to describe, and to analyze the regional characteristics because these reflect and are influenced by the macro conditions. These regions or local areas have specific labor needs and patterns of labor responses to these needs. They also have their specific division of labor. Are we talking about rural or urban, for example? These may have completely different patterns of work and of assigned tasks. Boserup, for example, has been criticized a lot but there have been contributions that she was able to make in terms of our understanding of gender. She suggested that local characteristics, especially in agriculture, lead to what Fernandez-Kelly has called "gender specific activities and spheres of social action." Related to this, there are two concepts that we been have tossed around that apply here, but not always equally. One is the "internationalization of labor" and the other is the "feminization of poverty." Let me illustrate what I mean by describing my research in Illinois, in an agricultural setting in which one of these concepts applies but not the other. In southern Illinois, the Mexican migrant population supplies almost 100 percent of the entire farm labor force. In this case, the internationalization of labor applies. Also, there is a distinct division of labor which is very local-very geographic specific. Men are assigned work with peaches and apples; this is orchard work. This is also the production of the area. Women are assigned the other crops. These crops, unlike peaches and apples, which are exported, are crops that are used for local sales and consumption, such as blueberries. This is what I picked, and I didn't do a very good job. But women are also important, economically. Actually their major importance, locally, is manifested in two ways. One, they are necessary for the harvesting of these other crops that no one else will pick. Secondly, they are used as labor reserves for orchard work. Certain conditions regulate the entry of women into orchard work. These conditions are imposed by the local growers. They will use women when they need extra field hands, such as when there's been rain and harvest work has been held up for sometime, or for particularly large crop yields, in which case an increased labor force is needed. So skilled labor is selected for by the by the characteristics of the local production. Men are considered more productive and so, more profitable. Thus, they are selected for the orchard work. Women are more profitable in the other crops and as labor reserves. Housing conditions in the area are very closely related to these work conditions. In migrant population there are no female headed households and no single women workers in migrant population. This is because only full-time employees in agriculture are able to obtain housing and employers will not hire women as full-time employees. Employers also regulate the migrant camp (where I centered my study) where housing policies discriminate against single women by not allowing women as tenants, only males or families. Yet, if truth be told, women are actually more dependable then men because men are restricted, socially, in the type of work they can do. The orchard work is considered men's work. It is heavy work, and so when that kind of work is not available it is actually preferable for men not to work, to sit and wait for the heavier tasks to become available. Except for the restrictions on the orchards, women don't have these kind of restrictions. Their work is more diversified, and therefore more dependable. They also work a longer span of time than men and their work time is less fragmented than that of men. Nevertheless, women are not viewed as full-time agricultural workers. Thus, if you look at the regional characteristics in terms of the feminization of poverty, this concept is not in operation in this context because of the restrictions set upon women. The restrictions are related to at least two things. One is the social ideology that preexisted in this area. In the 1800s and in the early part of this century, although it was very important to the family-owned business, white women's work was not considered "real work," it was just considered "helping out." This ideology has remained. What has happened is that the actors have been replaced by the immigrant laborers, particularly women. Second, what also affects the restrictions is the local economic needs which, by the way, are created by the following: the current participation of the area in the national agricultural economy, namely the export of peaches and apples and the reliance on labor; and the history which I have just mentioned. In the current structure of farms, even though Anglo women used to perform these tasks basically for free (or at least not as wage labor), Anglo farm women have now entered blue collar, clerical, and secretarial work. The labor that they once provided now is being done by the Mexican women in the area. And whereas Mexican family structure reflects these conditions and affects the gender relations in southern Illinois, it also demonstrates the economic realities. A hierarchy within the family's structure views men as the principal providers and women (or women's income) as supplemental. However, very few resources are available to the migrant workers in the area. It's important to make optimum use of these resources. And women are in charge of identifying them, procuring them, and effectively utilizing them for the family. The conditions that these migrant workers are under are extremely poor. That includes housing, health status, and procuring food on a daily basis. Conditions that affect their health are particularly notable. Women must really hustle for three reasons: to get agricultural work whenever they can; to procure community resources for their families; and to learn new methods and resources and employ them for the health and general security of the family. These three activities of women affect the way that the family perceives women's roles. And while women's work contributions are considered secondary to that of men, women are consulted about matters pertaining to the family's health, migration, and any other family matter that would directly or indirectly affect the family, because of their importance in other economic ways. Thus, the family reflects the status of women also at both levels: at the behavioral level and at the ideological level. And the inconsistencies that we might see reflected in the family are actually mirrors of the inconsistencies that the social and political position of women represents or that exist. The question that I was given to battle with was "What is the social and political status of Latinos in the Midwest?" I don't know that I've gotten anywhere with this question except that I think that we have a lot of work to do if we really want to get at the answer. It remains a principal research question and it is one that is highly important because without understanding one-half of our society, we're not going to get anywhere. The basic points that need examination are quite a few. But I've narrowed it down to five. First, it's important to take note of the local economic, social, and the structural characteristics of the region, as well as the regional representations of the national, international, and global economic, social and political influences. Even though the latter are highly influential, at the local level these take on a very localized character or localized form. Second, finding or analyzing the local characteristics includes looking at the patterns of labor demands and the responses that emerge from those demands. Who responds to these demands? What group's or individual characteristics should be noted? How are they important to these characteristics of the locale? What about the technological changes that have taken place? How do they affect workers? How do they recruit workers? And what happens to workers that have been there before displacement? What is the land distribution and land ownership pattern like? How is the land worked? What are the immigration flows in terms of how they fill or who fills these positions? Third, we have to look at how the family represents the regional context. What is the family structure like? What can we say about it? What are the roles of women? And this doesn't just pertain to the work roles of women, but to all the roles that women perform. Looking at it from an anthropological perspective, I try to look at things holistically because looking only at work doesn't tell the whole picture. It's important to note what else women do for their families. What else do women do in society? What else do women do that is economically related? What is the work of women? What is the real social and real economic significance of women? Fourth, much of the empirical research that has been done on gender issues is sociological and demographic. I think it's very important, however, that survey and ethnographic methods be used to complement these other approaches. Studying immigrant groups becomes a real problem because it is part of the survival strategy of migrant workers to be very suspicious and very retreating from people who want to ask questions; or who pull out a questionnaire and ask questions that sound like an immigration official. In fact, in a pilot study that I did, I purposely used a questionnaire with a woman with whom I built a lot of rapport and who was willing to participate as a research aide in the sense of helping me determine the appropriateness of this questionnaire. And even though she was very helpful and very tolerant, she eventually told me to destroy the questionnaire because other people would not be as understanding as she was. She said that I sounded like an official. Yet the questions were bland. They pertained to the migrant's perception of the area; about who made the decision to migrate; about whether they felt that health care was available, accessible, adequate; questions of that nature. Nevertheless, I was not able to use this instrument. Survey methods don't always tell the full picture. Neither does ethnographic research. In doing both we can really get a broader picture of what we're trying to understand. It is important also because policy makers are very interested in numbers and if we can document numbers, we'll get further. At the same time, if we get numbers without the real core issues which ethnographic work can provide, we're also painting an incomplete picture. And finally, I think an examination of all of the conditions pertaining to the area and affecting workers are important. What are the number and type of resources that are available? Are hospitals or other kinds of facilities available? Is AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) available? Are there bilingual programs? Is there free or subsidized housing available and accessible? Is there housing for workers? Women play important roles in the adaptation of families, as links to resources. Looking at women's roles in this adaptation process, I think, is very important in understanding their political and social importance. Thank you.
Commentary Teresa Cordova That was excellent. I jotted down a few points that I thought should be included in this kind of discussion because I knew that the first thing that Alicia was going to comment on was the paucity of research on Latinas, generally, and specifically on Latinas here in the Midwest. So I wrote down a number of things that any future research should include. Alicia picked up on almost all of those things that I thought were important, plus a few more. Alicia's presentation was excellent. I am assuming that my role as reactor is to highlight and perhaps expand upon some of the comments which Alicia made and use that as a basis for further discussion. I will start with some comments on what I thought should have been included, and then talk about the way Alicia's research fits into that. First, any research on Latinas here in the Midwest should be within the context of changes in the international economic order. We've had some earlier discussions today on the relationship between what's happening in the Midwest and the international division of labor; the relationship between the Midwest and third world labor. Research should be done in the context of understanding the decline of the manufacturing sector, the rise of the service sector, and the implications of that for people here. Alicia did just that. She also expanded upon regional specificities, noting that it's important to look at a local area, its formation, it's needs, and the ways in which that local area is a manifestation of the dynamics at the larger, international level. Also, any research that we must do on Latinas must be action oriented. That is to say, it must be research that addresses the question, "So what?" What difference does it make that we're doing this research? Far too much research doesn't really address or have any kind of significance for action. Particularly since we're starting out fresh, all the research we do needs to address the question "So what?" Another very important aspect of any research that we develop is that it needs to be done in the context of community and family. It was interesting for me to see the way Alicia did just that. First of all, so much of what has been done on women, whether feminist or otherwise, has been primarily oriented towards women as individuals. I don't think we as Latinos have that luxury, and I am not convinced that it would be a luxury that we'd want to have. When we talk about Latina's lives or when we talk about the development of our feminism, it needs to be in the context of family and community. What difference does the development of women, or women's needs and women's issues make for the nature of the community itself? It isn't just about improving women's conditions alone, it's about improving women's conditions as part of aiding the development of our people as a whole. This point/aspect is particularly important. Moving on, it was great that Alicia highlighted family relatio |