Care, agency, and social reproduction in the H-2A program

A case study from Ohio

Abstract

This paper uses the qualitative results of a survey of 285 H-2A workers in Ohio to explore questions of care, social reproduction, and agency within agricultural guestwork. Drawing on frameworks developed in labor and feminist geography, it examines how H-2A workers create community and develop skills of social reproduction during their time in the United States. Countering the common narratives of H-2A worker as victims or stoic, long suffering laborers, the research draws attention to the relational and emotional lives of the men who do this work.  By highlighting affective and social dimensions of the guestworker experience, it argues for an approach to questions of agricultural labor that emphasizes the agency, range of experiences, and humanity of the people who participate in the H-2A program.