Earning Money the Hard Way: Former Seasonal Farmworker Youth’s Entry Into Labor as Precarity Management

• In Event: Children and Youth Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6: Peer Dynamics, Activism, and Resilience

Abstract

Child labor is outside of “acceptable” practices in these models of youth. Nonetheless, labor regulations have historically allowed youth to labor in the intensive agricultural sector. I expand research about child labor in agriculture by addressing why farmworker youth enter the workplace. I draw from 78 interviews conducted with former farmworker youth, adults who worked in the fields during childhood and adolescence, from the Central Coast of California. I argue that youth enter into the agricultural fields to manage the impact of financial and social precarity. I offer three categories of farmworker youth to explain their methods of managing precarity: (1) Mutual Care Farmworkers, (2) Family Support Farmworkers, and (3) Pocket Money Farmworkers. These categories are not mutually exclusive. This research expands our growing understanding of alternative models of childhood and youth in marginalized communities. It also sheds light on youth agency and the strategies they implement to increase their inclusion among peers who have more normative experiences.

Author

• Natalia Candelaria Gonzalez, University of California-Irvine