Blocked Mobility: Institutional Absence in Rural Day Labor Markets

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 20: Race, Migration, and Work

Abstract

A growing body of scholarship argues that social and economic inequalities are shaped not only by individual attributes, but by the institutional arrangements that organize economic life. This paper examines how the absence of “institutional intermediaries” (Gleeson 2016) across rural labor markets structure outcomes among day laborers in California’s Central Valley. Drawing on 38 interviews six months of ethnographic fieldwork with Latino immigrant and U.S.-born day laborers, I analyze how workers pursue enter day seeking mobility in a regional economy dominated by industrial agriculture. While day labor offers an alternative to low-wage fieldwork and a potential pathway into skilled construction trades, the realization of this mobility depends heavily on institutional support. In metropolitan areas, worker centers, unions, legal aid organizations, and community-based groups function as intermediaries that facilitate wage claims, licensing pathways, and collective bargaining. In contrast, rural labor markets in the Central Valley are characterized by low organizational density and limited regulatory enforcement. I argue that this institutional unevenness deepens labor precarity by restricting access to credentialing support, legal recourse, and collective forms of redress. Drawing on insights from racial capitalism, I argue that the uneven distribution of institutional protections reflects broader racialized patterns that not only channel immigrant and Latino workers into informal and under-regulated labor markets but also blocks their mobility. As a result, rural day laborers must rely on informal networks and individualized negotiation to navigate workplace violations and economic advancement.

Author

• Andres Arias, University of California-Merced