A structural analysis of occupational injuries and disabilities among unauthorized Latino/a immigrants in California

• In Event: Migrations, Precarities and Illegalizations in the Americas, Panel I

Abstract

An estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants reside in the United States and 71 percent of this population participates in the labor force. A vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are entrenched in marginal and low-paying service sector jobs. At the workplace, the lack of a regular migration status renders immigrants highly vulnerable to unsafe working conditions, forced labor, harassment, and working for less than minimum wage. Latino immigrant workers face higher risk than native workers to experience work-related injuries. The level of occupational injuries and illnesses is even greater among unauthorized individuals as a result of their legal status that prevent them from reporting those instances for fear of deportation. This paper’s objective is to examine the following questions: How are the working lives of unauthorized Latino immigrants impacted as a result of work-related injuries and/or disabilities in a context characterized by precariousness and vulnerability? What is the role that legal status plays in the way unauthorized immigrants cope with work-related injuries? What are the individual, family and community strategies to cope with occupational injuries and disability? Drawing on the study of personal narratives, we explore the interplay between immigration, legal status, work-related injuries, and working conditions in the lives of unauthorized Latino immigrants in California. The significance of this study is to understand how structural violence related to social hierarchies of class, race and citizenship becomes embodied in the form of suffering and disease in the Latino immigrant community, particularly among unauthorized immigrants.

Author

• Angel Serrano Sánchez, University of Southern California