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Sociology of Agriculture and Food (SAFRIG)

Farmworker Mutual Aid: Citizenship and Belonging through Social Networks Natalie Garner*, Natalie Garner, Rebecca Som Castellano, Lisa Meierotto,

Scholars have articulated the importance of a food justice movement that centers and emphasizes the rights of Latine farmworkers, in part by centering Latine farmworkers’ lives (Wald 2011).  Additionally, research has revealed the importance of collective identity formation through solidarity for rural farmworkers (Thompson 2021). Currently, 85 percent of foreign-born farmworkers have lived and worked in the U.S. for at least 10 years (NAWS 2019-2020). Rather than returning to their home countries seasonally, farmworkers have increasingly settled into their communities in part because of the dangers of crossing the border. Due to this, our presentation aims to address the call for a food justice movement that centers Latine farmworkers lives by examining the solidarity enacted by rural farmworkers through their engagement with mutual aid practices. To understand how farmworkers navigate the challenges of marginalization through mutual aid, the theoretical frameworks of belonging and citizenship are imperative. We ask: In what ways do farmworkers create and utilize mutual aid networks to navigate the challenges of citizenship? And, how can we understand this through the lens of belonging? To answer these questions, we use data from 32 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with Latine farmworkers in Southern Idaho. We employ the theoretical framework of belonging to articulate the multilayered dimensions of citizenship (Wright 2014). A politics of production and denizenship acknowledges a political belonging that emerges from residency and labor rather than legal citizenship or national identity (Wald 2011). Our preliminary findings show that  belonging is constituted through friendships that farmworkers cultivate in the fields and in their communities. The relationships that farmworkers build additionally functioned as a source of support amongst challenges of survival and caring for their families outside of work. By drawing attention to the role of solidarity both on and off the fields, we assert the necessity of mutual aid networks that farmworkers form in which they support the well-being of one another.