‘It is their nature to do menial labour’: the racialization of ‘Latino/a workers’ by agricultural employers

Abstract Latino/as1 1. Pan-ethnic labels such as Latino/a or Hispanic are problematic because they obscure vast differences in national origin, mode of incorporation, citizenship, race and class, for example. I use the label Latino/a, however, to highlight the shared dimensions of the experiences of these groups and their similar structural location (for illuminating discussions of the origins and political content of the labels Hispanic and Latino, see Gimenez 1998 Gimenez , Martha E. 1998 ‘Latinos/Hispanics … what next! Some reflections on the politics of identity in the U.S.’ , Cultural Logic , vol. 1 , no. 2 , http://eserver.org/clogic/1-2/gimenez.html Google Scholar; Alcoff 2005 Alcoff, Linda Martin. 2005. ‘Latino vs. Hispanic: the politics of ethnic names’. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31(4): 395–407. Crossref , Google Scholar). constitute the largest ethno-racial minority group in the United States, and a significant and growing proportion of the US labour force. Nevertheless, they remain at the bottom of the US economy, concentrated and overrepresented in ‘bad jobs’. Using a case study from agricultural work, this paper examines how racialization is implicated in such positioning of Latino/as within the labour market. Based on data from in-depth interviews, I explore how agricultural employers articulate racial meanings about and in relation to Latino/a workers. While employers espouse colour-blindness, they routinely invoke racial meanings in their assessment of workers and everyday practices. They use race as proxy for worker quality, making racialized distinctions between recent immigrants and second + -generation Latino/as. A dual frame of reference serves as an ideological tool to de-problematize exploitative work conditions in the United States. I explore the theoretical and political implications of these findings.