Entre El Trabajo Y La Migra: Labor Rights Violations and Immigration Enforcement Among Immigrant Latine Workers in Rural North Carolina

This study examines the labor rights violations experienced by immigrant Latine workers in rural North Carolina and how increased immigration enforcement policies have shaped fear and influenced workers' responses to those violations. Through semi-structured interviews with eleven workers across three rural counties, the study documents widespread violations including unsafe working conditions, workplace injuries without compensation, discrimination based on legal status, race, and language, and retaliation for reporting. Drawing on frameworks of legal violence (Menjívar & Abrego, 2012), precarity (Standing, 2011), and engage and evade strategies (Asad, 2023), the findings reveal that while workers initially engaged by speaking up or reporting to supervisors, these efforts were frequently met with indifference or retaliation, leading most to shift toward evasion through silence, invisibility, or leaving their jobs. Nine out of eleven participants reported that enforcement felt significantly more present under the current presidential administration, even in a region with no confirmed ICE sightings. The rurality of these communities compounded workers' vulnerability, as no participant identified organizations or legal services as meaningful sources of support, revealing a significant gap in the infrastructure meant to protect them. This study contributes to an underexplored area of scholarship by centering the voices of immigrant workers in rural Southern communities during a period of heightened immigration enforcement, honoring their experiences and the changes they want to see in their workplaces and in immigration policy.