Funded by the NSF Program in Cultural Anthropology

2021-2024

In collaboration with Elizabeth Cullen Dunn (Indiana University Bloomington) and Seth Holmes (UC Berkeley), this project studied agricultural workers’ paradoxical positioning as “essential” workers in American agribusiness. The project examines how meat and vegetable industries secure new sources of labor amid economic crisis, specifically the migrant workers who produce and sell food in the US. Focusing on Burmese meatpacking workers, migrant farm workers, and grocery store workers. In so doing, we examine how new flows of capital depend on the creation of racialized bodies and labor markets based on citizenship status.