Abstract
This article focuses on the embodied experiences and memories of Mexican immigrant agricultural workers as objects of surveillance on the US–Mexican border, the agricultural fields and labour camps of Oregon, and in processing plants. Key to understanding these experiences and memories is the floating nature of the border as the legality of border crossers is continually contested through the way they are structurally inserted into the transnational power relations of development and commercial agriculture and culturally interpreted as ‘illegal’.
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Notes
This article is based on fieldwork carried out from September 1999 to September 2001 in the Willamette Valley of central Oregon. The ethnographic material comes from two collaborative projects carried out with Oregon's only farmworker union, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos (PCUN, Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United). The theme of this article came out of conversations with Mexican immigrant farmworkers and others, where we reflected on the meaning of the events of September 11 for Mexican immigrant workers in the United States.
The Mexican Consulate in Portland estimates that there are about 80,000 undocumented Mexicans in Oregon (The Oregon Story: http://education.opb.learning/oregonstory/ag-workers/issues.htm).
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Stephen, L. The Gaze of Surveillance in the Lives of Mexican Immigrant Workers. Development 47, 97–102 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100003
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100003