Indigenous US farm workers face greater job-related pain compared to undocumented peers, study suggests

Farming is a notoriously hard profession with long hours spent operating dangerous equipment and performing other arduous tasks. New Rice University research finds that indigenous farm employees — many of whom have legal status in the U.S. after moving from Latin America — may experience more physical pain on the job than undocumented workers. 

Researchers Christina Diaz, associate professor of sociology, and Erick Samayoa, a sociology graduate student, are the authors of “Away from Home, Into the Fields: Assessing the Health of Undocumented and Indigenous Farmworkers,” which appears in a recent edition of Social Science & Medicine. The researchers used data from the National Agricultural Worker Survey (including more than 20,000 respondents) to learn more about the lives of farm workers in the U.S., over 60% of whom are not in the U.S. legally and potentially susceptible to worse working conditions or exploitation. 

Diaz and Samayoa found that undocumented workers actually reported better physical health than their indigenous counterparts. Meanwhile, indigenous workers were more likely than any other type of worker to report physical pain stemming from their profession.

The researchers said there are different reasons that these individuals may be dealing with more physical pain.

“First and foremost, individuals who migrate to the U.S. — as is the case with many undocumented workers — are usually in excellent health,” Diaz said. “They are youthful and vigorous enough to complete an arduous migration journey and have resources to migrate.” 

Meanwhile, indigenous populations face what Samayoa called a “cumulative disadvantage,” sometimes facing discrimination as indigenous persons within Latin America prior to migration and once again after coming to the U.S.

“This can include a language barrier as many of these individuals speak neither English nor Spanish and as a result cannot advocate for themselves in the way that many undocumented workers can,” Samayoa said. “We suspect that because this indigenous population faces so much discrimination and so much socioeconomic difficulty, it may trump any of the benefits that legal status may offer them.”

The researchers say they hope this work sheds light on and will encourage more studies of the complexities of immigrant populations in the U.S. and how they face different challenges depending on their respective backgrounds. 

The study was co-authored by Sergio Chavez, an associate professor of sociology at Rice, and Victoria Bejarano, a former University of Houston student. It is online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624007536?dgcid=author.