After reading through the article from the CQ Researcher as well as the chapters selected from Isabel Valle’s Fields Of Toil, a few things seem clear: migrant laborers are working in substandard conditions for poor wages, and not provided with adequate housing options.  Migrants are marginalized.  In Fields of Toil, Valle explains that Raul Martinez wouldn’t go to the doctor or miss a day of work due to illness, because he wanted to be seen as able and dependable in order to be rehired the following season.  I can only guess that there are a whole host of other barriers that keep Raul from getting medical attention or choosing to take a day off from work.  Does he have access to affordable health care?  Is there a language barrier between he and a potential care provider?  Can he afford to take one day off of work?  This is perhaps a foolish and ill-informed question: would he get sick leave?

I would venture that when a group of people are marginalized, they are less able to get their primary needs met.  Said another way, when a group of people is relegated to the position of second-class citizen, they are given less voice, less power, and less opportunity.  However, our history of exclusion and prejudice is making citizen-farmers a lot of money.  In a country that’s so controlled by the pursuit of profit, it’s almost no wonder that migrant-rights legislation has been so pathetically slow.  While migrant advocacy groups have gained traction in recent decades, harsh disparities and inequalities remain.  Adequate housing is one important step.  Scratch that.  How about beautiful, dignified, spacious, welcoming housing is one important step.

Perhaps, in this studio, we have the opportunity to provide the need for a home for people who have existed in substandard “housing” for too long.  Perhaps, we have the opportunity to shape spaces that allow for individuals and families to feel safe, get rest, and truly be at home.  Reading Valle’s words, it sounds like providing built-in furniture would be important, as many families and individuals are highly mobile, sometimes gaining employment in a new place one day and moving the next.  Providing space for privacy seems important in response to Valle’s descriptions of one room houses with multiple families or many single adults sharing four walls.  Maybe including kitchen tools would be an important consideration.  Further, it seems that ample food storage would be necessary, in response to Valle’s example of Raul Martinez bringing home bags of apples and potatoes from the farms where he worked.

We can work to provide housing.  But what about the other human needs?  Pay? Health care? Education? Voice?  What about those needs?