Immigration Reform

Labor unions can continue to fight for better contracts, but an industry wide branding campaign is more to the point.  The current debate as is seen on the national level focuses on immigration reform or empowering farmworkers to ensure their own prosperity and fair treatment.  Little attention is paid to addressing the problem of substandard living and working conditions.  There already exists in many parts of the United States an ethic of sustainable food production.  If all goods produced using farmworker labor came under public pressure to carry on their label a seal certifying that they employ fair and humane work practices, then the pressure would be placed squarely on the growers and producers; where to this point it has not been.  When ensuring safer harvests of tuna attention was not paid to commodity import regulation or UDSA/FDA oversight, there was a concerted effort made at public education and branding of the issue with the “dolphin safe” logo.  It is not that American’s are comfortable with purchasing goods that nearly enslave immigrant workers; the problem lies in the fact that they cannot tell the difference in the grocery store. A single easily identifiable fair labor logo across the entire agriculture industry would ensure this.

Farmworker Housing

To the point of the farmworker families themselves, there is a profound strength of resilience and fortitude to their character that I admire a great deal.  As is typified the Valle article Fields of Toil migrant families remake themselves on a nearly continual basis, piecing together what they need as they find opportunity to acquire and never holding to closely assumptions that are not absolutely sound.  Despite this impermanence that is demanded of their lives by economic necessity, there are still very strong bonds of family and community that many affluent Americans would envy and wish they could see in their own families and communities.

I think that any housing response that is made for farmworker families should respect this character of the client.  It is important that farmworker housing be scalable as resources permit and easily adaptable allowing for changes in season, occupants, use, and perhaps location.  This character of adaptability will be difficult to achieve when paired with the desire for permanence of settlement.  I feel that maintaining permanence is of great importance to ensure that residents have buy-in and ownership of the site to allow for the creation of a home rather than a shelter.  Creating a long-lasting community is quite important because these social ties are difficult to establish and codify into the built environment through functioning public spaces and sharing of resources; and once established even easier to disrupt.  Therefore long term design-life will allow for the establishment of communities and minimize maintenance costs and the possibility for large scale renovations that would disrupt the community.  For this balance between adaptability and permanence I feel that the logical design imperative should be a characteristic of resilience.  Resilience implies an ability to survive or adapt to change to ensure longevity.  Therefore durable materials and assemblies that have lasting value and beauty  are more appropriate for building in response to farmworker housing rather than placing the design imperative on minimizing initial costs.