Abstract for: Examining mechanisms of structural racism in migrant and seasonal farm worker respiratory health

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into sharp relief the deep structural problems affecting Black and Latinx and workers in the US, especially environmental health exposures among migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFWs). To imagine new structures, we must understand the mechanisms through which legal and health protections of MSFWs are systematically marginalized and fragmented. This paper describes qualitative work to conceptualize MSFW health and housing inequities through a structural racism lens. Formative work included experiential learning workshops and key informant interviews with community advisory committee members to inform the initial framework and design of the qualitative study. The research team conducted 14 small group discussions and 17 site visits using structured interview and observation guides to engage MSFW themselves, service providers, farm owners, regulators, and advocates. Field notes were systematically coded to develop microstructures that were synthesized into causal maps. Findings from interview and observations were synthesized into an initial farmwork as a causal loop diagram that presents the balancing loops that are purported to be in place to identify, respond, and mitigate environmental harms for MSFW. Further, more detailed diagrams build on loops in the framework to elaborate the mechanisms through which these balancing processes are delayed, undermined, or circumvented to structurally disadvantage or marginalize MSFWs. This study offers a framework to examine how MSFW experience a complex web of environmental health exposures & contacts with regulators and service providers. Themes include processes through which systematic underreported harms are used to excuse continued exposures to sub-standard housing and working conditions. SD provides a language to represent mechanisms of structural marginalization, weave together insights and observations from ongoing empirical research, and imagine alternative systems of agricultural labor.