Fair-Trade Carceral Geographies. Migrant Labor and Transnational Agribusiness in Northwestern Mexico

Campos agrícolas are fenced parcels spanning thousands of acres, owned or rented by Mexican-US agribusiness corporations, and characterized by intensive monoculture and large-scale production. There, surrounded by deserts and highways, transnational agricultural conglomerates have built “mini cities” as a frequent strategy to secure sufficient and available human labor. Each harvest season, migrant workers from across Mexico and, to a lesser extent, from Guatemala live in these isolated and productive landscapes. Based on eight years of ethnographic and documentary research in Sonora, northwestern Mexico, this talk examines how campos agrícolas represent more than just another link in the global food supply chain and embody how human captivity is masked as corporate efficiency and labor safety. I present campos agrícolas as international value-production spatialities in which the confinement and surveillance of racialized migrant laborers are central to complying with fair trade and socially responsible production standards.

Speaker: Gerardo Rodriguez Solis, UC Berkeley