‘You want to feed your family, don’t you?’ Exploring the consequences of economic crisis for everyday food practices in immigrant communities

This article examines some of the consequences of recent economic recession for everyday food practices in immigrant communities in the United States. Immigrant communities already struggle with scarcity and cope with numerous threats to maintaining basic livelihoods. Examining these social dynamics through the lens of food scarcity and gendered relations around migrant household food practices, I demonstrate how economic crises compound the effects of differential access to essential resources and place increased strain on women in particular. The data I draw upon stem from ethnographic fieldwork with Mexican and Central American women in the United States. I allude to the broader consequences of social and economic policies in the context of economic crisis, especially as these articulate with patterns of immigration and access to resources. I conclude by arguing for broader attention to food practices into the relatively nascent body of ethnographic literature on women’s migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States, and to struggles with food scarcity in studies of migration more generally.

Introduction

At a gathering of food and labour activists in early 2012 in Santa Cruz, California, I spoke with an attorney from a prominent legal research centre following her presentation on the injustices endured by Latina immigrant workers in the United States, specifically in the food processing industry. Noting to her my particular interests in the food practices of immigrant households, she commenced to tell me about sexual abuse of female workers and how supervisors used the prospect of withholding pay –and ultimately food from women’s families – to elicit compliance from these workers. Among the several dozen women with whom this attorney had conducted in-depth interviews, she recalled the experience of one particular woman who had been sexually assaulted by her male supervisor. The supervisor soon afterward warned the woman against filing a formal complaint. ‘You want to feed your family, don’t you?’ he asked, insinuating that any retribution on her end would likely result in the termination of her employment, and her subsequent failure as a mother. Of course, this is not to say anything of her undocumented status which, if exposed, could have led to her deportation.

I present this woman’s story as it was dictated to me by an immigrant rights attorney for the reason that it highlights the extreme forms of exploitation that many women encounter in coming from Mexico and Central America to work in the United States. The desperation that informs women’s decisions to migrate as well as these forms of exploitation have only become more pronounced with the onset of economic crisis. Without formal documentation verifying one’s immigration status, many migrant women lack the means to challenge these forms of exploitation and to advocate for a decent wage, safe work conditions, benefits, and protection from sexual harassment and assault. Workplace vulnerabilities experienced by migrant women often rollover into the home, especially in the form of intense resource struggles that constrain the process of social reproduction, and consequently limit life chances.

As a result of the increased feminization of labour and poverty accompanying global economic crises of recent years, rural and poor households have endured a severe reduction in purchasing power, with effects particularly tangible in the realm of food procurement (Carney 2011; Katz 2008). As many within these households – namely children – depend on the labour of women to oversee and manage household nutrition (Narotzky 1997), women have absorbed additional burdens linked to economic crisis as their own survival is also tethered to this shifting economic terrain (Wamala and Kawachi 2007).

Feminist scholars have increasingly called for more nuanced research on gendered migration, noting substantial increases in the number of women migrating throughout the world (Agustín 2003; Zavella and Segura 2007), following policies of structural adjustment and free trade. Most of this migration is by women who are seeking wage-labour in the global North and often without formal authorization (i.e., documentation) (Agustín 2003). Recent estimates suggest that about half of documented migrants and one-third of undocumented migrants arriving to the United States are women, many of whom defer to economic rationales for migrating (Nicholson 2006; Zavella 2011; Segura and Zavella 2007). Nonetheless, women have been largely ignored and ‘underrepresented’ in the migration literature, with a few exceptions (Segura and Zavella 2007:3).

One of these exceptions is the ubiquity of victim narratives that has dominated much of the research on women’s migration, particularly through the discursive lens of ‘global trafficking’. While undoubtedly a global issue, trafficking likely accounts for only a small fraction of women’s migration. However, the persistence of the ‘victim’ trope tends to foreclose other possible explanations and interpretations of women’s migration. As identified by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (2011), for instance, there is tremendous variation and nuance in migrant women’s experiences; rather than passive subjects, women also engage as active agents in the process of migration. This article seeks to expand on the existing body of ethnographic research that calls attention to the ways that women utilize migration as a path toward autonomy, ascribe their own meanings to the work they do, and subvert different attempts to exploit them, even if in limited ways (Lee 2010). Specifically, I underscore the practice of feeding the family as a site of resistance and autonomy in the everyday lives of Mexican and Central American women.

Since the beginning of the financial crisis, many nongovernmental organizations and research institutes have predicted a rise in food insecurity in the United States. (Young 2008; Harrison et al. 2007; CHIS 2005), food insecurity being defined as lack of enough food to meet basic needs and sometimes characterized by household food depletion, disrupted eating patterns, and the repetitive pattern of reduced food intake (Blumberg et al. 1999). Rising unemployment, inflation of food prices, plummeting wages, and burgeoning costs of fuel and housing have contributed to the increased prevalence of food insecurity, as food expenditures are often relegated to the most flexible item in the household budget (Harrison et al. 2007). This article aims to broaden representation of contemporary migration of women from Mexico and Central America to the United States, and to account for some of the nuances of gendered migration, by highlighting the everyday challenges to household food practices further aggravated by economic recession, particularly as these impact women from immigrant communities. My data are drawn from research that I conducted in Santa Barbara County, California, from 2008 to 2011. First, I discuss some findings from a survey that I conducted with 150 households at the height of the economic recession from 2008 to 2009 (see Carney 2011 for a more complete discussion of these findings). Then I focus more closely on qualitative findings from interactions with key informants that occurred during an intensive phase of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2010 to 2011.

US immigration policy and effects of the global economic downturn

In the United States, immigration policy has fluctuated with economic conditions, so that welcoming policies emerge during economic expansion and restrictive policies during economic recession (Ortiz 1995; Menjívar 2012; Menjívar and Kanstroom 2013). Since the onset of the most recent economic recession in the United States, there has been more intense investment by the US Department of Homeland Security into the militarization of the US–Mexico border, resulting in record numbers of people being detained and deported, and a proliferation of punitive actions and surveillance programmes being carried out by local law enforcement (Menjívar 2013).

Patterns of immigration to the United States have subsequently shifted as a result of these policy changes. As a result of the most recent economic recession, migration from Mexico to the United States has tapered off dramatically in the past few years (Passel, Cohn, and Gonzalez-Barrera 2012). A study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center found zero-net migration from Mexico as fewer people crossed the border into the United States and more people returned to home countries (Passel, et al. 2012). Only 100,000 unauthorized migrants were estimated to cross the US border with Mexico in 2009, down from over 500,000 annually in 2005 (Passel and Cohn 2011). Durand and Massey (2010) have noted that Latin American intraregional (within Latin America) and transoceanic (to Asia or Europe) migration is likely to intensify if the US economy slips into further decline. As one of the most socioeconomically marginalized populations in the United States, immigrants are beginning to realize the futility of pursuing something known as the American Dream as those in the working class witness the erosion of this prospect (Ehrenreich 2005). In addition, conservative politicians have also popularized nativist sentiments that frame immigrants as ‘threats to the nation’ in the way of ‘stealing jobs’ from US-born Americans, thereby blaming them for mass unemployment (Zavella 2011).

Methodology

The data presented in this article stem from two separate phases of research that I conducted between 2008 and 2011 on the lived experience of food insecurity among immigrant communities in the United States, especially as this experience surfaced in the context of economic crisis. The preliminary phase of research consisted of a survey with 150 households from three distinct neighbourhoods (Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria) of Santa Barbara County. Survey sites were selected using US census data regarding population density of Latinos and levels of income (Bernard 2006). Data collection during this phase lasted from October 2008 until May 2009, coinciding with what has been deemed the worst moment of the economic recession (NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) 2008) and following what many have since come to regard as the peak of the world food crisis (FAO 2009). With support from three research assistants, I administered a survey that included 20 questions, the majority addressing household food procurement, preparation, and consumption. We explained the purpose and nature of the survey to all potential participants prior to obtaining informed consent and administering questions. More than two-thirds of survey interactions were recorded using a digital audio recorder to ensure complete data collection. The remaining one-third of study participants requested not to be recorded. Approximately two-thirds of survey interactions were administered in Spanish; all others were administered in English. The age range of participants was 18 to 65, 62 per cent women, 38 per cent men, 74 per cent self-identified as Hispanic or Latino, and 23 per cent unemployed. Surveys were conducted on weekdays during the early evening and midday on some Saturdays to maximize the number of household heads that would have returned home from work. Still, many household heads were not in residence during these survey times due to their working schedules. Study participants were not asked about income, thus it was assumed that most households qualified as low-income unless indicated otherwise through conversation. The purpose of the survey was to examine the entire spectrum of experience with food insecurity, specifically how households grapple with chronic food insecurity on a daily basis.

For the second phase of research, I conducted intensive ethnographic fieldwork, which entailed recruiting 25 Mexican and Central American women to serve as key informants. I publicized the study and connected with potential participants through community organizations in Santa Barbara County. These included distribution sites of the regional food bank, and Head Start preschools that offered monthly meetings for parents. To be eligible to participate in this research, women must have migrated from Mexico or Central America and have utilized some form of food assistance while living in the United States thus indicating that they had experienced problems with food access. Women ranged in age from 24 to 60 years (mean age of 38) and originated from Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, although the majority of women came from common migrant-sending states in Mexico. A few women had obtained legal status in the United States, including a Guatemalan woman who had been granted asylum, but most were ‘sin papeles,’ that is, undocumented. Women’s length of residency in the United States spanned from as short as three months to as long as 30 years. With the exception of one woman who was in the process of adopting a child through relatives in Mexico, all of the women in my research were mothers. Of the 25 women, 11 had full- or part-time employment, while the remaining 14 were unemployed, supported by a spouse, or were on disability allowance. In terms of marital status, 16 of the women were married or living with a spouse, four had never been married and five were divorced.

I implemented a mixed-methods approach to ethnographic fieldwork, combining semi-structured interviews (including life histories), dietary surveys, focus groups, and participant observation. Each woman received a modest stipend for participating in three individual interviews and three focus groups. Although anthropology as a field has historically scrutinized payments to research participants, preferring instead to identify other means of reciprocation, the especially high cost of living in Santa Barbara posed severe financial constraints for low-income households. Thus, participation in this research occupied women’s time during which they would have likely been earning a wage. Women and I arranged interview times and locations over the phone. Most frequently, women invited me to their homes or to join them at parks with their children. Focus groups were facilitated by an experienced moderator at community centres located within close proximity to women’s homes.

Feminist theory, in many ways, informed my overall research design in the second phase of fieldwork. Whereas research falling under the Western tradition has oftentimes been criticized for ignoring (or even exploiting) uneven power relations between investigators and ‘subjects,’ the burgeoning field of feminist ethnography emphasizes a democratization of knowledge production and shared authority in the research process (Behar and Gordon 1995). While the women in my research did not engage in the process of ethnographic writing per se, I sought to balance the contributions of key informants with my own during both the research process and in the presentation of research results. For instance, I sought to frame interviews as collaborative with participants (Yow 2005:2) by asking them to provide input on interview questions, particularly in terms of the legitimacy of certain questions and possible gaps. I also invited participants in the context of our focus groups to produce miniature autoethnographies via the use of disposable cameras. Some of the images from these autoethnographies appear elsewhere with women’s explicit permission, comprising an important contribution of the research itself (Carney forthcoming).

Compounding effects of economic crisis and food insecurity: the lived experience in Santa Barbara County

Santa Barbara County (the site of my fieldwork) has a long history of labour migration from Latin America, as it was also a major stronghold of Chicano culture following California’s annexation from Mexico in 1848. Today, Latinos account for more than 40 per cent of the local population (out of a total of 423,895), and many households identify Spanish as a first language (US Census 2010). Santa Barbara County is a coastal region located approximately 100 miles northwest of the city of Los Angeles. Tourism, agriculture, and construction rank among the region’s principal economic activities that employ several thousand migrants annually for work as hotel housekeepers, janitors, cooks, gardeners, farmworkers, and construction workers. During the time of my fieldwork, the local poverty rate was 18.0 per cent, or about one in five households (up from 11.9 per cent in 2007). Latino households accounted for 69 per cent of total households in poverty (Bureau of Population Statistics 2010).

Santa Barbara County’s principal economic activities (tourism, construction, agriculture) suffered setbacks following the 2008 recession with repercussions likely to have been especially severe for immigrant households. The hospitality and construction industries have employed fewer workers since 2008, although the hospitality industry has since recovered some of its pre-recession workforce (see figures 1 and 2). While data on agricultural employment from California’s Employment Development Department did not reveal any significant changes in employee numbers over the past ten years, data on employment in this sector are more difficult to obtain as farm labour often goes unreported. In responding to survey questions regarding employment, many study participants complained about job insecurity, ‘people have a job today, but not tomorrow’, and irregular work schedules, ‘my partner is off Monday, Monday through Friday, I don’t know what days, but then she works on the weekends. And I don’t have a stable work schedule.’

Figure 1. Employees in construction in Santa Barbara County 2001–2011 (in thousands)

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011)

Figure 2. Employees in leisure and hospitality in Santa Barbara County 2001–2011 (in thousands)

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011)[2]

The Housing Authority of Santa Barbara County had set the local poverty level at $53,700 for a four-person household, representing over a two-fold increase from the federal figure of $22,050 (Housing Authority of Santa Barbara County 2011). Property values in Santa Barbara are particularly high compared with other areas of California and local determinants of poverty far surpass the federal poverty line; less than one-fifth of county residents are homeowners. The average occupancy of rental property units increased by six per cent between 2000 and 2010, partially resulting from a lack of affordable housing and partially from the economic recession (US Census 2010). Almost half of county renters spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing, a percentage deemed unaffordable by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (US Census 2010; Children Now 2007). As of June 2012, there had been more than 2,189 foreclosures since the recession and 503 homes were in active foreclosure as of February 2012.[3] These housing conditions, combined with chronic under- and unemployment translate to regular displacement and homelessness.

As a way of controlling for the cost of housing, low-income families often live in overcrowded households (households with 1.5 persons per room, including kitchens and living rooms) (Zavella 2011). More than 7 per cent of Santa Barbara County’s population lives in overcrowded housing (Children Now 2007).

In regards to food prices, households participating in the survey perceived mild to severe volatility since the economic recession; 44 per cent of residents from Santa Barbara, 24 per cent of residents from Goleta, and 50 per cent of residents from Carpinteria reported a noticeable increase in the price of food within recent months. Responses varied from ‘I can say it’s tough right now’, to ‘It’s more expensive now’, to even some who thought food in the United States was at least cheaper than abroad, ‘food isn’t as expensive here as it is in Mexico.’ The rate of inflation in the United States at the time of the survey was the highest in 17 years (Young 2008; BLS 2009), especially for protein-rich foods. Many participants lamented a lack of protein in diets: ‘milk, anything dairy, it’s just going through the roof’; ‘some foods are expensive, like meat’; ‘sometimes we want meat but we don’t have the money to buy it’; ‘it’s gotten really expensive in the last year. Milk and cheese is really expensive. It’s already expensive to live here. It’s like you have to pay to eat too?’ Some households admitted to purchasing and consuming less food since the onset of the economic recession, providing statements such as ‘we are trying to not eat as much,’ and ‘I don’t buy as much as I used to’.

Searching for bargains and cooking at home were commonly reported coping strategies by survey respondents: ‘well, it depends on [where I can find discounts]’; ‘I’m cooking a lot more than I used to’; ‘now I prepare all my meals at home’; ‘I’m trying to cook more often’; ‘I used to [eat out] every day. I’m trying to change my eating habits. So over the last two or three months, I go once a week maybe.’ Meals prepared at home, however, did not necessarily translate to improved nutrition and food security in households, as explained by several participants: ‘we might be having rice and top ramen for the fourth day in a row, but it’s something’; ‘well, we just eat [refried] beans [frequently])’; ‘I just had some Rice Krispies and a banana. Is that a meal? I hate to cook. I hate it.’

Women’s experiences with economic crisis: findings from ethnographic fieldwork

In my in-depth interviews with Mexican and Central American women, they reflected on the myriad ways in which they had been affected by recent economic crises, both in their home countries and since coming to the United States. Women’s perspectives on employment and the state of the economy varied with length of residency in the United States. Those with longer residencies in the United States (i.e., more than five years) recalled better times, whereas more recent residents were surprised by the lack of employment opportunities. The latter group expressed much disappointment in finding an unfortunate economic situation, something quite the opposite to what they heard about through social networks in Mexico and Central America.

Tina (age 49, from Sinaloa) for instance, remembered vast employment opportunities when she arrived with her mother and two sisters in California over thirty years ago. She worked in a series of clerical and factory jobs prior to going on disability status. She alluded to the ways that the economy had changed.

Juliana (age 38, from Guerrero), living in the United States for 12 years, reported observations similar to those of Tina.

Juliana, among others, interpreted declines in demand for domestic and hospitality services as a result of the market becoming increasingly saturated with competition. Natalia lamented reductions in her work schedule for reasons that, ‘[t]here is a lot of competition in house cleaning. Many women want to clean houses. And there isn’t a lot of work [for them].’ Celina (age 36, from Veracruz), working as a hotel housekeeper, reported a reduction of hours in her work schedule: ‘before, I was given 80 hours [per every two weeks] and now I only have 70 and this is less money for me. There are people who only work two days a week and this adds up to very few hours every two weeks [when one is paid].’

Women with husbands noted the ebb and flow of demand for labourers in construction: ‘my husband works [in construction] but doesn’t work very often. There are times when there is a lot of work and times when there is no work’ (Celeste, age 25, from Guerrero). Dora (age 35, from Honduras) worried about her husband’s temporary contracts with different construction companies, and unanticipated interruptions to these contracts: ‘when the rain came we worried [because they don’t work when it’s raining].’

Despite the struggle to make a living, migrant women did not perceive any changes in the cost of living: ‘many families complain that the money doesn’t accumulate, especially now that work has dropped and meanwhile the rent and other bills do not drop. My husband works but he is only able to save for the rent’ (Celina, age 36, from Veracruz). Celina also believed that the high cost of living related to Santa Barbara’s tourism-centric economy: ‘right now we are in a situation, a crisis, of no work. Santa Barbara is a beautiful city, but as a tourist destination, it is very expensive to live here. I’d like to live alone here, but I can’t because the rent is too expensive.’

Conclusion

As national borders become increasingly permeable for the purposes of free trade, and as asymmetrical economic relationships exacerbate the effects of economic crisis, questions of inequitable resource distribution are of pressing importance. Studies of migration have been uncritical thus far of the extent to which the migration experience is shaped by constraints on eating and feeding (Crush 2013). Future research would ideally situate questions of resource access and governance in the context of global economic collapse at multiple borderlands sites to include both sending and receiving communities in data collection and analysis. While such studies may promise to enrich our knowledge of the complexity of experiences, representations, and identities behind ‘multiple sites of gendered control and contestation’ (Zavella and Segura 2008:543), more importantly, perhaps, is the political potential of such knowledge to alter the social dynamics and institutional arrangements that perpetuate uneven life chances.

Current debates about food insecurity in the United States have failed to hold accountable neoliberal economic policies as these reinforce and attempt to legitimize uneven resource distribution. Instead, the mainstream public health response to food insecurity (and many associated ‘dietary diseases’, for instance) has been focused on concerns with changing individual health behaviours. This begs the question of whether or not reforming decision-making at the level of individuals should dominate the premise and promise of our investigations. When probing into the consequences of uneven resource distribution, or of asymmetrical economic relationships (as the United States has with many migrant-sending countries), it seems that the more obvious objective of such research should be examining how and from where power exacts its disciplining influence.

Author’s Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) for providing a dissertation grant to conduct this research, and the Comparative Border Studies Institute at Arizona State University for supporting the write-up of this article. She also thanks Dr Holly Karibo, Dr Leila Rupp, and all of her colleagues from a feminist studies course at UC Santa Barbara for providing constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article.

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Résumé

Cet article examine quelques-unes des conséquences de la récente récession économique dans les communautés immigrées aux Etats-Unis. Ces communautés vivent déjà dans la précarité et font face à des nombreuses difficultés pour maintenir un niveau de vie décent. En examinant ces dynamiques sociales au travers des prismes de la précarité alimentaire et des relations de genre dans les habitudes alimentaires des immigrés, je démontre comment une crise économique entraîne un accès inégal aux denrées essentielles et met une pression accrue sur les femmes en particulier. Je m’appuie sur des données recueillies lors d’une étude ethnographique de terrain auprès de femmes mexicaines et centraméricaines vivant aux Etats-Unis. Je fais allusion aux graves conséquences des politiques sociales et économiques dans un contexte de crise, en mettant en relation immigration et accès aux ressources. Je conclue en argumentant en faveur d’une plus grande attention portée aux pratiques alimentaires dans le corps de relativement naissant de la littérature ethnographique sur les migrations féminines depuis le Mexique et l’Amérique Centrale vers les Etats-Unis, et plus généralement aux luttes contre la précarité alimentaire dans les études sur l’immigration.

Resumen

Este artículo examina algunas de las consecuencias de la reciente recesión económica en las prácticas de alimentación cotidianas de comunidades inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos de América. Las comunidades inmigrantes afrontan condiciones precarias y se enfrentan a diferentes amenazas para mantener mínimos estándares de vida. Examinando dinámicas sociales a través de la luz de la precariedad alimenticia, este articulo demuestra como la crisis económica empeora los efectos del acceso diferenciado a recursos esenciales, lo cual tiene un peso particular en las mujeres. Los datos de donde este artículo se basa, provienen de trabajo etnográfico con mujeres de México y Centro América que viven en los Estados Unidos de América. Aludo a las consecuencias más amplias de las políticas económicas y sociales en el contexto de crisis económica, especialmente desde que éstas se articulan con patrones de inmigración y acceso a los recursos. Concluyo argumentando sobre la necesidad de una atención más integral a las practicas alimenticias en la relativamente incipiente literatura etnográfica sobre mujeres inmigrantes de México y Centro América a los Estados Unidos de América, y más generalmente, a los padecimientos ante la precariedad de alimentos en los estudios de migración.

Notes

1. Data retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/ces/data.htm

2. Ibid.

3. Accessed on February 16 2012 from www.realtytrac.com.