Authors
Rebecca L Schewe, Bernadette White
Publication date
2017/10
Journal
Social Currents
Volume
4
Issue
5
Pages
429-447
Publisher
Sage Publications
Description
Using a survey of dairy farmers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida, this study examines labor patterns on U.S. dairy farms by analyzing employment of nonfamily and immigrant labor, as well as labor precarity and contingency. We build upon and connect two divergent theoretical frames: first, the contradictory class location of family farmers, and second, the neoliberal rise of precarious and contingent labor. We move beyond the family/nonfamily farm binary often found in examinations of the class location of family farmers, including the interplay of family and nonfamily labor, demonstrating that farm size is an equally important component of labor relations to farm ownership structure. Farms’ labor relations more accurately exist on a continuum between “family” and “industrial” that reflects both ownership structure and farm size. Extending the study of precarious and contingent labor into the agricultural sector, we …
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