Labour power materialised: farmworkers and the remaking of agribusiness landscapes

Don Mitchell

Chapter 17 in Handbook of Labour Geography, 2025, pp 304-315 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter seeks to answer the question of how labour geographers should best understand the nature of the power of labour power. Examining the historical geography of farm labour in California's agribusiness landscape, and focusing on the demise of the Bracero guest worker program in the middle 1960s, the chapter argues that a primary power that workers possess resides in their mere presence. The chapter shows that this power – the power to be present at the place of work or not – is sometimes positive, as when workers can monopolise a labour market or effectively strike, but often negative, in that production systems are frequently capitalised on the premise that a certain kind of labour will be there when and as needed (and only then). This negative power of presence is a central pivot around which much labour-capital struggle turns and therefore can be decisive in reshaping political-economic geographies.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Bracero Program; California; Farmworkers; Labour-capital struggle; Labour power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781785363399
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