Year: 2025-2026
Research Team Type: Student-led
Team leads: Alina Leticia Zárate, PhD student, Energy and Resources Group
Farmworkers make up one of the most vulnerable labor forces in the United States despite their essential role within the agricultural industry. Due to the various social, political, and environmental challenges they face, farmworkers have traditionally been studied in various disciplines focused on segmented aspects of their experience. While informative, little work has been conducted to synthesize these various disciplinary findings.
As a result, this team’s research addresses the following questions: (1) What are the major disciplines and topics that make up farmworker research? (2) What are the major contributions of this research, and what methods do they employ? (3) How can these contributions be combined to create a farmworker justice framework that provides a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of farmworker vulnerabilities, thus informing future research efforts and policy developments? Through an extensive interdisciplinary review, they seek to develop a farmworker justice framework that can inform future research and policy interventions concerning agricultural laborers.