Urban Braceros: Recruitment and Employment of Mexican H-2B Visa Workers in the Texas Landscaping Industry
Since the early 2000s, employment in temporary contract worker programs has significantly increased in response to claims by employers that other workers will not take jobs in certain industries. The Great Recession, the decline of undocumented Mexican migration, and the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the expansion of the H-2B visa program used when non-agricultural employers face labor shortages in seasonal jobs. However, the impacts of the program on H-2B workers and on the companies that recruit and employ them are not well understood. To examine the economic, sociocultural, and policy implications of H-2B employment, anthropologists Christian Zlolniski and Luis Plascencia will conduct an ethnographic and in-depth qualitative interview study. The project will focus on H-2B landscaping workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metropolitan area. Landscaping is the largest occupation group among H-2B visa workers, 81 percent of whom are Mexican nationals, and the DFW region has over 40 percent of the state’s total.