Abstract

The intention of this thesis is to provide a critical analysis of the 1989 North Carolina Migrant Housing Act. This legislation extended housing protections to migrant labor camps with under 12 migrant workers, implemented water sanitation standards, and strengthened housing code to conform to federal OSHA regulations. Local newspapers reflected that the act was as an example of political compromise between North Carolina farmers’ representatives and migrant worker representatives. Yet despite serving as a political victory, there was an incongruity between what the written legal code stated and what was enforced. Through the use of newspaper editorials, oral histories, photographs, and archival records that primarily focus on the Henderson County apple industry, this thesis argues that the 1989 Migrant Housing Act followed a historical trend of previous national migrant labor legislation such as the 1983 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Act that was largely ignored and at best only marginally improved migrant housing and health conditions. This thesis will contend that the incongruity between legislation and the physical realities of migrant workers in North Carolina was predictable and due in part to an economic disincentive by growers to ignore housing and health legislation in order to cut costs, the political and economic influence of agricultural growers associations in North Carolina, and the lack of bargaining power of migrant workers, which made them susceptible to physical abuse. Lastly, this thesis will argue that the geographical and cultural disconnect between the majority Hispanic agricultural migrant worker and North Carolina communities provided little political incentive for the state government to strictly enforce migrant housing legislation in 1989.

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