. While this reality varied amongst the program’s many actors,the bracero program nonetheless established a developed industrial agricul-tural system in California dependent on a highly exploitive and dehumanizedlabour process. Mexican men, as braceros (imported workers) – an emer-gency and supplementary labour force during the World War II era – becamethe dominant labour force in agricultural fields and shaped a landscape thatestablished California as a leading agricultural system in the world.

For workers, this entailedensuring they would be selected as braceros, as well as figuring out how tomake sufficient money to survive the off seasons and to also economicallysustain families back home in Mexico. Growers needed to secure a reliable andcheap labour force for the short harvest seasons. Meanwhile, a whole systemwas developed to organize this extremely poor and mobile labour force, frombeing selected in Mexico to being appointed in the California agriculturalfields.

As immigration continues to be debated in the WhiteHouse, and in the everyday lives of all Americans – citizens and noncitizensalike – migrants are scapegoated for the economic problems of the U.S., sur-veilled and hunted by the state, and subjected to the deportation regime thatcontinues to construct a racialized, exploitable, and disposable group of people.