The migrant agricultural day laborer population in times of pandemic in Mexico

Abstract

The presence of COVID-19 forced companies and the government to fire workers or return them home, but this measure was not applied to the migrant agricultural laborer population who go to work in export agriculture. This article tries to show that the imbalances in working conditions already existed before the pandemic, despite the fact that employment among agricultural day laborers was not significantly reduced, working conditions deteriorated sharply. It is based on the hypothesis that the increase in the deterioration of working conditions occurred not because of the impacts of COVID-19, which reduced migration from the expelling States to export agriculture, but rather that employers, taking advantage of the contraction in the employment of non-agricultural activities and the increase in the labor supply, intensified the precarious conditions of work for those employed in agriculture. The methodology used is based on the records of the National Survey of Occupation and Employment, ENOE, third quarter of 2018, 2019 and 2020, before and with the pandemic. The finding of the work is that it is shown with official statistics that working conditions deteriorated strongly, critical conditions of occupation increased, wages and income were reduced and the working day increased for internal migrant agricultural day laborers in Mexico when comparing the behavior of the employment of day laborers before and in the pandemic.