This research project seeks to understand the ways in which United States federal policies and racial capitalism shape the livelihoods of H2-A Visa holders in the U.S. and offer possible changes that could limit abuses of power. As immigration in the U.S. is rising after the pandemic, we are entering a time of increased foreign labor. With such increase, it is imperative that we understand how the ramifications of past legislation may impact our workers. Historically, foreign agricultural workers have faced countless injustices through exploitation due to power relations from racial capitalism. These workers are forced to commodify their bodies, sacrificing health to reach subsistence or retain legal status. Drawing on first and second hand accounts of foreign agricultural workers, we assess how these legislative policies affect their lives. With this research, we ask, how and why have workers on the H2-A Visa sponsorship been exploited? What system changes can be implemented to protect the rights of these workers? There is a gap in accessible documentation so, through creating a zine, we seek to provide this information to a wider audience. By including a policy memo, we offer possible changes that policy leaders, government organizations, and other actors could take to limit the amount of exploitation that these workers face; these include, a) offering a pathway to legal status or, b) growing visibility and awareness of the conditions. Preliminary results indicate that highlighting injustices through public demonstration can be helpful in limiting abuse, as seen in the success of the Familias Unidas por La Justicia Union, a Washington State example of how unionization serves as resistance to these oppressive forces. Our findings will spread awareness of exploitation within U.S. foreign labor, hopefully leading to safeguards against human rights abuses for workers or those wanting to obtain legal status.

One-on-one interviews will be conducted with mixed-race individuals from the Seattle area which will give us the personal stories and histories of individuals not typically heard from which we will then transcribe and encode. We will search for patterns on who storytellers tend to be (grandparents, aunts/uncles, etc.) as well patterns about the methods that stories were told through, and how those differing methods impact how participants identify today, as well as how that affects how they interact with the world around them. These will be used to draw conclusions about how having multiple methods of storytelling influences identity formation. We expect to find that non-white parents and grandparents tend to be the people to pass on ways of being, and that mixed race adults believe that although they may have experienced discrimination due to their mixed identity, the insight gained from having a mixed background is overall beneficial. We also expect to find that there may be a tendency to identify more with other mixed people rather than people of any of their discrete ethnicities or races. Thoughtful research and discussion of mixed-race identities can reduce the stigma of being mixed race, making studies like these relevant and necessary. This research will positively contribute to the overall scholarly community by providing information into diverse identify formation, as well as benefit individual participants by providing them a safe space to share their history.
 

The Puget Sound region of Washington State has the largest urban ferry system in the world. The most traffic occurs within the central corridor routes, connecting various communities on the Kitsap Peninsula to the metropolitan area of Seattle. These routes are frequented by commuters as they provide a direct connection to the labor market. Traditional land-based modes of commuting, such as by personal vehicle or bus, are shown to negatively impact the commuter. Factors of these traditional commuting environments, such as perceived lack of control and unreliability of the route, act as stressors that can harm the commuter’s well-being in both the short and long term. Many aspects of the ferry environment, however, might avoid these typical stressors. I administered a survey to workers who commute from the Kitsap Peninsula to the Seattle area by a passenger ferry route, and collected data on stress, the perceived reliability of the route, and the positive and negative factors of the commuting experience. Preliminary results suggest that while ferry commuters experience stress due to the unpredictable nature of their route, other factors of the ferry environment cause the ferry commuter to feel overall less stressed than the typical commuter. I aim to supplement previous anecdotal evidence that ferry commutes do not harm worker well-being to the same extent as traditional modes of commuting. Given the unique experience and lessened detriments of ferry commuting, this study can advise researchers to consider ferry commuters as their own distinct class separate from other categories of commuting, and consider how their unique experience can influence transportation policy recommendations and challenge the traditionally negative perception of the modern commute.