CU undergrads learn about lives of migrant workers in new course

By Susan Lang

Cornell undergraduate students can take courses in everything from nanofabrication to elementary Pali (the language of Theravaada Buddhist texts). To this rich assortment add one more, on a topic close to home but distant to many -- migrant farmworkers. It's a course believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation.

Farmworkers course member Edward Wilson '04, ILR, gives instruction in English as a second language to migrant farmworkers in Dresden, N.Y., April 26. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

"The course is intended to provide a very broad and eclectic perspective on the world of migrant, rural laborers, primarily from the Caribbean and mainland Latin America, who work in central and upstate New York," said Ray Craib, assistant professor of history and the primary coordinator of the class.

The course, Farmworkers (listed variously as History/Latin American Studies 431, City and Regional Planning 395 and Industrial and Labor Relations Collective Bargaining 402), is co-taught by professors in eight college departments and programs across the campus, including Industrial and Labor Relations, Romance Studies, Latin American Studies, History, Applied Economics and Management, Human Ecology, and City and Regional Planning. It covers migration and labor in global history, farmworkers and the agricultural industry, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and contemporary rural migration, migrant labor and human rights.

One of the compelling aspects of the course is that students are required to perform at least 40 hours of service, most of it outside of Tompkins County, with migrant farmworkers in upstate New York.

"Cornell is making a concerted effort to give undergraduates the opportunity to interact with whatever programs the university offers, such as the Cornell Migrant Program. Before this course, the migrant program never had an undergraduate component," said Herb Engman, director of the Cornell Migrant Program, which seeks to improve the living and working conditions of farmworkers and their families and to recognize farmworkers' contributions to society.

Students taking the course have worked closely on such projects as teaching English as a second language to farmworkers, fund raising, developing a Web site and designing a newsletter for the advocacy group, the Independent Farmworkers Center (CITA).

Marco Castro, a senior from Lansing, N.Y., majoring in English, worked on a Web site project for a farmworker organization and met with migrant workers in Albion, N.Y. "I would often pass by workers in my community. I wondered what their lives were like, what their stories were," Castro explained. "Farmworkers are often dehumanized and ignored. This course has done the opposite. We see farmworkers as individuals, with lives like our own -- people who make valuable contributions to our economy as a result of their work. The course has allowed me to meet migrant workers face to face. They are no longer strangers from another country, picking in the fields. They are families struggling to survive like you and me."

Castro and his classmates have learned, for example, that although migrant workers harvest most of the fruits and vegetables in the United States, they are among the nation's lowest-paid laborers, earning an average of less than $10,000 a year. New York state's 47,000 migrant farmworkers, of which about 40,000 are Latinos, primarily from Mexico, are excluded from labor laws that guarantee a day of rest each week, overtime pay and protection to bargain with employers as a collective unit.

"Prior to taking this course, I knew little about migrant farmworkers," said senior Pat Avery, a Cornell administrative manager in policy analysis and management who is majoring in industrial and labor relations. After teaching English to two young men from Mexico working in regional vineyards, she said, "I have learned that farmworkers contribute much more to our society and economy than many people realize, and I have discovered, firsthand through the service-learning component, that farmworkers are incredibly hard-working people."

The new course has been so successful that it is slated to be taught again next spring, when it will be coordinated by Mary Pat Brady, an assistant professor of English who is affiliated with the Latino Studies Program.