Seth Holmes Sociology

Seth Holmes argument is correct when he says class, race, ethnicity, gender and citizenship are all implicated in the system of structural violence experienced by migrants in the United States, it is seen with the numerous examples that are given in the text. Social inequality is something immense in this book and it is seen through Holmes experiences, how identity factor into the lives of farm workers in Washington State. Structural violence and social injustice can be split into three different topics which are race, class, and ethnicity. Theses migrants who are in a lower class are treated poorly by those who have power over them and this causes much of their injuries and health issues that the face. Holmes explains how the people that

When Holmes talks about Skagit Valley he mentions how a few thousand people migrate over there and they live in poor conditions for “several months in squatter shacks made of cardboard, plastic sheets, and broken down cars or in company-owned labor camps, often in close proximity to the multilevel houses of the local upper class that have picturesque views of the valley” (pg 47). This example demonstrates how class comes to play. Holmes goes into greater detail about the living explaining how the tin roofs of the living place would heat the rooms over 100 degrees and how at night the rooms would decrease in temperature all the way down to 32 degrees. These types of living conditions can lead to health problems and can be seen as structural violence and can also be related to what was talked about in lecture about exploitation. These migrants are being exploited because they are being paid poorly and given poor living conditions. The term conjugated oppression is “… ethnicity and class work together to produce an oppression experientially and materially different from that produced by either alone” (pg 50). Holmes noticed after a few weeks of picking at the Tanaka Farm that those who are in power has to do with their race, class, and citizenship. An example of how class affects migrant workers is that several of them “... have increased incidence of acute sickness such as urinary tract and kidney infections, heat stroke, anthrax, ascariasis… which are believed to be caused in large part by poor living and working conditions and lack of sanitary bathrooms” (pg 101). Countless of the migrant workers are not only affected by the working conditions, nonetheless by their living