Milking in the Shadows–a review
Tucked behind the trees and farmhouses dotting rural Wisconsin’s stretching dairy fields lie trailers housing the migrant workers who keep these farms running.
Veracruz, Mexico. Image accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons.
This one of the environments where Julie C. Keller takes readers in her book, Milking in the Shadows: Migrants and Mobility. While often unacknowledged, migrants from the Mexican state of Veracruz are the backbone of Wisconsin’s dairy industry. Keller situates these migrant workers’ experiences in the broader contexts of globalization and migration.
Keller met Vicente, a 52 year-old teacher, in Camotli, Mexico. Vicente thinks he was the first person to travel from Camotli to Wisconsin in 1996. Vicente worked as a milker on a farm in Fairfield, Wisconsin, and when his boss asked him to reach out and see if others from Camotli would like a job, Vicente spread the word. “‘I went out and began to call people, and those people began to call other people, and it went like that, making a chain of information.’”
From her conversations with farmers, Keller learned that in the 1990s and early 2000s farmers also began to have informal conversations amongst themselves about hiring Mexican immigrants. Farmers have gradually spent less time milking cows and teaching workers how to do so; instead, they rely on immigrants to train each other. As dairy farmers have hired more migrant workers, they have been able to grow the size and production of farms. Remaining dairy farms tend to be large and employ immigrant workers (today, 79% of the United States milk supply is produced from farms that employ immigrants).
A former dairy worker named Yurico reflects on his experience as an immigrant dairy worker: “‘Life is beautiful there, but you suffer. You suffer.’” When Keller visited farms, she usually found white workers in indoor offices, and Mexican workers in milking parlors. Immigrants are far more likely to be milkers or pushers; every day, they bring cows to milking parlors, hook them up to milking machines, clean cows and milking machines, and wipe up manure.
It is hard work and often for little pay. Milkers are the lowest paid jobs on dairy farms–the hourly wage in 2014 was about $7.90. Immigrant workers are also more likely to work late night shifts and work overtime, and in Wisconsin, agricultural employers are not legally required to provide overtime pay. When Keller asked Yurico, a former dairy worker, how he felt about the pay, he replied, “‘It’s not much, but how would you do that?… The boss is the one that pays… We have to put up with it… because it’s the boss who pays us and we can’t ask for more pay.”
There is little regulation governing wages, housing, or treatment. Workers often live in run-down trailers provided by their employers. On one farm Keller visited, the trailer bathroom was broken, so workers had to use the office bathroom for months. Living in a trailer on the farm places immigrants closer to their workplace and employers. They are also more likely to work late night or early morning shifts with no overtime pay. Yurico told Keller that his life in Wisconsin was “‘From my job to my room… I was enclosed every day.’”
People migrate for these jobs, despite the conditions and pay, because they don’t have much of a choice. When economic hardships hit Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s, people began to migrate to the United States in order to make money to send home to their families. Falling prices on coffee and corn farms in Mexico in particular led those with agricultural work experience to seek it elsewhere. Since jobs on farms in Wisconsin are less competitive than the other main dairy producing states, such as California and New York, traveling to Wisconsin offered better prospects for a job and an opportunity to support loved ones and future endeavors back home.
The journey that many migrants take is dangerous and difficult. Keller tells the story of Yurico’s border crossing. In 2004, Yurico crossed the border at a remote desert border town, but was detained by border patrol agents. He was taken to a detention center, and then deported to Mexico. Yurico finally found a way to cross the border into southern California, and he made it all the way to Los Angeles where he flew to Chicago from, and took an $800 taxi to Wisconsin.
Yurico’s journey represents the many risks, difficulties, and expenses of a trip across the border. Journeys to work in the dairy industry exist within a larger legacy of immigration policies that institutionalize a demand for cheap and exploitable labor across industries. Keller keeps this history in mind, whether in the kitchens where she sat and drank coffee in Veracruz or in the grassy fields where she wandered and chatted with those currently working in Wisconsin. Her writing highlights that today’s efficiency and quality of Wisconsin dairy is made possible by the laborers that have and continue to be physically and metaphorically pushed to the shadows of individual farms and broader agricultural policies and practices. As Voces de la Frontera, a Milwaukee-based immigrant and labor justice organization, says, “Got milk? Not without immigrants.”