Multiple Forms of Imprisonment: Migrant Child Labor Trafficking and Detention in the Late 20th Century

This paper expands upon adult-centric immigration histories by tracing the inception of undocumented youth labor trafficking onto remote, prison-like farms mainly in the late-twentieth century U.S. West. The trafficking of migrant Latinx youth emerged in the 1970s as a result of the U.S.’ weak anti-child labor regime, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico boundary, the growth of the deportation regime, and the rise of human smuggling. Growers refashioned labor camps and fields into unofficial sites of incarceration and containment in which they forced undocumented youth into debt bondage and denied them freedom of movement with threats of physical violence, formal arrest, and deportation. Though migrant Mexican and Central American youth challenged their labor exploitation and apprehension through various forms of explicit and subtle protest, they were exposed to the formal institutions of the carceral state through immigration raids on commercial farms and government attempts to prosecute smugglers.