Precarious Entrepreneurship: Day Laborers in the U.S. Southwest

Abstract

With the advent of globalization, neoliberalism, and immigration policy reforms that enlarged the non-White workforce in the United States, precarious employment—work that is contingent, risky, and socially stratified—has increased dramatically. The 2008 Great Recession exacerbated labor market uncertainty, deepening the demand for precarious labor. These same structural forces have conditioned a rise in precarious entrepreneurship in the informal economy; yet little is known about how precarity is experienced among “survival entrepreneurs” or its effects on their entrepreneurial outcomes. This study uses unique ethnosurvey data collected between 2012 and 2018 on 116 street corner day laborers in Texas, a state in the Southwest region of the United States, to investigate these relationships. In the context of a more precarious economy, findings reveal that undocumented Latino immigrant men continue to dominate day labor activity; however, the expanding supply and demand for day laborers has resulted in a more diverse day labor pool that includes legal permanent residents, naturalized citizens, and U.S.-born citizens, including Black and White Americans. At the same time, day labor remains a “bad job” characterized by exploitive and abusive working conditions and low hourly income. That said Latino immigrant day laborers are subject to a distinct process of criminalization and racialization that conditions a lower hourly income for this group, regardless of legal status. Findings suggest that day labor is a form of precarious entrepreneurship that is polarized by race and nativity.

Keywords

undocumented entrepreneurs day labor Latinos precarious work

Introduction

Low-skilled undocumented immigrant Latino men migrate disproportionately to states located in the Southwestern region of the United States to work (Espenshade, 1995; Massey, 1987a). Reflecting this economic priority, their labor force participation rate generally exceeds that of their “documented” immigrant and U.S.-born counterparts (Borjas, 2017). The high labor force participation rate of Latino immigrant men is consistent with their status as economic migrants and their cultural traditions regarding gendered expectations of work and economic family obligations (Massey, 1987a; Piore, 1979).

The working conditions and earnings of undocumented immigrants reflect their vulnerable legal status and low human capital attainment (Donato & Armenta, 2011; Espenshade, 1995). Undocumented Latinos are overrepresented in nonstandard, part-time, or seasonal work in the labor market that is often low wage and low skilled, with few benefits or security of employment (Reich, Gordon, & Edwards, 1973). These “3D” (dirty, dangerous, and difficult) jobs are often located in service, construction, and agricultural industries. Undocumented Latinos’ legal status is directly related to their devaluation as a cheap source of labor (Bonacich, 1972; Durand, Massey, & Pren, 2016).

Beyond wage-work, undocumented Latinos find work in the “informal” economy, that strata of the economy typified by a range of economic activities, including self-employment, which is unregulated by the state. Self-employed workers in the informal economy are sometimes referred to as “survival” (Valenzuela, 2001) or “hybrid” entrepreneurs (Ramirez & Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2009). Survival entrepreneurs share salient individual-level characteristics with their wage-worker counterparts, including lower aggregate human capital attainment, a concentration in similar industries and occupations, and work arrangements that are often contingent, low wage, and gendered. Survival entrepreneurs, however, are not formally employed by others but rather work on their own account in jobs that are typically paid in cash by clients “off the books” or “under the table,” including work as day laborers (jornaleros; Valenzuela, 2001), gardeners (jardineros; Ramirez & Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2009), and domestic workers (domésticas; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007). Whether employed in wage-work in the labor market or self-employed in the informal economy, undocumented Latino immigrants are engaged in precarious work.

Precarious work is generally defined as wage-work that is “uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker.” It is also highly stratified by race, class, gender, nativity, and legal status (Kalleberg, 2011). There has been a precarization of work—an increase in insecurity—across all advanced capitalist economies (Alberti, Bessa, Hardy, Trappmann, & Umney, 2018). Precarization in the United States is associated with macro-level structural changes in the economy and society including globalization, neoliberalism, and immigration policy reforms that dramatically increased the non-White workforce (Kalleberg, 2009). The 2008 Great Recession intensified instability in earnings and work hours, particularly in low-skilled, low-wage jobs in the labor market (Finnigan, 2018). It is likely a similar trend is occurring in the informal economy. Yet little is known about how precarity and polarization are experienced among survival entrepreneurs or its effects on their economic outcomes.

This mixed-method study uses ethnosurvey data on 116 street corner day laborers residing in a semirural Texas county 4 years after the Great Recession, between 2012 and 2018. This study investigates the individual-level characteristics, working conditions, and hourly income of day laborers to investigate how precarity and polarization shape the economic outcomes of survival entrepreneurs working in the informal economy in the postrecession context.

Day Labor Work

Securing work as a day laborer involves a highly visible practice of searching in informal marketplaces, often in open-air spaces such as street corners or empty parking lots of home improvement stores. With an estimated 120,000 day laborers soliciting or performing work across the country, day labor work is a “significant segment of nonstandard and specifically contingent” informal self-employment activity for migrant workers who are recent arrivals to the United States (Valenzuela, 2003, p. 307). Many of these workers have low levels of education and a poor command of English, characteristics that constrain formal employment or entrepreneurship (Valenzuela, 2003; Valenzuela, Theodore, Meléndez, & Gonzalez, 2006).

Self-employed day laborers, regardless of the occupation or industry in which they work, do not receive benefits or worker protections (Valenzuela, 2003). They are exposed to abuse by clients and in the workplace, including nonpayment for completed work, receiving lower pay than that to which they agreed, working under hazardous conditions, not receiving regular breaks, and experiencing negative occupational health outcomes (Valenzuela, 2003; Walter, Bourgois, Loinaz, & Schillinger, 2002; Walter et al., 2002). For example, Rabito et al. (2011) find that day laborers are particularly vulnerable to exposure to irritants, such as lead in the workplace. Drever and Blue (2011) found that day laborers lack access to financial institutions, transportation services, and social and safety nets, limiting opportunities to pursue stable or formal employment. From Los Angeles (Valenzuela, 2001) to post-Katrina New Orleans (Fussell, 2011) research shows that day laborers are vulnerable to victimization and exploitation by their clients, regardless of the presumed autonomy associated with being one’s own boss (Valdez, 2011). The precarity of day labor activity is connected to processes of racialization and criminalization (Valenzuela, 2001, 2003).

Racialization and Criminalization

Racialization is sociohistorical process that extends “racial meaning to a previously unclassified relationship, social practice, or group” (Omi & Winant, 2014, p. 3). This process is at its core relational, historically contingent, and multidimensional. The positioning of groups within a racial hierarchy occurs by naturalizing socially significant differences relative to other groups, thus justifying the domination and exploitation of an entire class. However, what racial meanings are attached to which groups depend on the time and place, as meanings are contested (De Genova & Ramos-Zayas, 2003; Gans, 2017; Saperstein, Penner, & Light, 2013). For example, Herrera (2016) demonstrates how Latino day laborers in Oakland were racialized as “illegal” by clients and immigration authorities alike, despite an array of legal statuses and racial identities, including indigenous identities and relationships imported and reformulated from their country of origin. Most clients, moreover, use multiple axes of difference (such as legal status and race) to proxy worker qualities, relegating ethnic minorities and immigrants to low-wage and hypersegregated segments of the economy (Moss & Tilly, 2001; Peck & Theodore, 2008; Waldinger & Lichter, 2003).

Through the process of racialization, illegality intersects with other social group affiliations (e.g., race) to further marginalize and criminalize immigrants (García, 2017; Herrera, 2016; Hiemstra, 2010; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Maldonado, 2009). By marking day laborers as “illegal Latino men,” clients justify paying criminalized Latino immigrants less and providing few if any benefits. Clients may also dismiss from consideration non-Latino immigrant day laborers as less favorable workers (Moss & Tilly, 2001; Peck & Theodore, 2008; Purser, 2012). In their research on Chicago’s temporary work agencies, Peck and Theodore (2008) found that formerly incarcerated U.S.-born Latinos attempted to “pass” as undocumented immigrants to work as street corner day laborers. Other formerly incarcerated Black Americans learned Spanish to improve their chances of joining all Latino immigrant landscaping crews. The process of racialization and criminalization renders all day laborers “illegal Latinos,” regardless of race, nativity, or legal status, with consequent effects on their economic outcomes (Crotty & Bosco, 2008; Herrera, 2016; Hiemstra, 2010; Valenzuela, 2003).

Racialization and criminalization is a structural process that takes place at the local, state, and national levels, or “nested contexts of reception” (Golash-Boza & Valdez, 2018; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). The mainstream economic, social, and government response to undocumented Latino immigrants, particularly in the past decade, has been uniformly negative (García, 2017). The visibility of day laborers soliciting work has resulted in communities around the nation passing local ordinances banning day labor solicitation, thereby criminalizing the activity (Kornzweig, 2000; Varsanyi, 2008). Public discourse and draconian immigration policies contribute to the criminalization of undocumented Latinos and day laborers, targeted as the “face of undocumented immigration” (Valenzuela, 2007, p. 25). In this climate day labor activity is ever more precarious.

Precarity and Polarization of Work

Labor market scholars have demonstrated a rise in precarious work since the 1970s in the United States, with the advent of globalization and the restructuring of the economy (Kalleberg, 2009). With international competition, the U.S. labor market changed, as observed in the growth of high-tech, high-skilled, white-collar occupations at the top and low-skilled, low-paid service sector occupations at the bottom. Good, unionized, blue-collar occupations in durable manufacturing, automobile, and aerospace industries—jobs that provided a middle-class lifestyle for workers—were exported to countries with lower labor costs. The restructured “hourglass” economy intensified inequality and polarization between workers, as they were squeezed into the top or bottom tiers of the economy and out of the “narrowing middle” (Portes & Sensenbrenner, 1993). Polarization was not limited to low-skilled, low-wage workers only, but included relatively more privileged workers as well, as 1980s neoliberal policy reforms facilitated a decline in union membership and strength and the deregulation of financial and insurance markets throughout the economy (Batt & Appelbaum, 2013; Kalleberg, 2015).

Additionally, the passage and implementation of 1990s immigration policy reforms resulted in a dramatic increase in the migration and settlement of non-White immigrants to the United States from Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. The influx of immigrants of color generated greater competition in occupations across all industries but particularly in low-skilled, low-paid service work—work that remains disproportionately stratified by race, nativity, class, and gender (Waters & Pineau, 2015). These large structural forces have contributed to the rise in precarious work and polarization across distinct groups of workers.

Finally, the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, exacerbated the precarity of Latino wage-workers, as unemployment rose, wages fell, and wealth declined (Kochhar, & Fry, & Taylor, 2011; Valdez, in press). For example, between 2008 and 2010, the unemployment rate more than doubled from 6.3% to 12.9% among Latinos, whereas the unemployment rate for non-Hispanic Whites was lower to begin with and remained so by 2010 (Kochhar & Fry, 2014; Pfeffer, Danziger, & Schoeni, 2013). Consequently, there has been a gradual but steady increase in the number of workers engaged in precarious labor throughout the economy and across all industries, deepening the exploitation and vulnerability of all workers (Kalleberg, 2009), but especially racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants (Kalleberg, 2011).

For undocumented Latino immigrants, precarity of employment is not new. Yet the structural forces that reshaped the labor market have also conditioned precarity in the informal economy. Though understudied, it is reasonable to conclude that in the current climate, the social exclusion, criminalization, and racialization of day laborers in the informal economy have increased their precarity and polarization on par with or greater than their wage-worker counterparts, driving migrants to retreat further into the shadows and into more exploitive work arrangements (Milkman & Ott, 2014; Ribas, 2015). This study focuses on survival entrepreneurs to investigate explicitly how precarity and polarization shape the work conditions and economic outcomes of day laborers in the informal economy.

Day Labor as Precarious Entrepreneurship

This study uses survey data on 116 day laborers from one semirural Texas town collected between 2012 and 2018, a 6-year period that began 4 years after the Great Recession. We assess the individual-level characteristics of day laborers to understand whether and how the rise in day labor activity is reflected in the day labor pool. A wealth of previous literature contends that day laborers are disproportionately young, undocumented Latino men, with few legal permanent residents or U.S. citizens who may be criminalized and racialized as such. Yet, in an era of an increasing supply and demand for precarious work, has the pool of day laborers grown more diverse? More diversity in the day labor pool may reflect greater precarity in the formal labor market, as unemployment or underemployment drives wage-workers to seek out part-time or full-time work in the informal economy.

Additionally, a more diverse day labor pool may produce polarization in working conditions or financial remuneration by legal status, as observed among wage-workers in low-skilled, low-wage occupations in the labor market (Finnigan, 2018). If on the other hand, the economic outcomes of day laborers remain the same, regardless of legal status, this suggests that the process of criminalization and racialization ensures that day labor is, simply put, a “bad job,” for anyone engaged in this activity.

Data and Method

This mixed-method study uses data from the Central Texas Day Laborer Survey (2012-2018). In addition to several fast-growing higher education institutions, employment in Central Texas is concentrated in construction, light manufacturing, services, and agriculture. Mexican-origin migration to the area increased significantly after the 1986 Immigration and Reform Control Act, as undocumented immigrants living in gateway cities like Houston adjusted their status and moved to Central Texas in search of better jobs and wages. The early 2000s marked a shift from Mexican to Central American migration (Alonzo, 2018). The Latino population has tripled since 1980, from 10% to 36% (Hong, Murga, Plankey-Videla, & Chavez, 2015).

The Central Texas Day Laborer Survey is an ethnosurvey that consisted of face-to-face interviews offered in Spanish or English and conducted by the second and later authors and several additional trained graduate students. The ethnosurvey took place at the day labor street corner site just north of downtown “Central Texas,” specifically, a four corner busy intersection nestled behind a gas station with an attached donut shop and laundromat. One of these streets in the heart of the Latino immigrant community is Highway 21, and thus the site is called “la 21” or “la esquina” (the corner). To get picked up for work, men arrive on the corners every day of the week around 6 a.m. They congregate in small groups of three to five men, segregated by nationality and race. There are a few spindly trees in the area that do not provide shade as the men stand outside until at least noon. In Texas, standing in 100-degree weather is exhausting. The men, however, prefer it to the spring rains that keep employers away.

To conduct the survey, a pair of trained, Latino-identified and bilingual interviewers respectfully approached day laborers, explaining the nature of the study, promising confidentiality (e.g., pseudonyms are used), and offering a $20 gift card to a local supermarket. The response rate was 75% in 2012; however, by 2018, it had declined to approximately 50%, correlated with an intensifying antiimmigrant climate as expressed by the day laborers. Not surprisingly, the rejection rate for citizen day laborers remained lower at about 10%, owing to their more secure legal status.

The ethnosurvey combined a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions that aimed to provide detailed information on labor force participation, industry and occupations, working conditions, days and hours worked, and income for a sample of street corner day laborers in Central Texas. We use descriptive statistics to explore the demographic characteristics of the sample and assess the diversity of day laborers in the postrecession context. We conduct a qualitative analysis to explore the working conditions and experiences of day laborers with attention to aspects of precarity and polarization. Finally, we employ regression methods to investigate the hourly income of day laborers net of legal status and salient background characteristics.

Legal Status

Participants were not directly asked for their legal status as this could have been perceived as invasive and threatening (Cornelius, 1982). Instead, we included and structured several questions so that day laborers had the opportunity to reveal their legal status at different stages of the interview process. For example, many volunteered their documented status if they had received amnesty in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act when asked about their migration history, such as the year they first come to the United States. Undocumented immigrants were more likely to reveal their legal status to questions about experiences with clients, their opinions about immigration policy, interactions with the law enforcement, or the future. Answers were cross-referenced with responses to later questions. This method of deriving legal status is in keeping with previous research (Cornelius, 1982; Hernández, Nguyen, Casanova, Suárez-Orozco, & Saetermoe, 2013) and generates both valid and reliable data (Massey, 1987b).

Descriptive and Qualitative Findings

Table 1 depicts descriptive statistics for sample respondents (N = 116). Given the gendered aspect of street corner day labor, the population from which the sample was drawn is made up of men only. The average age of respondents is 43 years old. Hourly income is $11.85 (confidence interval [$10.77, $12.93]), or $1.85 over the informal minimum hourly amount that day laborers typically request. About half of the respondents completed eighth grade or less (47.4%), compared with one quarter (28.1%) who completed some high school and one fifth who earned a high school diploma or its equivalent or more (23.7%). Most day laborers are Latino (88%) and undocumented (54.4%), followed by 8.8% Black Americans and 3.5% non-Hispanic Whites. Most day laborers report speaking some English or better, although a significant percentage speaks no English at all (16.8%). Most day laborers have resided in the United States for an average of 20 years. Finally, just under 40% of day laborers indicate that they had ever been arrested.

Table 1.

Descriptive Characteristics of the Sample (N = 116).

	Men
Dependent variables
Mean hourly income, $	11.85
Explanatory variables
Education, %
Eighth grade or less	47.4
Ninth grade to some high school	28.1
High school graduate or more	23.7
Race, %
Latino/a	87.7
Non-Hispanic Black	8.8
Non-Hispanic White	3.5
Speaks English, %
None	16.8
Some	57.5
Good or better	25.7
Mean age, years	43.1
Unauthorized, %	54.4
Mean years in the United States (Foreign-born Latino)	19.7
Married, %	54.4
Ever been arrested, %	38.8
Number of cases	116

Source. Central Texas Day Laborer Survey (Waves 1 and 2), 2012-2018.

Diverse Characteristics of Day Laborers in Postrecession Context

Most day laborers are undocumented Latino immigrants, in keeping with previous literature; yet we observe diversity in the day labor pool that challenges the mainstream view of homogeneity by time in the United States, legal status, nativity, and race. Moreover, we show differences in day labor activity traced to the postrecession context in two domains: (a) day labor as primary or supplementary work and (b) labor violations by legal status and nativity.

Day laborers are typified as “birds of passage” who work informally and temporarily in the United States with an eye to returning to the country of origin (Piore, 1979). Against this characterization, recently arrived immigrants comprise less than one third (29.8%) of street corner day laborers. Moreover, fully one third of recently arrived day laborers use this activity not as their sole occupation, but as a part-time strategy to compensate for low wages and/or underemployment in the labor market (34.4%).

Kevin is representative of this subgroup. A 56-year-old, undocumented Honduran immigrant, Kevin arrived in the United States in 2012 and is employed by a cement pouring contractor. When business at the cement company is slow, he goes to la 21 to seek work and supplement his earnings. In the last week, Kevin landed two jobs over 3 days for $10 an hour, the informal minimum standard hourly income that street corner day laborers agree to charge.

One fourth (24.5%) of the immigrant day laborers surveyed have been in the United States for an intermediate length of time (11-20 years). These day laborers overwhelmingly speak English (91%), and approximately one third (34.8%) work full-time. Given their intermediate length of residence and proficiency in English, this subgroup was less likely to report instances of income theft or difficulty securing jobs than recently arrived day laborers. They were also more likely to secure an hourly income over $10 an hour. For example, Diego is a 31-year-old Mexican immigrant who arrived 14 years ago. In the last month, Diego has gone out to la esquina just about every day and obtained four jobs in an array of fields, including roofing, moving furniture, landscaping, and painting. Most day laborers hired for construction work are not asked to do specialized work. However, having plentiful experience roofing, Diego was able to capitalize on his skill, earning $15 per hour for 8 hours of work. While his next two jobs did not require specialized knowledge, he also earned well-above average hourly income for moving furniture and landscaping.

Almost half of the immigrant day laborers have resided in the United States for 21 years or more (45.7%). Of this subgroup, less than half are undocumented (41.9%). Although this latter group does not reflect the traditional conceptualization of day laborers as young, recently arrived, or majority undocumented, other characteristics are in line with prior research. Specifically, all long-term Latino immigrants are of Mexican origin with limited education, and for 42% of this subgroup, day labor is their primary occupation. For example, José, a mild-mannered 57-year-old unauthorized immigrant, works as a day labor for his primary occupation. However, he has struggled to secure work. In the last month, he was picked up only three times—twice to clean houses inside and out, and once to help with a 1-week remodeling job. The week of this interview, José had arrived at the corner every day but did not manage to land even one job. Still, he prefers day labor work to wage-work, which he states is more difficult. In some ways, then, José and members of this long-term subgroup typify day laborers presented in earlier research (e.g., Valenzuela, 2003), suggestive of a shift in the current economic context.

Another difference from previous studies is that two thirds of the men consider day labor to be their primary source of income, whereas one third consider day labor work as a secondary job. Full-time day laborers reported going to la equina in search of work 24 to 28 days the previous month. Part-time day laborers are employed in construction, food service, or landscaping, but when there is no work or the work slows down, they come to la esquina. These men work as day laborers typically 5 to 10 days a month. Findings suggest that the precarity in the labor market may have a spillover effect in the informal economy, increasing the numbers of (part-time) day laborers.

Citizen Day Laborers

In the past 3 years, U.S.-born citizens have been observed frequenting the day laborer corner. While U.S.-born Latino citizens, a small but also growing subgroup, tend to go unnoticed by the research team, U.S.-born non-Hispanic White and Black day laborers are often visibly distinct from their Latino day laborer counterparts, with respect to ascribed characteristics associated with their “racial uniform” (Takaki, 1998). We interviewed 10 Latino citizens, 2 of whom were naturalized, as well as 4 U.S.-born non-Hispanic White and 11 Black men.

U.S.-born citizens, whether Black, White, or Latino, are rarely included in day labor studies, especially in the Southwest, because these groups do not typically participate in this activity. The mere presence of American citizen day laborers in the Southwest provides evidence that the day labor pool is more diverse than in the past.

Citizen respondents confirmed that they had difficulty in finding wage-work. Yet the reasons offered had less to do with a lack of job opportunities and more to do with a shared group affiliation; specifically, 60% of citizens disclosed that they had a criminal record, compared with 22% of immigrant day laborers. As Devah Pager (2003) has argued, the mark of a criminal record often prevents formerly incarcerated men from participating in the formal labor market. In fact, one of the White American day laborers volunteered that, due to probation check-ins and other court-mandated appointments, he was not able to hold down a 9 a.m.to 5 p.m. job. For these precarious citizens, then, street corner day labor offered improved circumstances to earn an income than wage-work, even though they conceded that day labor did not provide sufficient work or income. They believed that citizenship (legal status), English proficiency, and earning a high school diploma did not increase their hourly income markedly.

Deteriorating Working Conditions for Day Laborers in the Postrecession Context

Notably, day labor work is not reliable. About 30% of all day laborers did not land a job in the previous week, whereas 60% secured one to three jobs during this period. Day labor is also highly exploitive. Three quarters of day laborers report experiencing some type of work violation, including not being paid, being paid less than promised, made to work longer hours than agreed, and being insulted, threatened, or beaten. Income theft is the most common labor abuse reported, even though day labor falls under the 1935 Fair Labor Standards Act provision requiring federal minimum wage (U.S. Department of Labor). For example, Juan, a 50-year-old undocumented man who has been in the United States for over 21 years, noted that he had not been paid for a whole week of labor, and another time had been paid the equivalent of $3 an hour. Adding insult to injury, income theft experiences regularly involve interactions with clients that are suffused with insults.

The use of racialized insults and threats appears to be a strategy by clients to force day laborers into accepting lower pay than that to which they agreed. Martin, an undocumented 46-year-old Honduran man who has been in the United States for 13 years, shared his experience, concluding, “Everyday they’re insulting you, calling you wetback, everyday usually. [They say] ‘If you don’t work, we’ll deport you.’” Another unauthorized Mexican, Pedro, who has been in the United States for over 20 years, recalled several incidents of income theft,

the first day they took me [for a job], I worked from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Got $20; that was 2 years ago . . . [Another time], they came and told me they were going to give me $80 but then they asked for papers at the end of the day. They trick you.

Legal permanent residents and citizens also faced verbal abuse and income theft, consistent with the criminalization and racialization of day laborers and day labor activity. Regardless of their more privileged legal status, these day laborers often capitulated to the abuse, cognizant of their disadvantaged social location and lack of means to make clients pay.

José, an undocumented immigrant in the United States for over 40 years, stated that he prefers day labor to wage-work, even though he acknowledged that conditions are deteriorating. He recounted several instances of work abuses in the recent past, including a 15-day job (over 200 hours) where his client failed to pay him, and another instance where the client left on the pretense of securing payment, never to return. José concluded that while clients regularly claim to prefer Mexican immigrant workers, they regularly discriminate against them, “Some employers will have us in the sun [all day] and [then] call us dirty.”

José was also explicit about the rise in antiimmigrant sentiment in the postrecession context and current political climate. The last two administrations have targeted undocumented immigrants for deportations, and José lives under this constant fear. Because of the negative reception context, José claims that clients now feel empowered to “kick the Mexicans.” Of late he is reconsidering his options, weighing an opportunity to pick sweet potatoes in Mississippi for $800/week plus room and board. Like José, Miguel, an older, long-term resident, has also experienced client abuse and difficulty securing work. Unlike José, however, Miguel is a legal permanent resident who speaks English fluently and earned a high school diploma. Though his legal status, education, and English skills might suggest an improved job situation, since these human capital characteristics are often valued in the secondary labor market (Chiswick, 1991), it appears that human capital may not be associated with higher income among day laborers working in the informal labor market. Miguel reported frequent incidents of work abuse and income theft, noting that although he is a legal permanent resident, clients and law enforcement harass him on the street corner and treat him like a “wetback” and a “criminal.”

Three fourths of citizen day laborer reported being mistreated by clients. Almost two thirds recounted experiences with underpayment and income theft for completed work. Although the sample size is too small to generalize, U.S.-born White citizen day laborers reported better treatment from clients and other day laborers. Dan, who moved to Texas from California, even expressed enjoyment for the job, “Even if I do not get work, it’s my social club, my donut shop.” He concluded that the immigrant men accept and joke with him, granting him the nicknames “güero” (fair-skinned) and “California.” Clearly, the experience of this White American day laborer is inconsistent with the mostly negative experiences relayed by Latino immigrants.

Like Latinos, the 11 Black men en la esquina often experienced outright racism by clients. As one young Black man said, “It’s kind of racial out here. It is tough out here.” Another was told to “go back to Africa” by a potential client. While most Black men obtained several jobs the week they were surveyed, they reported poor treatment by clients that they attributed to their race. Discriminatory treatment was further compounded by racial profiling by law enforcement. One Black day laborer reported being arrested for walking on the wrong side of the street. Although the racism experienced by Black day laborers is unique, it resembles the racialized antiimmigrant rhetoric, discrimination, and heightened labor violations experienced by Latino immigrants, whether undocumented, legal permanent residents, or naturalized citizens.

Quantitative Analysis

We use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression methods to examine the relationship between the dependent variable, hourly earnings, and undocumented legal status among all self-employed day laborers, with a second analysis for immigrants only. Table 2, Model 1 assesses the main effects of this relationship. Table 2, Model 2 includes a consideration of legal permanent residency. Table 2, Model 3 includes undocumented legal status, legal permanent residency, and adjusts for influential background characteristics as control variables in the final analysis. Control variables included: age, a continuous variable between 18 and 75 years of age and age squared; educational attainment, a categorical variable that included completing eighth grade or less (reference), ninth grade to some high school, and high school graduate or more; married status (1 = married; 0 = not married—single, divorced, widowed); and English-speaking proficiency (1 = speaks some English to speaks very well; 0 = does not speak English).¹ Table 3, Model 1 assesses the main effects of undocumented status among immigrants only. Table 3, Model 2 includes immigrants’ length of residence in the United States (recent = “10 years or less,” intermediate = “11 to 20,” and long-term = “20 years or longer”). Table 3, Model 3 includes undocumented legal status, length of residence, and adjusts for influential background characteristics. All analyses were conducted using Stata 15 (StataCorp, 2017).

Table 2.

The Effect of Legal Status on Day Laborer Hourly Earnings (N = 116).

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
	β (SE)	β (SE)	β (SE)
Independent variables
Undocumented Latino	−.145* (.061)	−.273*** (.084)	−.260** (.096)
LPR/naturalized Latino		−.203* (.092)	−.140 (.193)
Control variables
Age			.000 (1.000)
Age²			−.000 (.783)
Education
9th To some high school			−.100 (.076)
High school grade or more			−.074 (.089)
Married			−.113 (.069)
Speaks some English or better			−.065 (.086)
Constant	2.49*** (.045)	2.619*** (.073)	2.862*** (.357)
R ²	.053	.096	.156

Note. Standard errors are in parentheses.

Source. Central Texas Day Laborer Survey, 2012-2018.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 3.

The Effect of Undocumented Status on Latino Immigrant Day Laborer Hourly Earnings (n = 94).

	Model 1		Model 2	Model 3
	β (SE)		β (SE)	β (SE)
Independent variables
Undocumented	−.070 (.056)		−.066 (.065)	−.086 (.067)
Years in the United States
11 Years to 20 years			.120 (.072)	.138 (.082)
21 Years or more			.045 (.071)	.076 (.088)
Control variables
Age				.006 (.015)
Age²				−.000 (.000)
Education
9th To some high school				−.105 (.067)
High school grade or more				.019 (.083)
Married				−.096 (.059)
Speaks some English or better				−.098 (.073)
Constant	2.416*** (.046)		2.364*** (.077)	2.444*** (.306)
R ²	.018	.051	.144

Note. Standard errors are in parentheses.

Source. Central Texas Day Laborer Survey, 2012-2018.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Day Labor Hourly Income

We used information provided by respondents on the number of days worked per week, number of jobs in a given week, number of jobs in a given month, and the number of total and hourly income for each job, to determine average hourly income. Preliminary analysis revealed that the mean number of days day laborers attempted to secure a job in the past week was 4 days, and the mean number of jobs day laborers worked in the past week was 2. A higher percentage (42%) report day labor as a primary occupation, whereas 38% seek work on 2 days or less. These results suggest that day labor is a full-time occupation during the week and a part-time occupation during the weekends for a sizeable number of day laborers. Because this population is composed of a significant number of part-time and full-time entrepreneurs, we did not use weekly or monthly income to determine returns and instead opted to construct a measure of hourly income based on the average pay for two jobs during the past week, which is more appropriate given the contingent aspect of this economic activity. We used the natural log of hourly income in the regression models to reduce skew, as the natural log is more normally distributed, and for ease of interpretation, as the natural log allows us to approximate percentage change in income as measured by a one-unit increase in the coefficients.

Quantitative Findings

Table 2 shows OLS regressions of the relationship between undocumented status and hourly income among all day laborers (Model 1), net of the controls (Models 2-3). We found support for the expectation that undocumented legal status has a marked effect on the hourly income of day laborers (Model 1). Model 1 shows that undocumented day laborers earn an hourly income that is approximately 15% less than their “documented” immigrant and U.S.-born counterparts. Model 2 distinguished legal permanent residents from undocumented and U.S.-born day laborers. This model shows a significant decrease (27%) in the hourly earnings of undocumented day laborers, and a 20% decrease in the hourly earnings of legal permanent residents compared against U.S.-born day laborers. Model 3 depicts these relationships net of the controls. Undocumented legal status is the only variable in the full model that reveals a marked decrease in the hourly income of day laborers (β = −.157, p < .05).

Table 3 Models 1 to 3 depict the OLS regression outcomes for undocumented status and hourly income among Latino immigrants only. Findings demonstrate that undocumented legal status has no marked effect on the hourly earnings of Latino immigrant day laborers (Model 1), and this nonsignificant relationship is maintained after including immigrants’ length of residence in the United States (Model 2) and adjusting for influential background characteristics (Model 3).

Discussion

The findings of the descriptive and qualitative analyses show that today’s day laborers are more diverse than in the past. Although day laborers have been characterized as recently arrived undocumented immigrants (Valenzuela, 2001, 2003), the day laborers en la esquina also include long-term residents, legal permanent residents, naturalized citizens, and even U.S.-born Latino, Black, and White citizens. Qualitative findings revealed exploitive and abusive working conditions consistent with a process of racialization and criminalization, including verbal threats of deportation, name-calling, income theft, and, since the street corner is a public space, increased racial profiling from law enforcement. Such abuses can be traced to the demonstrable rise in antiimmigrant sentiment in the societal and governmental reception context and the heightened period of economic uncertainty associated with the Great Recession.

The findings of the quantitative analyses confirm that undocumented day laborers are disproportionately likely to earn a lower hourly income when compared with U.S.-born Latino, Black, and White day laborers. Yet, when the relationship between hourly income and legal status was assessed for Latino immigrants only, the quantitative analysis revealed that the income of undocumented immigrants was not markedly different from that of legal permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Overall, the findings of the qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest that survival entrepreneurs in the informal economy are experiencing greater precarity and polarization in their self-employment activity, in keeping with precarious labor trends observed in the formal labor market. Against prior research (Herrera, 2016; Peck & Theodore, 2008), however, observed polarization among survival entrepreneurs is not based on legal status but rather race (Latino) and nativity (foreign-born). It appears that all Latino immigrant day laborers are criminalized and racialized as “illegal” with consequent, negative, effects on their hourly income more so than their U.S.-born counterparts.

Conclusion

Recent research suggests that the demand for day labor is growing because of greater precarity in the economy associated with structural changes including globalization, neoliberal reforms, modifications to immigration policy (Kalleberg, 2009, 2011), and more recently the Great Recession. The effects of these structural forces have affected and are affected by the context of reception in the United States more generally, and Central Texas in particular. Across the United States, incidents of antiimmigrant sentiment, racism, and discrimination based on legal status, nativity, and race, are on the rise; characteristic of an increasingly negative societal reception context confronting undocumented immigrants and racial minorities (García, 2017). In keeping with the research on the precarization of the economy (Alberti et al., 2018), our findings confirm the notion that a diverse group of survival entrepreneurs in the informal economy are engaged in precarious work, and although our study shows increased polarization, our evidence suggests it is rooted in race and nativity rather than legal status.

While the jobless recovery has increased both the supply and demand for precarious workers, in the case of day laborers in Central Texas, we find a third potential mechanism at work: the mark of a criminal record (Pager, 2003). Although data limitations prevented us from investigating how a criminal record or being formerly incarcerated shaped income returns, our qualitative data suggest that formerly incarcerated citizens unable to find or keep work in the formal labor market seem to be transitioning to the (limited) opportunities provided by day labor self-employment. The case of formerly incarcerated citizen day laborers, along with the rise in U.S.-born Latino, White, and Black American day laborers, raises important questions regarding how multiple dimentions of identity and group affiliation shape day labor outcomes. This study brings new insights to the study of day labor work in the United States in an era of increasing precarity in the economy and encourages future research to better understand how structural changes in the economy and society shape survival entrepreneurship.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Elizabeth Fussell for guidance on developing the survey instrument and Edmundo García, Mario Páez-Arellano, Fernanda Preciado, David Orta, and Juan Salinas for research assistance.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Zulema Valdez is professor of sociology at University of California, Merced.

Nancy Plankey-Videla is an associate professor of sociology at Texas A&M University.

Aurelia Lorena Murga is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Texas at El Paso.

Angelica C. Menchaca is a graduate student at Texas A&M University.

Cindy Barahona is a graduate student at Texas A&M University.

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