Occupational Stressors and Access to COVID-19 Resources among Commuting and Residential Hispanic/Latino Farmworkers in a US-Mexico Border Region

Abstract

Hispanic/Latino and migrant workers experience high degrees of occupational stress, constitute most of California’s agricultural workforce, and were among the most impacted populations by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, relatively little is known about the occupational stress experienced by farmworkers who commute daily between the US and Mexico. Occupational stress is considered an imbalance between the demands at work and the capabilities to respond in the context of the workforce. The goal of this study is to determine the type and severity of stressors in daytime and resident farmworkers and how COVID-19 vaccination status contributes to these stressors. Interviews containing the Migrant Farmworker Stress Inventory (MSWSI) were administered to a sample of 199 Hispanic/Latino farmworkers in Imperial County, a multi-billion-dollar agriculture sector in the US. Principal factor analysis differentiated latent factors in the MFSWI. Simple linear regression models and correlations identified associations between MFWSI scores and sample characteristics. The MFWSI reduced to five stressor domains: Health and Well-Being Vulnerabilities, Inadequate Standards of Living/Unknown Conditions of Living, Working Conditions, Working Environment, and Language Barriers. Approximately 40 percent of the respondents reported significant stress levels, with foreign-born (p = 0.014) and older respondents (p = 0.0415) being more likely to experience elevated stress regardless of their nighttime residence. We found that Spanish-language COVID-19 outreach might have been particularly effective for workers who reported high stress from English-language communication (p = 0.001). Moreover, our findings point to the importance of worker and human rights to mitigate the high-stress foreign-born workers who live in Mexico and the US experience.