Farmworkers as an Environmental Justice Issue: Similarities and Differences

This paper endeavors to situate farmworker issues within a broader context of issues in environmental regulation. Environmental regulation is itself a subset of a broader universe of environmental justice concerns. In approaching the issue this way, the author highlights some of the similarities farmworker issues share with other regulatory environmental justice issues. The author highlights the dramatic differences as well. Leaving to others the task of describing the dire conditions of the farmworker, the author takes two important examples of regulatory mechanisms designed to protect farmworkers and describe some of the commonalities. The two sites of regulatory activity used are standard setting and enforcement