Immigrant vulnerability in high-risk industry: A socio-occupational examination of counties with large meatpacking plants in Iowa and Nebraska

The decade of 1990-2000 saw a 53 percent increase in the number of Hispanics to 35.3 million, 20.6 million whom are of Mexican origin, signifying the fastest growing cohort in the U.S. today. This decade has also seen a surge in Hispanic migration to the Midwest region, particularly to communities with large meatpacking plants (LMPPs). Although overall literary consensus underscores the fact that this educationally disadvantaged ethnic group is over-represented in service and labor-based industries, few attempts have been made to empirically link their growing participation in high-risk industries like meatpacking with socioeconomic and occupational indicators of immigrant vulnerability