They leave their kidneys in the fields : illness, injury, and illegality among U.S. farmworkers /

Using ethnographic methods, anthropologist Horton (Univ. of Colorado, Denver) brilliantly examines migrant farmworkers' health in California's Central Valley. The leading cause of work-related death for farmworkers is heat stroke, and Horton follows a group of farmworkers over ten years in the corn and melon fields to understand why. By investigating policies that place farmworkers at risk in the fields, she offers new insights into the multiple factors that contribute to the high rates of heat death among them. Instead of the traditional viewpoints often found in occupational studies of farmworker health that focus on individual behavioral choices that place farmworkers at risk for heat illness, Horton uses ethnographic immersion as an important research method to illuminate farmworkers' viewpoints on what causes heat death and illness in the field. By capturing the narratives of farmworkers in vivid detail, she examines the causes of farmworkers' vulnerability at work, income strategies migrants use to survive, government policies that put farmworker families at risk, high rates of undiagnosed cardiovascular disease, and the cumulative effects of chronic heat illness. Horton keenly advocates for measures to remedy farmworkers' health, such as ending policies of agricultural exceptionalism, reforming the health care and immigration systems, and promoting labor policies to improve farmworkers' health. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Students, researchers, practitioners. --Debra E. Bill, West Chester University