Labor shortages and the unmaking of class in Mississippi’s poultry plants

Following 2019 immigration raids at seven Mississippi poultry plants and the beginning of mass infection in meatpacking plants early in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi meatpackers announced a “labor shortage” and lobbied for government intervention to force workers back into the plants. Like many newly declared “essential” workers, some Mississippi poultry workers pressed their advantage, walking out for higher wages. But barriers to worker unity emerged, highlighting ways that Indigenous Guatemalan immigrant workers and US-born Black workers are differentially exploited by the industry, creating deeply felt differences along lines of race and citizenship. Comparing the events of 2019 and 2020 to earlier moments in which Mississippi’s poultry capitalists periodically declared “labor shortages” to divide and reshuffle their workforce, this paper explores how poultry corporations use their influence within state institutions to leverage criminalization, debt, and the deprivation of basic subsistence to recapture workers. Finally, we explore how workers of divergent backgrounds struggle to “make” class relationships across difference and leverage collective power to challenge meatpacking corporations’ exploitative practices.