“They See Us As Machines:” The Experience of Recent Immigrant Women in the Low Wage Informal Labor Sector

This study explores the organization of work and occupational health risk as elicited from recently immigrated women (n = 8) who have been in the US for less than three years and employed in informal work sectors such as cleaning and factory work in the greater Boston area in Massachusetts. Additional interviews (n = 8) with Community Key Informants with knowledge of this sector and representatives of temporary employment agencies in the area provides further context to the interviews conducted with recent immigrant women. These results were also compared with our immigrant occupational health survey, a large project that spawned this study. Responses from the study participants suggest health outcomes consistent with being a day-laborer scholarship, new immigrant women are especially at higher risk within these low wage informal work sectors. A difference in health experiences based on ethnicity and occupation was also observed. Low skilled temporary jobs are fashioned around meeting the job performance expectations of the employer; the worker’s needs are hardly addressed, resulting in low work standards, little worker protection and poor health outcomes. The rising prevalence of non-standard employment or informal labor sector requires that policies or labor market legislation be revised to meet the needs presented by these marginalized workers.