Dual frames of reference: naturalization, rationalization and justification of poor working conditions. A comparative study of migrant agricultural work in Northern California and South-Eastern Norway

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes how agents such as agricultural migrants, agricultural employers and local community representatives apply the dual frame of reference (DFR) to naturalize, rationalize and justify the presence of exploitative labor practices for agricultural migrants. The paper gives a qualitative account of social dynamics in two agricultural-dependent communities located in Northern California and South-Eastern Norway. Qualitative one-on-one interviews with agricultural migrant workers (n = 11), employers (n = 10) and community representatives (n = 12) were conducted in English and Spanish. Our findings demonstrate how DFR is utilized by employers to justify labor strategies that rely on migrant workers, employees to rationalize their participation in exploitive work, and by local community representatives to naturalize the exploitative labor practices of migrant workers in their community. Our research findings further add to the analysis by suggesting that the frames of reference are dynamic based on changes of material conditions in the home country. Lastly, we find a third frame of reference focused on the future of the agricultural worker and the hopes for future generations. Combined, these perspectives add to the understanding of the disempowerment of workers, lack of successful changes and overall, upkeeping of exploitative migrant labor systems in the agricultural industries and beyond.


Introduction
In this article, we compare research focused on low-wage agricultural work in Northern California and South-Eastern Norway.While there are some differences in each locality, both communities are highly dependent on agricultural work as a dominant source of their economy.Both cases clearly outline how two distinct communities are similarly impacted by enhanced globalization and contemporary markets that lead to steep inequities in social, political and economic worlds, thus further exploiting the most marginalized workers.It is uncommon for locals to accept agricultural work, and therefore each locality heavily relies on migrant 1 labor to sustain their agricultural industries.This work is typically characterized by precarious and tough labor conditions such as long hours, physically demanding work, dirty conditions, low-wages and harsh climate conditions that impact work hours and work availability (Bock, Osti, and Ventura 2016;Holmes 2013;Rye and Scott 2018;Scott 2017).Also, in other matters these localities serve as illustrative cases of contemporary migrant labor systems that has become the backbone of the global food value chains feeding the world; such as development of intensified production regimes reliant on flexible and salaried labor, non-standard short-term employment contracts, and a labor force poorly integrated in off-work social domains (Corrado, de Castro, and Perrotta 2017;Gertel and Sippel 2014;Rye and O'Reilly 2020).
While the exploitatie nature of the agricultural sector is well documented, as are the plentiful initiatives to reform labor relations at the farmsby states, trade unions, civil society agents and migrants themselveslabor practices and structures appears to be continuously reproduced at the farm level (Rye and O'Reilly 2020 ;Papadopoulos, Fratsea, and Mavrommatis 2018).So why do immigrants continue to accept and even justify their precarious work in the receiving country?Why do other involved agents at the local level, such as employers and other stakeholders in the agricultural communities, through their social practices participate in the upkeeping of exploitative migrant labor systems in food production?
In this paper, we answer these research questions by exploring processes of naturalization, rationalization and justification of precarious and physically demanding agricultural work conditions through the dual frame of reference (DFR) theory.Naturalization is the internalization of social asymmetries that we recognize and perceive as natural.In this paper, we show how the social order of labor conditions is seen as natural, pre-given and not object of alternation, and the inequalities are thus made invisible and normal for all involved (Bourdieu 1997;1998;Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).Further rationalization, the action of attempting to explain behavior with reasons instead of tradition, values or emotions (Weber 2019(Weber [1921]]), works to portray labor conditions not just as natural but also preferable, while justification is the action whereby status quo are not only natural and logical but in effect also right, or at least, morally acceptable.Combined, these are process that explains the prevalence of exploitative labor conditions and allow for their continuous reproduction by agents, both workers, employers and other social agents.
The paper argues that essential to these processes are the DFR (hereafter DFR), which is understood as the phenomenon when immigrantsand any other agentscompare the conditions in the receiving country, also referred to as the second frame of reference, with conditions in immigrants home country, referred to as the first frame of reference (Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1995).We provide a theoretical elaboration of the DFR perspective, which includes its use by others than the migrants and also helps to understand not only migrant behavior but the larger scale reproduction of exploitative wage and working conditions.

Dual frame of reference theory
Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (1995) explain that immigrants come to a new country with hope and see the receiving country as the land of opportunities, and focus on the negative aspects of the life in the place they left behind.While from 'the perspective of the receiving country the immigrant's living circumstances may seem "poor" and "disadvantaged," in many cases immigrants see their lot as having improved from what it was in their country of origin' (Suárez-Orozco 1989).While their work conditions in the receiving country may be exploitative, migrants in our study, and in accordance with accounts in the research literature on migrant farm labor, continuously explained that the situation is better than the conditions in their home country.
Early variations of this phenomenon are described by Piore (1979) who concluded that immigrants accepted working in a secondary labor market in a receiving country because their main point of reference was the place of origin.As immigrants are navigating their new home, and their new job, they are viewing and situating their experiences in comparison to their country of origin.And while wages, for example, may be low compared to what is expected in the receiving country, immigrants may focus on the fact that wages are excellent compared to what wages were in their home country; this is what Nieswand (2014) refers to as the 'status paradox of migration'.Immigrants also believe that they have more and better opportunities to get ahead in the receiving country, such as the USA, than in their home country when making comparisons of the 'here' and the 'there' (Suárez-Orozco 1989).Louie (2012), who studied the immigrant American dream concluded that even immigrants in the USA who were experiencing similar conditions as their home country or were doing even worse financially expressed optimism about the new country.These immigrants deployed a DFR to situate both the long-term rewards and the long-term costs of post migration lives, and their comparison was not just in economic terms but also in the non-economic domain such as overall perceptions about violence, national security and freedoms available in the US (Louie 2012).Nieswand (2012) studied immigrants who experience a loss of social status in the receiving country because their educational and professional qualifications from their home country are undervalued in the receiving country; even when immigrants are forced to accept positions in the low-income segments of the labor market, they are still able to build up symbolic representations of a middle-class status in their countries of origin.In other words, while they are losing social status in the receiving country, at the same time they are gaining status in their home country through their ability to send remittances to their families (Nieswand 2012).Ogbu (1991) speculates that immigrants rationalize their subordination and exploitation because they do not consider themselves a part of the stratification system in their host country and instead see themselves as outsiders.Even if they are at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, lack political power and have low social prestige, they do not develop a low opinion of themselves (Perez 2004).As Piore (1979) notes, immigrants in low-status jobs are a rare exception to the general rule of occupational position shaping agents' subjective identity.
Other researchers have expanded on the DFR.Orupabo, Drange, and Abrahamsen (2019), suggest that the DFR is different for children of immigrants; who use both the DFR to 'compare their achievements with the poorer conditions in their parents' home countries, and (2) a single frame of reference, to compare their achievements with their peers with ethnic majority background'.Furthermore, the DFR can also have a symbolic meaning to second-generation immigrants, even when they do not have actual transnational connections to the parents' homeland (Louie 2012).Perez (2004), argues that first-generation immigrants may have not had time to internalize the negative effects of discrimination or other poor conditions.However, as second-generation immigrants begin to acculturate, DFR becomes less influential and US-based frames of reference become more important.Piso (2016) argues that even first-generation immigrants continuously reevaluate their situation based on evolving factors, and with time the significance of the home country may weaken.
While each scholar adds a unique nuance they all outline a similar pattern, how well individuals think they are doing or what conditions they are willing to accept depends on their comparison with others in locations that they transition from, and the lenses through which they observe and interpret social phenomena (Louie 2012;Orupabo, Drange, and Abrahamsen 2019).Social positioning and comparisons will be influenced by professional status, lifestyles, personal trajectories and resources held and acquired at different points of the life course (Salamonska and Winiarska 2020).The dual frame among highly mobile individuals is more than in the context of origin and destination, but onward destinations and global scale (Faist and Bilecen 2015) and that the experience of being mobile is used to construct comparisons concerning lifestyles and aspirations.
The DFR has implications beyond individuals.The low-wage agricultural industry depends on immigrant's DFR, and the constant assessment of work conditions as relative to home country conditions, to succeed.Rogaly (2008) argues that the intensification of horticultural production and governments push to reduce produce prices has increased the demand for international migrants who are accommodating to demands and will accept work for low pay.Waldinger and Lichter (2003), explain that immigrants, unlike locals, are not yet in the know, and not yet aware of the conditions such as pay, status of job or type of work involved that may be stigmatizing or seen as poor.Employers are keenly aware of this and are able to see immigrants as more accommodating, than those born in the USA at different types of jobs (Waldinger and Lichter 2003).In fact, some employers will use nativity and ethnicity as a proxy for workers' attitudes toward authority, (Baxter-Reid 2016; MacKenzie and Forde 2009) and less-entitled status make them ideal candidates to take on one of society's most dirty and tough jobs (Waldinger and Lichter 2003).Shubin and Findlay (2014) further argue that recruitment agencies also play a big role in the production of the 'ideal' migrant worker.In fact, in order to make a profit, they use the DFR to identify the right flexible worker to connect to employers (McCollum and Findlay 2018).
In the larger picture, the availability of migrant workers willing to accept sub-standard wage and work conditions also have implications for the spatial division of labor across nations and the North/South divide.In Harvey's terminology, the 'import' of inexpensive labor is an alternative to the outsourcing of production to low-cost countries, the 'in situ' version of the spatial fix (Harvey 2001a;2001b;Scott 2013a).Könönen (2019) argues that migrants' willingness to take on precarious jobs cannot be distinguished from immigration policies that contribute to hierarchies in the labor market; in other words, being unable to change immigration status and requirement to have income requirements to attempt to change status, decreases opportunity for bargaining power in the labor market.While larger forces shape the labor market, the individual subjective appraisal of these and acting on their basis, is essential to the upholding of capitalist mode of production, in agriculture as in other industries.
In this paper, we study these processes from the agent level of analysis, and analyze how a variety of agents at the community levelmigrants but also employers and community representativesapply the DFR to naturalize, rationalize and justify their participation in the exploitative labor practices, and in more detail describe the logics of various frames of reference, and how these, beyond the DFR concept's anchoring in social-psychological mechanisms and most often are employed to make sense of individual-level behavior, are related to structural properties of the agricultural industry and the upkeeping of these.

Methods
Qualitative data for this article comes from two rural agricultural communities in Northern California (USA) and South-Eastern Norway.The two regions share a reliance on permanent and seasonal migrant farm workers to sustain their agricultural economies and provide an opportunity to do a comparison analysis on two different communities and labor markets.However, the localities are also different in some regards that adds to the understanding of how contextual aspects, for instance immigration regulations, impact the workings of the DFR social mechanisms.
Study Locations: The community in Northern California has a population of approximately 40,000 people.The racial ethnic breakdown of residents are: 67% White and 28% Latino.Common agricultural jobs include: vineyard work, nurseries and harvesting olive trees but the economy is largely dependent on the vineyard and wine-making industry.Individuals who have permanent jobs in agriculture are directly employed by either vineyard owners or vineyard management companies.Employees work year-round to prune, harvest, install irrigation and do other work to maintain the vineyards.In order to meet the high demands during the harvest season (August-October) extra temporary workers are recruited from Central California or other surrounding communities.Some contractors bring workers from Mexico with H2B visas, a US guest worker program that admits a limited number of migrant workers to the US on defined conditions, including their return to after a given period.In 2018, when the interviews were conducted, the normal hourly wage was about $15.50 but during the harvest the hourly wage was approximately $25-$30 per hour.While farm work in the location certainly holds many of the 'gruelling' characteristics (Guthman 2017), it may not be among the most exploitative case compared to others in the US agricultural industries.The majority of agricultural workers who are employed year-round are from Mexico, live in the community, are an aging population who have lived in the community for over 20 years and have established families.
During the time of the interviews, the community in South-Eastern Norway had a population of approximately 26,000 people.Labor immigrants were employed across several sectors of the local economy, and according to administrative numbers the main sending countries were Poland, Somalia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Iraq, Sweden and Vietnam.The types of agricultural production in this community include vegetables, berries, fruit and grain.There are no definitive figures on the number of seasonal nor permanent migrants in the agricultural.However, we know from our fieldwork that most workers were from Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries, and with smaller share of Vietnamese workers; most labor migrants are seasonal migrants.Currently, immigrants from the European Economic Area (EEA, which covers the European Union and a few other countries, including Norway), do not need to apply for a working visa or permit to work in Norway, they only have to register with the police within three months of arrival.The registration is free and it makes it easy to start work as soon as workers arrive in Norway.Family members are able to come to Norway and after five years they may be granted permanent right of residence.For labor migrants coming from outside the EEA the procedure is more difficult.Migrants need to apply for a residence permit with the immigration authorities, which costs approximately $650USD and have a document proving that they have full-time employment arranged.The permit is only valid for 6 months and if they switch jobs they have to apply again.Family members are not entitled to come, and it is not possible for these labor migrants to easily become residents.At the time of the interviews, the minimum hourly salary of 'long-term' employees (6 or more months) was about $15USD, while short-term employees (less than 6 months) received $14USD per hour.
Data Collection: The methods utilized to capture this data include 33 semi-structured qualitative interviews in an agricultural community in Northern California (US) (N = 15) and South-Eastern Norway (N = 18); all of the interviews were conducted in 2018.The interviews included the perspectives of migrant agricultural workers (N = 11), agricultural worker employers (N = 10) and community representatives (N = 12), interviews equally divided between both communities.Research participants were recruited via word of mouth and interviewed if it was determined that they were considered 'key informants'; persons with knowledge about the topics in question and access to other agents' experiences and evaluations of these, for instance farm workers with longer stays and extended social networks in the locality, or farmers and others in key roles in the local agricultural environment.Importantly, community representatives were drawn from a variety of positions in the study localities and often also varied greatly in their views on migrant workers' experiences (e.g. trade unionist versus employer association spokespersons), however in the discussion we primarily present what turned out to be largely unanimous references to the DFR perspective and its workings.
In the Northern California community, one of the authors conducted all interviews in English and Spanish.The California vineyard workers included four men and one woman who all were born in Mexico but have lived in the study location year-round for an average of 26.6 years.Employers included a vineyard owner, a farm labor contractor, a human resource representative at a vineyard management company, and two different vineyard management company owners.Community representatives included a winemaker, representatives of an agricultural worker rights organization, a community resource center, and an education board member.
In the South-Eastern Norway community, interviews were conducted by the other author and another colleague.Agricultural workers interviewed were men, born in Latvia or Poland and have come to the study location for an average of 12.5 years.Three of the employees live in Norway full time and work on a farm year-round.The other three employees are seasonal workers and only live in Norway between 5 and 9 months out of the year.All interviews were conducted in English, which limited perspectives to those who have been migrating longer and have been able to master the language.All employers are horticulture vegetable farm owners who grow and package produce.Community representatives included representatives from an agricultural government agency, local volunteer coordinator, a union representative, a health care worker specializing in migrant health and a historical society member.
The same interview guides were used in both locations that covered topics such as migration patterns, agricultural jobs, migrant integration, among other topics.Probing was utilized throughout all interviews when appropriate to clarify responses or get more in-depth details about comments stated by interviewees.The semi-structured interviews lasted between 45 to 99 min and were recorded and transcribed.
Data analysis: The interviews were analyzed using a theoretically informed inductive approach, where we engaged existing theories and research findings on migrant labor in agriculture with the materials, amounting to what is described by Conaty (2021) as 'abduction as methodological approach'.The starting point was previous knowledge on immigrants' work conditions, which often but rarely in a systematic way, allude to the importance of workers' comparisons between conditions at 'home' and 'away', and at times also making short references to a DFR perspective, implicitly (e.g.Hoggart and Mendoza 1999;McAreavey 2012;Papadopoulos and Fratsea 2022) or, more rarely, explicitly (e.g.Rye and Scott 2018;Scott 2013b), but never expanding on the DFR concept.Following from a first reading of the materials, we chose to do a more systematic analysis of how interviewees drew on DFR to make sense of their everyday experiences, and in effect, how these led to the construction of contemporary labor practices, which led to numerous iterations between existing literature and the materials.Atlas.tiqualitative analysis software was used to organize the materials, and develop themes and categories during the process of analysis.
The objective of the paper is to develop DFR as a theoretical framework to provide a better understanding of the enduring exploitative contemporary labor practices found in migrant-intensive industries, and not to provide better factual accounts of labor conditions.The paper seeks theoretical insights and, in Yin's terminology, drawing on two illustrative cases to establish claims 'generalizable to theoretical propositions and not to populations or universes' (Yin 2009).

Findings
Agricultural work is objectively tough and precarious; often it is described as dirty, dangerous and demeaning (Bock, Osti, and Ventura 2016;Holmes 2013;Rye and Scott 2018;Scott 2017).As key to this paper, the relative toughness of working conditions is viewed differently from agricultural migrant workers, employers and community representatives.In this first part of the presentation of the findings we briefly outline how informants evaluated the overall situation in the localities.
While the perspective of what is acceptable is relative and the specifics varied in both locations, the toughness and undesirable conditions are acknowledged by all study participants.A California worker reflects, 'Those who are born outside of the USA work much harder.[…] If there is an opportunity [to not work in the field] then you take it, but a lot of it is having to wait for it'.In both Northern California and South-Eastern Norway agricultural workers, employers and community representatives agree that the reason that these jobs are filled by migrants is because they are the only ones who are willing to take agricultural jobs, and often it is because it is their only option in the receiving country.It is also common knowledge that agricultural jobs are not acceptable for local non-migrant folks and in fact, employers put no effort in recruiting locals.A local wine-maker reflected on why he thinks employers do not recruit local nonmigrants to work agricultural jobs, 'not everyone's willing to go out there and work 10 h under the sun or cold'.Similarly in South-Eastern Norway, Norwegian students used to take summer jobs picking strawberries.However, over time the wages and the difficulty of the work made these jobs unappealing and not worth the effort.Employers in both locations state that local non-migrants 'do not want to do this type of work' or that 'wages are not worth it'.
Additionally, the work and availability of work is highly impacted by unpredictable weather patterns and crop failures.Employees in both locations only get paid when work is available, and sometimes they have to wait days or weeks for crops to be ready or for bad weather to clear up.Often crops are ready early and employees have to work long hours without days off to ensure crops don't spoil.
Lastly, migrant workers in both locations have to be away from family, live in poor housing conditions and in Northern California migrants also had to struggle with being undocumented.A migrant worker in Norway stated, 'we come for earning, for work and money … family is the price for that … that is the hardest part of [this] kind of life.To be away from the family'.In Norway even those that can legally bring their families do not want to uproot their family if they are only working in a receiving country for a few months out of the year or cannot afford to rent a place for their family.In Northern California migrants are unable to bring their family with them because of documentation status.Agricultural jobs don't pay well when compared to receiving country standards and while migrants can send money to their home country, they cannot afford to financially support their family in the receiving country.Oftentimes, they cannot afford to live in a decent place on their own.In Northern California many vineyard workers, even those that work year-round, have a second job during off seasons, during the evenings or weekends to make ends meet.
In addition to the tough work conditions, being away from family and poor housing conditions, migrants in Northern California also had to experience implicit and explicit othering.Migrants experience discrimination and are in perpetual danger of deportation and often depend on employers' turning a blind eye to keeping their immigration status private.A vineyard worker in Northern California shares his concern of potential deportation, 'you always have that little thorn, thinking, taking care of yourself.Like there was a time where there were random checks in streets and immigration was present'.The constant fear of potential deportation takes a toll on workers.

Dual frame of reference is shared among agricultural migrants, agricultural employers and local community representatives
This paper analyzes how agricultural migrants, agricultural employers, and local community representatives apply the dual-frame of reference to naturalize, rationalize and justify the presence of exploitative labor practices.Our research demonstrates that in both Northern California and South-Eastern Norway, migrants understand that agricultural work is often their only option, but at the same time they utilize the dual-frame of reference in a similar way to rationalize their work conditions.Agricultural jobs in both Northern California and South-Eastern Norway operate in unacceptable conditions as considered by local standards and employers have to primarily rely on migrant labor to fill these positions.While there are differences in each location such as the average length of stay, types of labor contracts and ability or inability to visit their home country, these differences give us the opportunity to understand the application of the DFR in two different contexts.
Previous research has primarily emphasized social-psychological dynamics of the DFR focused on migrant workers as the main agent (Louie 2012;Louie 2012;Nieswand 2012;Orupabo, Drange, and Abrahamsen 2019;Perez 2004;Salamonska and Winiarska 2020); our analysis confirms the importance of the DFR to make sense of migrants' compliance with low wage and poor working conditions, and acceptance of exploitative work.However, the material also shows how the DFR is essential to understand how other key agents' such as employers and community representatives make sense of what is generally interpreted as unacceptable labor practices.Employers utilize the DFR to rationalize their reliance on migrant labor, how they design their recruitment strategies and how they justify the tough working conditions and low wages.As noted above, the literature has discussed how employers often use mobility, nationality and ethnicity as short-hand for what is considered to be a 'good' worker (Baxter-Reid 2016; MacKenzie and Forde 2009,) and migrants from peripheral economies were consistently preferred above local workers for low-wage seasonal agricultural work (Scott and Rye 2021).Waldinger and Lichter (2003) argued how employers prefer these migrants because of their DFR and less-entitled status make them more accommodating and ideal candidates to take on one of society's most dirty and tough jobs.In our research agricultural employers know that migrants observe their experience working in the receiving country in comparison to their home country, and utilize this to their advantage when recruiting migrants for their jobs.An employer in Northern California states, 'Obviously, non-migrants are not wanting these jobs at all … we don't have any local white people picking.'Employers understand that the work that they are offering is tough and low-paying but in both locations employers rely and depend on migrants' DFR to justify providing poor working conditions and making this type of employment attractive.This is not unique to our findings.Rye and Scott (2020) showed similar conclusions among strawberry farmers who justified their employment conditions by focusing on the fact that they are offering employment largely to migrants from less affluent societies and claimed that hard-working migrants could earn wages that were excellent when compared with wages in the migrant's home countries.An employer in Norway states, 'they use the money that they earn here to build quite nice houses in Poland.It is fun to see the pictures of the palaces that they got back home … [chuckles]'.The stories employers shared emphasized positive outcomes in the home country, without questioning the migrant workers poverty or position relative to the rest of society in Norway.
The DFR also helps community representatives to make sense of current labor practices and to back up employers' justification of how the employment regime functions.Despite their internal differences, reflecting their quite different position and functions in the social fields, most community representatives largely appear to support employers' perspective of migrant work as good enough and did not question the order of things because of their understanding that the situation is worse in the agricultural workers' home country.The result is the naturalization of inequalities that are left unquestioned and unchallenged.In this case, migrants, employers and community representatives take the divergence between first and second frames as a given by external forces and not an object for change.In other words, the agents recognize (or 'misrecognize') the social order as natural and thus made invisible, taken-for-granted, and normal for all (Bourdieu 1997;1998;Holmes 2007).A community representative justifies the lack of ordinary salary and working conditions, I kind of understand this from the perspective of farmers, because they are very pressured on price, when they are selling their products, and at the same time it needs to be top quality.So that means that they need to keep their costs down, and then everybody knows who that will affect … those who are going to do the harvesting.
In this reflection, we see the acceptance of the natural order of exploitative working conditions as required by the labor market to have competitively priced produce to ensure the survival of local farms.It is not the farmers alone in the recruiting and offering of tough work, but community representatives are complicit and back up farmers.If employers had been treating local workers as they treat migrant employees perhaps they would have been met with resistance.
Some community stakeholders also reflected on how locals' work capacity and motivation has changed, ' … when we grew up it was common to do three weeks of work in the strawberry fields.But the generation after us … they work one day and then their back hurts too much or there are too many flies or … [chuckles]'.This clearly illustrates how over time locals were not considered candidates for manual labor, thus requiring the need for migrant labor to meet worker shortages.Community representatives reflect that 'strawberry harvesting is often done by Vietnamese.They are eager to earn money and particularly in terms of piece rate and that, they are really good workers.They are diligent and … are very hungry to earn money'.And while community stakeholders can agree that work conditions are poor and wages are meager, they understand that to migrants it is better than back home.A community representative reflects, it is evidently the case that the sum that the poor Vietnamese keeps for himself after working in Norway is meager.But … getting money of any amount means that they are running a surplus, so if he sits back with like a third of what he really earned here in Norway, he might still be satisfied.
The application of the DFR among workers, employers and community representatives highlights how exploitative agricultural practices and work is institutionalized.All agents find work conditions in the receiving country, second frame context, as needed to be evaluated based on the home country, or first frame context.This analysis naturalizes, rationalizes and justifies the poor conditions; poor conditions are upheld because the evaluation of the conditions are taken from the first point of reference, not in comparison to the receiving country.This suggests that dual point of reference moves beyond the individual social-psychological perspective, but instead how the agricultural sector institutionalized exploitative labor practices through the use of DFR.In other words, it is accepted as a fact of how things must be, and efforts to make positive changes to improve working conditions might be stalled because of the naturalization of the order of things.

Dual frame of reference is dynamic
Our research findings suggest that the DFR is dynamic.Agricultural workers' reference of what is acceptable in the receiving country is impacted based on changes of material conditions in the home country.The literature shows us that frames of references are capable of changing based on different factors.Piso (2016) argues that first-generation migrants continuously reevaluate their situation based on evolving factors, and with time the significance of the home country may weaken.Perez (2004), argues that as second-generation migrants begin to acculturate, DFR becomes less influential and the US frame (second frame of reference) becomes more important.Our research argues that among first-generation agricultural workers the significance of home country conditions continues to be dominant and that the first frame of reference is not solely dependent on how migrants used to see their country when they first left, but how they are seeing it now.Migration patterns impact how migrants make sense of the conditions back home.In Northern California, due to the inability of undocumented workers to travel back and forward, only those who have permanent residency or citizenship are able to re-evaluate the conditions firsthand.For the others, upholding the first frame of reference relies on memories of being back home and on second accounts of others who are back home or travel back home.In South-Eastern Norway, upholding the first frame is reinforced by circular migration practices that allow migrants to see first accounts of material conditions in their home country; migration policies allow migrants to go home as often as they would like and see improvements.As material conditions in the home country improve the first point of reference also improves, which impacts the degree of what working conditions are acceptable in the receiving country.In other words, the frame of reference is constantly shifting with material changes in the home country.This phenomenon is clearly illustrated in Norway with Polish migrants who are able to easily travel to their home country to re-evaluate material conditions.Since the 1990s, Norway has increasingly become dependent on Polish migrants to sustain their agricultural workforce.During the time of interviews, Poland was experiencing progress in terms of material conditions and standard of living.This allowed Polish workers to find well-paying jobs back home without having to immigrate for work.A Polish migrant worker explains, Fifteen years ago it was better even if we earn three times less … but that money means less in Poland now.It seems like we earn a lot but the price of the Norwegian kroner there is weaker now so we get less Polish zloty.
As the material conditions in Poland were improving the Norwegian Kroner became weaker which impacted the agricultural labor force in Norway.
The changes of acceptable conditions impact agricultural employers' rationalization of agricultural work arrangements.A Norwegian employer explains, the loyalty and the speed of those who are working is more uneven now than it was in the past … they are not that hungry for working … [or] … to keep their job … also people … have terminated the work relation in the middle of the season, by saying that 'no I don't want to do this anymore, the work is too hard and I can earn almost as much in Poland so I go back home again.'And that has never happened before in the past.That is a new phenomenon that came during the last two years … what they bring back home now is less compared to what they had previously in purchasing power back in Poland.
These changes have a deep impact on the labor market and recruitment strategies.Agricultural employers that used to depend on Polish workers now have to look for other types of migrants where their first frame of reference is still considered 'poor'.Rather than making work conditions better or increasing wages, instead the solution is to find workers who would find existing conditions acceptable.
Norwegian farmers do not have to compete with the farmer or industry next door to attract workers, rather they have to compete with the conditions of the countries of origin.Employers have ramped up their recruitment strategies in countries like Vietnam and Ukraine where the conditions and pay are comparingly worse.A community representative explained that countries like Ukraine and Vietnam have corruption and bad conditions for the average person, and therefore Norwegian employers can easily recruit and exploit workers from those countries because conditions in Norway are better when compared to their first frame of reference.Additionally, some Vietnamese workers were taken advantage of by recruitment agencies who take a cut of their pay.Even with lesser than standard wages, it is still worth it for Vietnamese workers to continue to work in Norway.Here the comparison of conditions back home in Vietnam to the receiving country in Norway, made unacceptable work conditions justifiable.
While we argue that the DFR is used by migrant agricultural workers, employers and community representatives to naturalize, rationalize and justify the exploitative agricultural regime, we also argue that this perspective is not fixed and can change when material conditions are changed in the home country.Even though the DFR is treated and understood as a social-psychological and individualized concept, our research demonstrates that it is rooted in the material realities and conditions.

A future frame of reference exists
This paper has argued that the DFR is utilized to naturalize, rationalize and justify conditions that would otherwise be considered exploitative if it were not for the DFR.While conditions in the sending country are dominantly used as the comparison point to justify conditions in the receiving country, the research also reveals another comparison focused on the future.The authors refer to the future-oriented comparison as the 'third frame of reference'.The third frame of reference adds another dimension because it has a future orientation, it is not based on evaluation of past or current situations, but instead on expectations and hopes on how things will be in the future for themselves and the expectations of future generations.A worker in Northern California explains, I tell my children, 'You speak English, study' so they are not like me.'You have all of the opportunity.Here everyone has the opportunity to go study, not like us [in Mexico].When I was growing up, I had a dream to study and maybe play soccer but I couldn't.My son really likes playing soccer and hopefully if he wants to go to college and play soccer and that is why I support him -[in Mexico] you know your parents can't give you that support because it is much harder.When you are 5 or 6 years old they put you to workit is not the same like here.I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, I was already working milking cows.My kids, here they don't have to work.They are 12, 13 years old and they don't have to work.
In other words, workers are willing to struggle and take on the toughest and dirties of jobs if it means that their future off spring will live a better life in the receiving country, than they did in their home country.The fact that the workers children do not have to work in the receiving country is already an accomplishment, and the hopes for a better future are used to justify sacrifices.
When asked what he would think if his son worked as a vineyard worker, this same worker responded, He goes to do a type of job like that [vineyard work], I would think it is a failure.Honestly, I tell them 'You all have such a great opportunity … if they want to study agriculture, great!'But I want them to be the bosses … the person managing [the fields].I would not see that as a failure.A failure would be graduating from High School and working [as a vineyard worker].
This same worker had explained that for him vineyard work was acceptable because of the limited options he had and it is still better than back home, but he truly devalues being a vineyard worker as he explains that it is clearly not good enough for his child.He is using the first frame of reference as his point of comparison to define success for himself, and the second frame of reference as the point of comparison for his child.Because he sees better opportunities in the receiving country that are potentially accessible to his children, he prefers that.However, he does not see these same opportunities as available to him.
The third frame is embedded in migration politics and is more evident in Northern California because workers think that their future generation will be part of the receiving country; in Norway this is not as apparent due to circular migration, migrants can easily cross borders and don't have to settle in receiving country to be able to work.This means that migrants in Norway are less likely to bring their children or establish families in Norway since they can come to work in Norway and then leave after the seasons with much more ease.All of the migrants in Northern California mentioned about future opportunities and those who had children mentioned the importance of the future of their children.The general sentiment among agricultural workers is, '100% there is a better future here.With the situation that is happening in Mexico and other countries [we] come fleeing -[we] want to live somewhere more tranquil.And there are plenty of opportunities here'.Another migrant beamed with pride as he shared the success of his children, one studies at a local University and the oldest went to studied another state and now lives in Sacramento selling cars.The youngest is studying to be a nurse, she's learning to draw blood and put in IV fluids and I tell her 'keep learning'its good she is getting that opportunity.'Another one stated, 'thanks to god, they grew and now they work.I think right now we are doing much better.When they were younger it was much harderwhen they went to school, sometimes they needed a notebook [and it was tough to always buy their supplies], but we did the best we could for them.'Those who have younger children are holding onto the hopes for a better future, and those who now have adult children are able to witness their children having a better future, making their sacrifices worth it.

Conclusion
This paper analyzed how agents such as agricultural migrants, agricultural employers, and local community representatives apply the dual-frame of reference to naturalize, rationalize and justify the presence of well-documented exploitative labor practices in the agricultural industry.Work conditions deemed not acceptable for the domestic labor force are nevertheless considered to represent a natural state of order for immigrants, rationalized as good enough and particularly so in comparison to alternatives for the migrant workers, and in effect justified by most involved actors in the local communities.Our findings detail beyond existing accounts in the literature how the DFR is utilized by migrant workers to establish this frame of evaluation and to make sense of their work experiences as acceptable, despite their exploitative characteristics.Moreover, we demonstrate how their DFR perspectives are shared and supported, and fortified, by their employers and other stakeholders in the local communities.
While previously referred to in existing literature, though only tangentially, the current paper's analysis adds a qualitative account to the DFR literature by describing in more detail how workers elaborate and make sense of the DFR through their own exploitation.First, we illustrate the largely universal application of the DFR and how it is applied in parallel ways across different locations, but also how there are important nuances.In South-Eastern Norway, migrants describe their experience of how it used to be in their home country when they left and when they go to visit (before and now).As economic conditions in homelands improve, the first frame of reference changes, thus also impacting the second frame of reference, which appears less attractive in the relative way.Furthermore, we compare two different contexts that differ in legal arrangements but the logic is the same, though with a twist.In Northern California, undocumented migrants cannot easily travel between countries and rely on past experiences or re-counted experiences from others to remember the first frame of reference conditions; these are used as the comparison to the conditions in the receiving country.
Our paper further emphasizes how DFR is also utilized by employers who justify their reliance on migrant labor and design their labor strategies based on this rationalization.Employers know they can explicitly or sometimes implicitly benefit from the existence of the DFR, such as the financial gain, which allows them to justify their employment practices, even if considered precarious in the receiving country.Most local community representatives further use the frame of reference to naturalize the exploitative labor practices of migrant workers in their own community and defend the farmers who employ migrant workers.The frames that are utilized by all three types of agents are proven to be dynamic and our research demonstrates that previously acceptable exploitative conditions may no longer become acceptable if material conditions in the home country (first frame of reference) are improved.
In addition to the first and second frame of reference, we find a third frame of reference focused on the future of the agricultural worker and the hopes for their future and their future generations.Often times, these are the only types of jobs that are available due to documentation status or lack of education but by living in the receiving country means that their children will have access to other opportunities, such as education to achieve upward mobility.
Overall, the materials demonstrate how the DFR works to fortify existing migrant labor systems in contemporary agricultural industries, and with transferability also to other migrant-dependent industries.First, the DFR makes arrangements to be conceived of as naturalized, as pre-given (it's normal), and therefore difficult to change.They cannot realistically be modified by individuals or their communities, though as noted, they may be altered by larger-scale structural changes in economies of sending and receiving countries.Second, the DFR works to rationalize agents' continued participation in the exploitative migrant labor system of agriculture (it's reasonable).Regardless of possible criticism of arrangements at the structural level, that exploitative labor is not preferable or socially sustainable; taking up exploitative farm work in a distant locality is rational for the migrant in their interpretive frame of the DFR perspective.Similarly, the DFR perspectives allow employers and others in the hosting societies to understand their employment offers as rational, in the sense that they are providing workers with better work alternatives and, other things given, improves their life situations.In totality, the DFR also works to justify contemporary arrangements of exploitative labor in practice, even if not approved in principle, and thus to their almost perpetual reproduction (it's okay).As such the paper emphasizes how DFR not only is a useful conceptualization for the sake of understanding individuals and their experiences and evaluations, how they attempt to make sense of these, but also how the perspective helps explaining the dynamics of larger-scale labor market process.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that the comparisons that migrants (and also reflected in some non-migrant actors' arguments) make regarding their home country versus their receiving country conditions do not mean that migrants accept their precarious situations in the receiving country as fair in principle.We see in our research, which is also supported by Stachowski and Rasmussen (2021) that even though many of their interviewees made comparisons to their home country to justify their work, their narratives challenge the assumption about their willingness to accept precarious working conditions because they were better in their home country.In other words, just because migrants make comparison of the conditions being better, they do not think that they are fair or should be acceptable in an ideal world.At the same time, they tacitly take the current conditions as given and seek to maximize their well-being within parameters encountered, as do other agents involved at the agricultural labor market.
In effect, the paper's analysis shows how the DFR perspective works to naturalize, rationalize and, in its implications, also justify contemporary exploitative labor practices within the agricultural industries, and their seeming perpetual reproduction.Hopefully, the detailing of the DFR perspective and its larger scale structural implication at the same time works to provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the upkeeping of exploitative labor market practices, thereby also challenge the natural, rational and just order of contemporary migrant labor arrangement in contemporary agricultural and other immigrant intensive industries.Note 1.We use the term migrant worker in both the US and European context.In the US, migrant worker is a common reference to workers who have at some point in their life immigrated from Mexico to the US and currently not migrating on a regular basis.In the European context, migrant workers are engaged in circular migration within different states in Europe.