INTRODUCTION

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Scholarly literature surrounding Farm Workers’ Communities during the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration program suggests a model carefully intertwined with the many societal and political factors of the time. The following analysis of main scholars’ research on perceptions of power and control, race and class, and the American conception of an ‘ideal’ childhood within the government-funded farms of dust bowl refugees, Mexican migrants, and beyond displays the program’s general successes and failures for migrant farming families and their children. Research on primary sources of the time, such as photos, figures, and personal accounts of those involved further exemplify these themes. My research centers around two questions: How did federal programs embedded in Farm Workers’ Communities benefit the children that resided in the camps, and how may these programs have created disadvantages? Further, how thoroughly were American political and cultural ideals of the time embedded into the structure of these communities? Note that within scholarly journals, as well as my own analysis, Farm Workers’ Communities are also referred to as Migratory Labor Camps and FSA camps. I will be primarily utilizing Farm Workers’ Communities to define these spaces, although the term ‘camps’ will show up often in my work.