Latino Day Laborers Share Struggles in Photovoice Study

January 22, 2025 | By Charles Schelle

"Me manda el estrés – la preocupación de no conseguir trabajo y no puedo pagar los biles.” / "It causes me stress — the worry of not finding work and not being able to pay the bills."

Those words by a Latino immigrant day laborer in Baltimore provide insight into a day in the mental health and life of over 100,000 who find themselves in the same situation across the United States. Six men ages 25-50 from Venezuela, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Honduras chronicled their daily life in words and photos for Proyecto SALUD: A Photovoice Study of the Behavioral Health of Latino Immigrant Men in Baltimore.

“We arrive here desperate, searching for work ... and both the people who live here and Latinos take advantage of us ...They don't pay in full ... (they say) 'another day' and 'another day' and they never return to pay the rest.”

The study was one of dozens of poster presentations featuring University of Maryland School of Social Work (UMSSW) research featured at the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Annual Conference in Seattle on Jan. 16-19.

Giving a voice to the voiceless is a major theme of social work research, and highlighting challenges and potential solutions faced by the Latino immigrant population had a large presence from UMSSW at this year’s conference. (See below for a list.)

“The reason that my research is focused on Latino immigrant day laborers is because as part of getting to know and learning more and more about the immigrant community, what you will see is that these men have some of the least access to social services,” said principal investigator Nalini Negi, PhD, MSW, professor at the School of Social Work. Adjunct professor Jennifer Siegel, PhD ’22, MSW, and doctoral students Tural Mammadli, MSW ‘20, and Claudia Choque, MSW, presented the research at the SSWR conference.

The project provided a direct way for these men who seek employment in parking lots every day to voice and show what their lives are like, giving more insight to social service providers and other programs that offer support but aren’t meeting the needs of this population.

Or as one participant put it: “Hay apoyo, pero falta algo todavía”/ "There is support, but something is still missing.”

Researchers provided smartphones to the participants and trained the men on how to take photos and use WhatsApp to send their photos and responses for six days in 2023. All photos can be viewed on the Proyecto SALUD website.

“I selected photo elicitation because one of the other things that I've been informed is we don't really know about the lives of these men,” Negi said.

“There is a lot of demand (for services) and nothing can be done.”

Each day had a different prompt. Some of the questions included: "What is a day at work like for you?" "What are the problems in your daily life that can impact your health?" "Where do you receive support?"

"Sometimes ... we work all day without eating ... because they don't honor break times, your lunchtime," shared one man about workers' rights abuses.

On the prospects of hope, one man said, "A purpose ... a destiny ... a steady job ... talking with people so I can find something positive each and every day."

Day laborers often face issues of wage theft, lack of meal and water breaks, safety violations, and more. Getting justice isn’t as easy due to barriers of access for help in the legal system and fear of repercussions if they report these violations. Not only does this impact their livelihood, but their mental health.

“A word that comes up quite a bit in my work with day laborers is the Spanish word, desesperacion,” Negi said. “The translation of it would be despair, but desesperacion really taps into more of socially induced isolation that leads to a feeling of deep despair.”

At the end of the first week, Negi and her team gathered the participants for a face-to-face charla, or dialogue.

“We looked at the pictures, and through a really thorough process, they selected the pictures that best exemplified each prompt in thinking, through that chronological order of their lives,” Negi said.

“We were talking ... today nothing came out of Home Depot, but
tomorrow it will ... One can start conversations ... for me, that's what
it means to coexist with others.”

The 40 photos and stories of these men resulted in a photo exhibit at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Community Engagement Center in 2023, fostering awareness of this public health issue. The exhibit will be reinstalled in the lower-level Community Room this year following renovation of the space.

The exhibit included a panel talk where a frank conversation took place between providers and the participants to address perceived gaps in service or equity. For example, one nonprofit offers classes to learn English, but charged $20, or services are offered during the day when these men are working irregular schedules.

“For you all who are not struggling with poverty, it may not be a big deal, but for us it is,” the man shared.

The work produced from the charlas continues today and will be included in a white paper outlining an action framework to improve behavioral health services for underserved Latino immigrants, Negi said. The white paper is expected to be published in the spring.

UMSSW Latino-centric Research at SSWR Annual Conference

Former Unaccompanied Refugee Minors' Experiences as Parents: A Collaborative Approach

Authors:

Morgan Pardue-Kim, PhD candidate, UMSSW
Kerri Evans, PhD, MSW ’09, LSW, assistant professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Celene Viveros Garces, research team member, UMSSW
Melissa Edmondson Smith, PhD, associate professor, UMSSW

Immigration Status-related Intimate Partner Violence and Financial Strain: The Role of Financial Safety and Planning

Authors: