UCLA’s Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History and UCLA’s Luskin Center for History and Policy hosted the “Future of History of Conference” on Nov. 3 at UCLA’s Luskin Conference Center.
The event featured Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III and opening remarks by UCLA’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt.
Below are recordings from the event.
PART I: A Conversation with UCLA History Faculty
Featuring:
• Kelly Lytle Hernández, Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair of History Professor of UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History
• Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences Distinguished Professor, UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History
• Vivien Tejada Assistant Professor, UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History
Moderated by Brenda E. Stevenson Nickoll Family Endowed Chair in History and African American Studies Distinguished Professor, UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History
PART II: A Conversation with Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III
Featuring:
• Robin D. G. Kelley Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in United States History Distinguished Professor, UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History
• Athena N. Jackson, Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian, UCLA
Moderated by David N. Myers Sady and Ludwig Kahn Endowed Chair in Jewish History Director, UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy Distinguished Professor, UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History
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New data upends myths about Mexican migrant labor
Farm workers pick strawberries at Lewis Taylor Farms, which is co-owned by William L. Brim and Edward Walker who have large scale cotton, peanut, vegetable and greenhouse operations in Fort Valley, GA, on May 7, 2019. Mr. Brim talks about the immigration and disaster relief challenges following Hurricane Michael. USDA helped this farm with the Farm Service Agency (FSA) Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) for structural damage cleanup. He also mentions the importance of having Secretary Sonny Perdue, a person with an agricultural background, come visit and listen to 75 producers six months ago, in southern Georgia.
The farm’s operation includes bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon and a variety of specialty peppers on 6,500 acres; and cotton and peanuts on 1,000 acres. Near the greenhouses is a circular crop of long-leaf pines seedlings under a pivot irrigation system equipped with micro sprinklers. Long-leaf pines are an indigenous tree in the Southeast. Growers are working to increase the number of this slower growing hearty hardwood tree in this region. USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.
FSA https://www.fsa.usda.gov/index
ECP https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-programs/emergency-conservation/index
Temporary Mexican labor migration to the U.S. is largely legal today due to the rapid expansion of H2-A and H2-B visas, reversing a longstanding trend of unauthorized migrant flows
Farm workers pick strawberries at Lewis Taylor Farms in Fort Valley, Georgia, May 7, 2019. / (Photo: USDA courtesy of Flickr; public domain.)
UCLA International Institute
One of the main impacts of social science research is overturning enduring assumptions based on outdated information. Research based on the latest empirical data can have particularly salient impacts when the subject is Mexican labor migration to United States.
The research of Ruben Hernández-León, professor of sociology and director of the UCLA Latin American Institute, has focused on the migration of Mexican workers to the U.S. and their return to Mexico throughout his career. He recently published an article with colleague Efrén Sandoval (CIESAS-Noreste, Mexico) on the explosion of U.S. H2-A and H2-B visas over the last 20-25 years.
H2 visas are granted to foreign workers to do temporary agricultural work (H2-A) or heterogeneous “low-skilled” work (H2-B, which covers temporary work in such varied fields as landscaping, tree trimming, hotels and resorts, fisheries and seafood processing) in the U.S. In the late 1990s, the combined annual total of the two visas was slightly more than 30,000. By fiscal year 2025, the total had jumped to roughly 455,000: an increase of over 1,500%.
“The growth of these visas has been connected to a very important transformation in Mexican migration over the past roughly 20 years: the channeling of formerly unauthorized flows to legal channels,” remarked Hernández-León.
Although technically open to workers from around the world, the vast majority of these time-limited visas are currently granted to Mexican workers (90% of H2-As, 65–70% of H2-Bs). Many of these workers return year after year to work for the same employers for a specified time period and then return home. “They become sort of career H2-visa workers,” said the professor. “Workers establish relations with employers. And employers want people who they trust, who they know will get the job done.”
The total number of Mexicans who annually receive H2 visas and travel legally to work in the U.S. is now conservatively estimated at 500,000. “This is roughly the same number of undocumented migrants who were crossing the border — south to north, from Mexico to the United States — during the heyday of undocumented migration in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” said Hernández-León.
Several major forces have pushed Mexican worker migration from an undocumented to a documented pipeline. First, pointed out the UCLA professor, “A very profound demographic change has been taking place in Mexico over the past 20 to 30 years. Mexican families are now having very few children, so there are fewer entrants into the general labor market.” Second, the migrant Mexican population in the U.S. is aging, especially farm workers, and these older workers are being replaced by H2 visa holders. Finally, border enforcement has made it increasingly difficult for employers to hire undocumented workers.
“A great many undocumented workers continue to work in U.S. agriculture, and the majority are still from Mexico,” continued Hernández-León, “but agribusinesses are using more and more H2 visas to get their workers, despite their complaints about the process.”
Mexican labor migration has traditionally been circular
The advent and growth of H2 visas, noted the professor, “has permitted a restoration of circulation, which was an old feature of U.S.-Mexico migration, but less so during the so-called undocumented years.”
One of the largest programs to bring Mexican workers to the U.S. on a legal basis was the Bracero Program, which ran from 1942 to 1964. “It was a bilateral agreement between the Mexico and the U.S. to bring millions of temporary workers to the U.S. from Mexico through the use of visas and contracts,” said Hernández-León.
When the program ended in 1964, observed the researcher, “The most important legal channel for Mexicans to work in the U.S. was closed. Labor migration did not end, however; it continued and even grew, only to become a largely unauthorized, irregular flow between the two countries for some 40 to 50 years.”
Travel to and from the U.S. on the part of migrant workers continued until border controls tightened in the 1990s, eventually making it difficult for them to return home. As a result, a large population of undocumented migrants stayed and settled in the U.S, said Hernández-León. They continue, he said, to work in agriculture and other industries where jobs either have very low social status in U.S. society or where surges of workers are needed seasonally.
Dilemmas and contradictions of the H2 visa regime
As opposed to the original Bracero Program, which was a bilateral treaty, the H2 visa regime — which amounts to a Bracero II program, albeit on a smaller scale — is operated entirely by the U.S.
Workers are thus unable to turn to the Mexican government to address such abuses as exploitative wages, factory town prices for local goods, “bribes” levied by brokers for U.S. employers, lack of water and shade in the fields and grossly substandard living quarters. Instead, they are largely left to turn to state authorities for enforcement of their contracts, a process that is spotty at best and varies by state.
H2-A visa workers are also being used by agribusinesses to pressure undocumented farm workers living in the U.S., who are beginning to organize unions to demand better working conditions and wages, observed Hernández-León.
“Whether or not the wages of H2-visa have a negative effect on the wages of U.S. workers,” commented the professor, “what U.S. employers are doing is not really satisfying temporary shortages. They creating a regular binational workforce.” And while the legal Mexican agricultural workforce remains small compared to the total agricultural U.S. workforce, it plays a significant role in harvesting, a critical step in the food production process overall.
“Temporary Mexican migration to the U.S. is largely legal now,” concluded Hernández-León. “That actually goes against a very established idea, which at this point is largely a myth, that the flow of migrant workers from Mexico is largely unauthorized. Employers have to petition H2 visa workers through the Department of Labor and Mexican workers have to clear Homeland Security inspections and interviews to receive these visas.”
This story was originally published via UCLA’s International Institute, here.
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Ivy McGregor calls for ‘radical collaboration’ at UC Regents’ Lecture
The transformational social change leader urged audience members to look beyond their current social networks to enact social change
UCLA Professor Marcus Anthony Hunter nominated McGregor for the distinguished residency inspired by the impact she had on his students during a visit to his class last fall./Photo UCLA Division of Social Sciences
Citlalli Chávez-Nava
When Ivy McGregor took the stage for her UC Regents’ Lecture she delivered an urgent message. McGregor said that the most pressing social challenges facing society today will not be addressed if we continue to work in silos. Change, she said, will require radical collaboration.
In an evocative address held at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) on Oct. 8, McGregor, a global strategist, impact architect and transformational changemaker opened her lecture by telling students, faculty and community members that oftentimes the biggest transformations we witness in society begin with the efforts and intention of a single individual, reminding audience members of their own power to advance a new framework for enacting change.
As an example of this truth, she referenced her mother, 87, who was in attendance. Raising five children on her own, she instilled the blueprint for social action from which McGregor continues to draw inspiration for the work she does today.
“She made sure there was always an abundance of integrity, of love, of prayer, of compassion, and, of course, hope. And what we lacked in money, we made up for in connection, in community,” said McGregor.
Marcus Anthony Hunter, the Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences Division and professor of sociology and African American Studies at UCLA, introduced McGregor at the event. His idea to nominate her for the Regents’ lectureship was borne out of witnessing the profound impact she had on his students during a guest visit to his “African American Studies M5: Social Organization of Black Communities,” class last fall.
“Oftentimes, in a class, the students say, ‘All this talking is great, but I want to meet application. I want to meet somebody in the world of work, and I want to be inspired by them,’” said Hunter.
He recalled how his students were so energized by McGregor’s visit, they stayed an hour past the scheduled end time to engage with her.
Photo: Adrian Davis
McGregor’s talk, titled, “Four-squared™: Unlocking Systemic Change Through Radical Collaboration,” was grounded in the vast social disparities facing the world today. McGregor discussed how 1% of the world’s population controls nearly half of its wealth; how 700 million people still live in extreme poverty; and how by the year 2030, 375 million workers will need re-skilling to remain employed.
“These are not just statistics,” she declared. “These are signals, signals that we cannot solve 21st-century problems with 20th-century systems.”
Drawing on her decades of experience leading initiatives across the nonprofit, corporate, philanthropic and entrepreneurial sectors, McGregor then introduced her “Four-Square™” framework, a model that connects these forces to drive systemic impact.
“I’ve seen each of these pillars move mountains,” McGregor said. “But I’ve also seen their brilliance trapped in silos, and I came to believe something radical, and it is that the future will not be built by one sector alone. It will be built at the intersections.”
“When these forces converge, collaboration becomes currency,” she continued.
For over a decade, McGregor served as executive director of BeyGOOD Foundation, the public charity founded by Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, where she advanced initiatives in economic equity, education, disaster relief and small business development. Known for her human-centered and hands-on approach, she has designed and led programs that address health disparities, HIV/AIDS prevention and anti-human trafficking efforts, while also advising world leaders, corporations, grassroots organizations and the United Nations.
At UCLA, McGregor urged audience members to look beyond the continuum of their social networks and to “reach across the table, across the aisle and across campus.” She invited audience members to embrace one of her signature concepts, “issue escape rooms,” intentional silo-breaking spaces that foster cross-sector dialogue and collaboration. She said, this concept could be adapted as an “issue escape tables” and easily put into practice over a meal.
“I invite you to create an ‘escape table’,” she said. “I invite you to make sure that there are individuals at your table that represent diverse sectors. So, bring someone to the table that represents wealth, bring someone to the table that represents innovation, bring someone to the table that represents need, and create an issue and say: ‘I know that the 4-5-6 of us can create a solution.’”
McGregor concluded her lecture by reminding audience members that they each have a role to play within her Four-Square™ framework as innovators, investors and amplifiers.
“This is a clarion call, my sisters and brothers, because the future doesn’t belong to the powerful. It belongs to the partners, and it begins here at UCLA, where ideas don’t just live in lecture halls, where ideas become movements.”
McGregor’s address marked the beginning of a visiting residency at UCLA during which she will attend other convenings and conversations with faculty and students designed to catalyze cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt and Chair of UCLA’s African American Studies Department Cheryl Keyes also provided welcoming remarks at the event. The event was hosted by UCLA’s Department of African American Studies and co-sponsored by UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate, UCLA’s Dialogue Across Difference Initiative, UCLA’s Department of Sociology, UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and UCLA’s Division of Social Science.
The Regents of the University of California established the Regents’ Professors and Lecturers Program to allow the appointment, on a visiting basis, of distinguished leaders to increase students’ exposure to a diverse range of successful professionals, artists and others. Vice President Al Gore, actor Anthony Hopkins, Grammy Award winner Quincy Jones, filmmaker Kassi Lemons, jazz and blues pianist Henry Butler, composer Arturo Márquez and, activist-scholar Angela Davis, are among those who have delivered past lectures.
Corazon Adamo, a first-year physiological sciences major who attended McGregor’s lecture with Hunter’s current class, said she walked away feeling inspired.
“It all starts with finding ways to connect with those who might think differently from you, because they can open your eyes to new ways and can help fulfill your purpose and change your community.”
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