“Less Documented” Immigrants and the Changing U.S. Economy

Research on immigrant and undocumented migrant workers in the United States tends to overlook the range of legal and various other barriers to employment that such workers face in the U.S. labor market. This paper proposes the category less documented worker to reflect a broader spectrum of employment barriers for immigrant workers. Drawing on a participatory research project with less documented workers in Southern California, this study describes how changes in the U.S. economy are forcing immigrant workers to find new ways of obtaining work, that the search for work and types of employment are increasingly flexible and contingent, yet typically have a coherent organizational structure, and that the range and diversity of work that immigrant workers engage in is far broader than was previously known.