Skip to Main Content
UVM Libraries Research Guides banner

Migrant Farmworker Health in Vermont

UVM Extension Farmworker Resources

Migrant workers and their families often live in geographic, linguistic and cultural isolation, which can create barriers to education, wellness and other public services. UVM Extension provides assistance with a focus on improving access to healthcare and education, food access and security, and overall social wellbeing.


Migrant Justice/Justicia Migrante

"Our mission is to build the voice, capacity, and power of the farmworker community and engage community partners to organize for economic justice and human rights. We gather the farmworker community to discuss and analyze shared problems and to envision collective solutions. Through this ongoing investment in leadership development, members deepen their skills in community education and organizing for long-term systemic change. From this basis our members have defined community problems as a denial of rights and dignity and have prioritized building a movement to secure these fundamental human rights to: 1) Dignified Work and Quality Housing; 2) Freedom of Movement and Access to Transportation; 3) Freedom from discrimination; 4) Access to Health Care."


The Most Costly Journey/El Viaje Mas Caro 

The Most Costly Journey is a collaboration between the Open Door ClinicVermont Folklife CenterUVM Extension Bridges to HealthUVM Anthropology, and Marek Bennett’s Comics WorkshopOriginally distributed to farm workers as individual Spanish language comic books, these stories bring the lives and voices–as well as the challenges and hardships–of these workers to an English-language audience, granting insight into the experiences and lives of the people vital to producing the food we eat.


The Golden Cage Project 

An online exhibit from the Vermont Folklife Center (2008): "Migrant Mexican farm workers began arriving on Vermont dairy farms almost ten years ago and continue to work here living hidden lives. Through intimate photographs and interviews, this project strives to create a revealing portrait of dairy farmers and their Mexican employees and offer a glimpse into their interdependent lives-exploring who they are and what they hope for."