Dear Omolara,

The issue of seasonal migrant labor being of surplus value is in fact true. Low wages are one relevant factor and others includes, living on the farm and monies taken out for rent, long hours and no overtime pay, very high knowledge based workers,little training costs, little need for oversight, and wealth of knowledge on diseases and treatment of said diseases.

There is a wealth of studies on this issues coming out of California due to the migrant seasonal workers is almost nine months long starting at the southern most end of California and ending in Washington State for both planting and harvesting seasons.

Look into Pajaro unified school district and  migrant education and there should be links to all the information you will need.

Hope this helps

Douglas 

Mr. Daugherty, Thank you very much,I would follow up on your response.

Duke

Its very true that migrants do assume duties at a lower cost than natives, and in most cases some migrants are better educated/skilled than the native counterparts. This on its own places the firm at an advantage. However, to determine the exact level of impact, will demand a lot of data collection. Which involves selecting firms to study (i.e farms or ranges), then collecting the volume of workforce, migrant workers, period of stay, output produced, Individual or group score cards. This will then enable a proper synthesis to the contribution of migrant workers to the overall output. An easier method may be to use primary data in form of questionnaires to evaluate migrants through their employers or supervisors. this approach will lead to methodologies like Logit and Probit, and enables various qualities of migrants towards output to be explored.

Thank you Mr Garikai for the insight. Its very useful. I am thinking of carrying out a survey on the migrants and their employers. I thought  using the shadow pricing concept but not very clear on it.  I would appreciate any help on this.