POWER-CONFLICT, CULTURAL PREPARATION AND OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ARIZONA FARM WAGE-WORKERS FROM FOUR ETHNIC CATEGORIES.

Abstract

In 1972, town-based farmworkers in the agricultural region of Pinal County, Arizona were surveyed. Random samples of Anglo, Black, Mexican American, and Native American male family heads provided data to study the correlates of their occupational prestige. The work of Harland Padfield and William Martin offered a measure of prestige, along with a functional set of predictors, while conflict-competition theory furnished an alternate set and its corresponding hypotheses. Ethnicity was studied for interaction with the 21 independent variables, and the ranking of the ethnic groups relative to one another was scrutinized. Since analysis of covariance revealed significant interaction by four of the predictors (with the slope for Blacks contrasting most markedly with the Anglo reference category), further analysis, by multiple regression, was made within the ethnic divisions. In the case of Anglos, the significant correlates of prestige were optimism about workers' being able to improve their job situation, and a desire for training, although age, in the negative, controlled the latter. With Blacks, an equation which included age, time spent in the county, residence in Eloy, and membership in associations explained 53% of the variation in prestige. The Mexican American study yielded only a working family pattern as a correlate. Native Americans showed the influence of education on their job prestige (when age was not controlled), and of residential mobility, lack of house ownership, and unwillingness to move. A study of cases from each ethnic group, with insight from experience, suggested several conclusions beyond the data themselves. Caution in measuring attitudes of Native Americans was indicated. There also emerged implications for future policy and research.