My research analyzes Mexican federal programs and agribusiness philanthropic foundations implemented since the1990s to improve the conditions of migrants who seasonally inhabit and work in agricultural fields owned by Mexican-US corporations in Sonora. Mainly, I argue that they are labor control practices and depoliticizing strategies disguised as social policies. Therefore, I discuss how these social policies –state and corporate— seek to “educate and develop capacities” ofworkers based on racial tropes of inferiority and uncivilized, using racial markers of phenotype, language, and birthplacewhile denying anti-indigenous violence and anti-migrant hostility. Furthermore, I examine the agricultural fields as agrariancapitalist camps because of the exploitation, surveillance, and isolation that characterize these productivity landscapesand workers’ temporary homes surrounded by deserts and highways and shielded by fences and private security.
     The study engages in theoretical discussions about racial capitalism, plantations, bordering regimes, and state formation.The fieldwork and archival research were conducted in the Rural District of Hermosillo between 2018 and 2022. Critical race methodologies, anthropological political economy traditions, and studying-up ethnographical approaches framed the thirteen months in Sonora.