Researcher(s):
Marlene Guzman Jay Horita-Chu Tarun Bishop Anna Foster
ENVS course(s): 330 Initiated: April 2017 Completed: April 2017 Go to project site
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Over the past several decades, the United States has supported an increasingly demographically diverse and dynamic labor population. For our situated project, we focused on the pressures that change demographics of oyster workers, specifically, what pressures may have contributed to the changing demographics of the oyster aquaculture labor force over time. Willapa Bay is a very interesting context for many reasons, one being that Willapa Bay has a history of changing worker demographics. Using GIS and historical analysis, we attempted to understand the changing demographics of Willapa Bay's oyster workers.
From our research, we have gathered more of a picture of how the demographics of Willapa Bay has changed over time. Through Spatial analysis of GIS maps, we note an increase in Non-white people in Pacific County, in which Willapa Bay is situated. Through historical analysis, we created a timeline of U.S. policy regarding immigration that pertained to our research. Our timeline revealed a shift from policy regarding Asian immigration to policy regarding immigration from Mexico. This correlates to the shift in demographics in Willapa Bay. These results, along with our discussion of our results and broader implications of immigration labor, begin to answer our research question.