Sociospatial Genealogies of Wartime Impoverishment: Temporary Farm Labour Camps in the U.S.A.

Established to develop New Deal resettlement programs in 1937, the United States Farm Security Administration (F.S.A.) was best known for accommodating migratory labour from the drought-stricken central plains. Large numbers arriving in California prompted F.S.A. engineers and architects to develop purpose-designed labour camps and townships, described as early exemplars of community planning. Yet in 1942, when 118,803 Japanese and Japanese Americans were evacuated from the newly created Military Exclusion Zones and incarcerated in relocation centres, F.S.A. skills were put to a different use. This paper demonstrates how wartime exigency, racist immigration policies and militarisation transformed a model for relief and rehabilitation into a carceral equivalent. It contextualises this transformation within a socio-spatial genealogy of temporary facilities that accommodated mass human displacements – including two examples from California: the Tulare County F.S.A. Camp and the Japanese American Relocation Centre at Manzanar.