Work in the old age of agricultural laborers: "traveling across the furrow with the mattock in the hands"

Introduction
The metaphor: "Traveling across the furrow with the mattock in the hands", symbolically expresses the temporality, space and work that have configured the agricultural laborers’ way of becoming old. This study explores the connection that exists among the social realities, work conditions and the subjectivities of the Mexican elderly agricultural laborers in relation to their work life, their being elderly and their elderliness

Methods
Participated 43 male agricultural laborers, aged 60-83. The life histories conducted through in-depth interview were analyzed using ontological hermeneutics

Results
The 80% of the participants still have agricultural occupations. In their lifetimes, these elders have been exposed to risks in their social and work milieu, due to their tasks in the fields: static postures and repetitive movements, heavy loads, pesticides, excessively long hours of work and stress due to psycho-social and environmental conditions. They live in poverty and travel long distances to their places of work, earning an average daily wage of 50 to 100 pesos (4.1 to 8.3 USA dollars)

Discussion
The work ethics of these participants does not only respond to survival logic, but also forges their identity and the sense of their lives. Work is for them a matter of life, self-esteem, dignity and obligation, as well as the wish of to continue doing it: “Since I was a child my life has been to work in the fields, until God wants, I would like to die there” (Laborer, 83 years old). The subjectivities and images of these working elders unveil the connection between their functional capacities, motivations and identities with their native land and their work as meaningful elements. In these work contexts, the production logics have changed, but not the work and life conditions of the agricultural laborers