When Gerardo Sandoval was researching conditions at a meatpacking plant in Iowa, he found that many workers came from near where he grew up in Guatemala. In 2008, U.S. immigration officials raided the plant and deported hundreds of undocumented Guatemalans. Sandoval's award-winning research has documented what he calls shadow networks that commodify such workers. In the journal Ethnicities, Sandoval and UO colleague Edward Olivos detail the exploitative system. Sandoval says such networks still exist but in different forms in the United States. Read more at phys.org.