The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a global reconsideration of labor, disrupting established patterns across various sectors. The question "Where have all the workers gone?" has taken on new urgency, particularly in industries reliant on temporary migrant labor. In Maryland's iconic blue crab processing industry, this question reveals complex transformations in labor regimes and worker experiences, transformations that predate the pandemic, but have been greatly intensified by it.

For decades, the industry has depended on the H-2B visa program to recruit Mexican women for seasonal work. These workers were deemed "essential" during the pandemic, yet they continue to face structural vulnerabilities that the pandemic has only exacerbated. The industry's reliance on temporary migrant labor has created what one worker described as "killing yourself for almost no gain," transforming what was once conceived as temporary migration into a state of "permanent liminality." In this state, workers are suspended in perpetual transition, experiencing a sense of being neither here nor there, with the instability that comes with that condition. As an anthropologist, capturing this liminality presents its own methodological challenges—how do we locate and theorize workers whose very existence is defined by not being fully present in any single space or time?

My ethnographic research examines how these post-pandemic labor transformations shape new worker subjectivities among gendered, racialized, and legally precarious migrant laborers, challenging traditional understandings of migrant agency. I identify three interrelated worker figures that have emerged in this context: the "essential yet expendable worker," the "socially isolated worker," and the "embodied resistant worker."

The "essential yet expendable worker" embodies the contradiction of being indispensable to economic production while remaining politically marginalized. As one processor owner stated, Mexican migrant women are the "lifeline" of an "iconic" industry, yet they lack basic protections and healthcare. This vulnerability has only intensified post-pandemic, with increased visa bottlenecks and rising anti-immigrant sentiment creating additional precarity, a situation further complicated by the current administration's aggressive deportation policies. The women often face long hours and difficult conditions, with their labor considered essential to the industry's survival, yet they are denied the rights and protections that other workers receive.

The "socially isolated worker" experiences profound estrangement not only from family and friends in Mexico but also from other migrant workers and neighbors on the Eastern Shore. Women live with other women in cramped quarters on remote islands, yet there is very little socialization or interaction among them. As one woman explained, "Each of us keeps to herself, in our own world. We sleep, we get up, we eat, and then it’s time to work. It's the same routine." Despite shared experiences of routinized living and working conditions, women describe their distress as affecting only themselves, in isolation. This isolation is compounded by language barriers and limited transportation options. Unlike agricultural migrants who often work in groups, these women experience a more profound form of social alienation due to their specific industry placement and the geographic constraints of island life. Their isolation becomes not just a condition but a defining feature of their migrant experience. The physical and natural characteristics of the Eastern Shore, with its sparse population and rural, isolated landscape, enhance this sense of social separation, as does the burden of racism and anti-immigration sentiment. These islands, locally known as "La Isla de las Mexicanas" or the Island of the Mexican Women, become spaces of both confinement and protection, where women remain largely invisible to the broader community yet visible to each other in their shared liminal condition.

The "embodied resistant worker" challenges labor exploitation through the management of their own health and well-being. Women's narratives about their bodies as "contingent, mutable, and fluid" defy dominant frameworks that prioritize productivity at all costs. By speaking openly about workplace injuries and actively seeking care, women enact what I call a "politics of visibility" that demands recognition beyond their economic value. They assert their right to health and well-being, refusing to be reduced to their labor power. Women suffer from numerous visible and invisible injuries—cuts from crab shells and knives, rashes from constant contact with chemicals, back pain, numbness, and carpal tunnel syndrome—yet actively seek care despite limited access to healthcare services.

These subjectivities reflect the broader post-pandemic world between integration and resistance, visibility and invisibility, isolation and connectedness, and essentiality and disposability. This simultaneous experience of isolation and community reveals how labor resistance manifests in ways that transcend traditional understandings of collectivity. Migrant women push back against the capitalist notion that only un-deportable lives are lives that are fully able to work, asserting their agency in the face of structural vulnerabilities. Their actions highlight the limitations of viewing migrant workers solely through the lens of economic contribution, revealing the importance of recognizing their complex social, political, and bodily experiences.

This research challenges traditional theoretical frameworks for understanding labor. The post-pandemic emphasis on "essential workers" has heightened attention to the contradictions these women have long experienced—being simultaneously essential to production yet politically expendable. Their experiences necessitate moving beyond binary understandings of exploitation/resistance or inclusion/exclusion to recognize more complex forms of agency.

To capture these complexities, I propose liminal labor theory, which builds on Turner's concept of liminality (1969) and Szakolczai's notion of permanent liminality (2000). This framework acknowledges how contemporary workers strategically adapt to perpetual uncertainty, as what appears transitional becomes an ordinary, structured experience. It moves beyond the idea of liminality as a temporary rite of passage, recognizing it instead as an ongoing condition shaped by the precarious nature of contemporary work.

The experiences of Mexican women in Maryland's crab industry provide critical insights into the reconfigurations of labor in the post-pandemic world. Their narratives challenge us to recognize the complex ways workers navigate precarity, assert agency, and create community—even through isolation—in an era of global uncertainty.