Based on direct observation of farmworker housing, reviews of the literature on the subject, "openended" interviews with migrant workers or members of their families, and visits to some 75 camps in Texas, Florida, Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, and Colorado, this report examines the conditions of migrant housing. Part I provides a brief historical overview of the migrant experience, focusing on the uses of shelter as a bargaining chip in the agricultural labor markets, and examines the federal government's critical role in these proceedings, especially "its historic tendency to confuse the farmworkers' welfare with that of their employers." Concentrating on the housing conditions which existed in the summer of 1980, Part II presents the migrant families' own assessments of their housing, the amount of space provided for families, the rooms they crowd into, the mattresses they sleep on, the burners they cook on, the bath-houses they shower in, the out-houses they use, and the dusty, treeless yards their children play in. The relationship between these and the migrants' notably poor health and low morale is discussed. The last section briefly examines the politics of farmworker housing as characteristically practiced in rural communities. A 30-item bibliography on migrant farmworkers concludes the report. (Author/NQA)