Diversion and subversion occur in the playful humor in which trans-migrant farm workers engage to alleviate the gruffness and roughness of farm labor and to re-assert the human potential for creativity, with words, if not in action and behavior. This essay considers nuances of the humor response in formal interviews as markers of significant points of transition. Narrators use humor to reflect on alterations in behavioral experience that directly affect the personal identity they have come to accept and to believe is a reasonable representation of who they are.

Restorative Justice is a community alternative to criminal justice. Its principles and practices are grounded in harm reduction, consensually-determined reparation, and in many applications, a facilitated conference between an offender and respective victim, and family members and/or community persons impacted by the crime. Projects based on Restorative Justice are rare for sex offenders. In this article, we review one such program funded as a demonstration project. Based on the rubric that we adapted from a template developed by Stephen Webster, we assessed the veracity of apology letters written by adult sex offenders, who earned the right to apologize to their victim, following participation in a 12-month program based on principles and practices of Restorative Justice. Content of the apology letters demonstrated anticipated changes in classic features of sexual assault as a harm-causing, ego-centered, trauma-producing, controlseeking, relationship-imposing act. Despite individualized formulation by each responsible person, the letters from misdemeanor and felony cases were similar in acknowledgment of harm and in the articulation of gratitude, but varied in responsibility acceptance and trauma discontinuation.

Hardships that face transmigrants working in agriculture include the potential for drug use. Reliant on village-based networks that facilitate border crossing and developing a plan for a destination within this country, transmigrants who try new drugs/alcohol and/or continue on accustomed drugs/alcohol are facilitated in these endeavors through locally generated networks as alternative forms of access and support. Seven cases of undocumented men from Mexico are reviewed to show how use of illicit drugs is minimally affected by economic success and time in the United States, or village-based networks that first facilitated entry into this country. Prior conditions, especially childhood difficulties and search for socioeconomic autonomy, precipitate new and/or continuing drug use within the United States on this side of the border, where both forms of drug use are facilitated by locally generated networks.