These images depict people who were driven from their homes in the Southwestern states by drought and economic depression and migrated to the West in search of work. Most of the images in this archive were taken in the mid to late 1930s by Dorothea Lange, one of several photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document migrant life. Many of the FSA photographs were used to publicize the deplorable living and working conditions of the migrants.