Migrants, Economic Mobility and Socio-Economic Change in Rural Areas

Abstract

This article evaluates the contribution of Immigrants Working in Agriculture (IWA) and their socio-economic mobility over time. Up to the present, European and Greek literature has focused on immigrants' impact on metropolitan areas, in part due to the relatively insignificant role of agriculture in the European economies. Moreover, concerning the socio-economic mobility of IWA only snapshot views are available in the literature. Through field-work carried out in the northern Greek countryside, reinforced by analysis of the FADN database, we argue that the influx of immigrants in the early 1990s constituted a driving force in the development of the Greek countryside in a period during which long-term structural problems in the rural sector had condemned it to relative immobility. Immigrants' contribution is articulated at three levels. First, they enabled farmers who had abandoned agriculture to re-enter the sector and, at the same time, keep their non-agricultural jobs, thus increasing their sources of income. Additionally, IWA helped active farmers to expand their holdings, and to enrich and diversify their cultivations. Second, IWA have not displaced familial agricultural employment, as this was in decline prior to their arrival. Last, their employment allowed for a more flexible combination and specialization of capital and labour in the production process. Moreover, contrary to many developed countries, immigrants in the Greek countryside have displayed upward economic mobility over time.This is due mainly to occupational mobility in the agricultural sector and a movement to non-agricultural jobs, as well as spatial mobility between rural regions, which has increased the number of days of employment and income.

Addressing the Knowledge Gaps in Agroecology and Identifying Guiding Principles for Transforming Conventional Agri-Food Systems

“…A general trend of land abandonment and migration of rural populations into urban areas, and a reverse trend of immigrant labour moving into these rural areas to take up the manual agricultural labour, has led to a combination of land abandonment, concentration of land into larger holdings and a shift from extensive to intensive agricultural practices [53]. These dynamics lead to a limited number of landowners and labour to manage labour-and knowledge-intensive agroecological farming systems.…”

Migration and Land Use Change in Europe: A Review

“…With the rural exodus of people from countryside to city, immigrants replace some of these emigrants and undertake the hard and difficult agricultural jobs abandoned by the original locals, allowing a change from extensive (such as wheat production) to intensive agriculture (Labrianidis and Sykas, 2009).…”

Lost in Transnational Space? Migrant Farm Workers in Rural Districts

“…Zúñiga and Hernández-León 2005, Durand and Massey 2004, Cohen 2001), but far less has been written on transnationalism in rural Europe. Among other things, this probably reflects the relatively insignificant role of agriculture in the EU economy (Labrianidis and Sykas 2009).…”

“…They conclude that '[i]t is not only core cities which are attracting [Eastern European] migrants: they are living and working in everyday, small-town peripheral Britain' (Stenning and Dawley 2008, 279). This reflects the labour demand in the traditional rural industries, which has come to rely on cheap, docile migrant labour instead of family labour and domestic paid workers (see also Green 2007, Labrianidis andSykas 2009).…”