Producing Cheap Food and Labour: Migrations and Agriculture in the Capitalistic World-Ecology

Abstract

Through the perspective of world-ecology, one of the most recent approaches in international relations, we aim to analyse global capitalism as an ecological project based on the appropriation of human and extra-human nature oriented to support capital accumulation process. Agriculture and its labour force occupy a central role in maintaining the world-system in which global chains, international migrations and centre-periphery relationships interact. This paper shows how global processes occur at this intersection. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the analysis of the current world-system through this innovative approach, developed mainly by Jason W. Moore, and then show how the world-system's structure and its crisis have articulated a highlyinternationalized production model whose most significant effect has been the generation of large migrations of cheap labour across the planet. It is also proposed to descend to the local context to highlight examples because the organization of work at this territorial scale is representative of global agricultural production.

International Labour Migration and Food Production in Rural Europe: A Review of the Evidence

“…The influence of migrant labour further varies within Europe's nation‐states. Gerbeau and Avallone (, p. 138) argue, for instance, that: ‘We cannot speak of a Spanish agriculture, but rather of the global enclaves of agricultural production of Huelva, Lleida, Murcia, Almeria, and others’. Distinct regional nuances are also identified.…”

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work

“…Challenging border policies which produce hierarchical divisions of economic citizenship and devalued classes of workers emerges as central to countering the "unjust transition" this would represent. Indeed, immigration policies are also the mechanisms which beget cheap labour to produce cheap food in the greenhouses of Southern Spain (Gerbeau and Avallone 2016) and an important component of the logic of Cheap Nature in Europe.…”

Migrant agricultural workers in search of a dignified life: Labour conditions as a source of vulnerability in Spain

“…Sociologists have typically referred to market segmentation theories to explain the enormous increment of international labour migration to rural Europe during the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries (Hoggart & Mendoza, 1999;Kasimis et al, 2003;Piore, 1979). The The shortages in lower segment occupations or '3D' employment-dirty, dangerous and degrading (Stalker et al, 2000)-were occupied by a foreign-born 'multifunctional' workforce (Gerbeau & Avallone, 2016;Kasimis et al, 2010). In Spain, these are labour-intensive low-qualified jobs in tourism, construction, domestic services and fieldwork in agriculture (Camarero, 2009;King, 2000).…”

“…Notwithstanding the structural inequalities of current food supply chains, the main reason used to explain the continuous engagement of international migrants in agricultural labour despite its exploitative labour conditions is their situation of social vulnerability (Gadea Montesinos et al., 2017; McLaughlin & Weiler, 2017; Palumbo, 2022; Papadopoulos et al., 2018). International migrants act as a transnational labour reserve army for the intensive agriculture industry, a perfect vulnerable, disciplined and flexible workforce to reduce labour costs (Corrado et al., 2017; Gadea Montesinos et al., 2017; Gerbeau & Avallone, 2016; Rye & Scott, 2018). Social vulnerability is defined as a life situation in which a ‘weak and unstable integration in the main mechanisms of resource distribution’ places people ‘in a situation of uncertainty and risk of poverty and social exclusion’ (Ranci & Migliavacca, 2010, p. 219).…”

“…International migrant workers have been described as a ‘transnational labour reserve army’ for the European agricultural production industry, which adopts a labour‐cost reduction strategy to compete in a structurally unequal global food market (Corrado et al., 2017; Gerbeau & Avallone, 2016; McMichael, 2005). This workforce's continuous engagement in agricultural labour is explained by its situation of social vulnerability, driven by factors such as citizenship, race, gender, nationality, labour market competition or ineffective EU and national regulations (Palumbo, 2022; Papadopoulos et al., 2018; Pedreño Cánovas, 2014a; Perrotta, 2015).…”