International Labour Migration to Europe’s Rural Regions

Johan Fredrik Rye, Karen O'Reilly, Johan Fredrik Rye, Karen O'Reilly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000223934
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Emerging in the throes of a global pandemic that threatens Europe's economies and food security, International Labour Migration to Europe's Rural Regions combines a diverse range of empirically rich, in-depth case studies, analysis of their rural context specificities, and insights from labour market and migration theories, to critically examine the conditions and implications of rural labour migration.

Despite its growing political, economic and social importance, our understanding of international labour migration to Europe's rural regions remains limited. This edited volume provides intricate descriptions of lived experience, critical theoretical analyses, analytical synthesis, and policy recommendations for this novel and developing phenomenon that has the potential to transform the lives of international migrants and local communities. The book's 25 authors represent a wide range of social science disciplines, with coverage of a vast range of Europe's rural regions, and diverse types of rural labour in areas such as horticulture, shepherding, wild berry picking and fish processing.

The volume will be of interest to policy makers at local, regional, national and European levels, and scholars and students in a broad range of areas, including migration, labour markets, and rural studies.

This book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com.

Section I

Transforming Europe’s rural industries

Chapter 1

New perspectives on international labour migration to Europe’s rural regions

Johan Fredrik Rye and Karen O’Reilly

Migrants at work transforming rural Europe

International labour migrants no longer settle mainly in urban gateways but are more evenly spread across Europe’s urban and rural spaces (McAreavey 2018, Bock et al. 2016, Corrado et al. 2016). Estimates suggest that more than 5 million international migrants currently live in the EU’s rural regions, though actual numbers are likely to be even higher (Natale et al. 2019). In some rural industries, such as horticulture and food processing, migrant workers make up the majority in manual, low-skilled positions, and many rural communities today host large populations of migrant workers from across the globe (Rye and Scott 2018). As a result, even the very idea of everyday rural life is changing as traditional notions associating the rural with a quaint backwardness and sedentarism are challenged by changing social dynamics, cosmopolitanism, and mobility (Burdsey 2013, Woods 2018, 2007, Rye 2018, Bell and Osti 2010). In this book we provide rich detailed descriptions and theoretical analyses of this novel phenomenon which has the potential to transform the lives of both the international labour migrants arriving in Europe’s rural regions and the rural communities in which they arrive.

At the time of concluding the volume – spring 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic – the complexities of the migrant labour phenomenon in Europe’s rural regions were more evident than ever. State borders – as well as key aspects of everyday life inside the borders – were practically shut down. Many migrant workers in the food industries could not travel to workplaces abroad to make a living for themselves and their households. Others, in place, were severely affected by government measures to limit the spread of the virus, which, for some, led to reduced work hours or even lay-offs. The shutdown also created havoc for other actors in the food production industries, including fears for fields neither planted nor harvested, short- and long-term market failures and large numbers of bankruptcies. In response, a variety of regulative measures were enacted to counter effects of the pandemic that demonstrates the crucial role of migrant labour in Europe’s food industries. For instance, the European Commission (2020) issued, in late March, an emergency notice stating that seasonal farmworkers were to be treated in the same manner as ‘critical occupations’ in terms of cross-border travelling. The individual chapters in the volume were finalised just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (papers were accepted after peer review in January/February 2020). However, they all provide invaluable knowledge about the international labour migration phenomenon and its transformative powers in the rural industries and rural society at large, and as such provide a sound foundation for future endeavours to develop sustainable food production and labour practices in rural Europe. These are insights that will be more important than ever as Europe strives to get back to the ‘new normal’ after the Covid-19 pandemic.

International labour migration in rural Europe as a multiscalar phenomenon

International labour migration to Europe’s rural regions is located within global systems, especially those related to labour markets, and European societal, cultural and economic structures, and political shifts. Migration regimes are also constantly being shaped at every level and in all aspects by nation-states, although there is great variation within states, notably between urban and rural regions but also between rural localities. We argue that every understanding of a specific migration flow needs to examine this wider picture and how larger societal structures shape the current context of labour migration, through a range of possibilities and impossibilities, assumptions and dreams, actions and inactions.

Most importantly, while international rural labour migrants and their host localities each have their unique experiences and practices in relation to the labour migration phenomenon at large, they nevertheless operate within the same globalised international society, as do urban regions. If anything, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates starkly how all localities – whether urban neighbourhoods, small towns, or rural villages – are interconnected and interdependent. Over the last decades these interlinkages have become increasingly evident in the enhanced levels of international migration across the globe, which has led to the coinage of the now widely used term ‘Age of Migration’ (Castles et al. 2014). According to the International Organisation of Migration (IMO 2019), there are today some 272 million people residing in a country other than that of their birth. Two thirds of these are considered ‘labour migrants,’ of which increasing numbers find employment in rural industries in Europe and in other regions of the western world (Dufty-Jones 2014).

These flows of labour migration are closely related to the emergence of global food systems, in which international conglomerates exert control over food production through ownership structures and technological regimes, which impact processing, distribution, and retailing. As shown in several chapters of this volume, labour migration is largely demand-driven and responds to the dynamics of the current global modes of industrialised and intensive food production, which in turn rely on access to what seems like inexhaustible pools of inexpensive, flexible and docile migrant labour. The international industry of labour recruiters (Martin 2017) and other mediators (Krifors 2020) further work to facilitate these flows in – at least for the employers – ‘frictionless’ manners. Further, the emergence of new communication technologies – both virtual (internet, telephony, and so forth) and physical (such as transport routes and low-fare flights) – has been pivotal in facilitating the recruitment of migrants workers from just about anywhere to jobs just about anywhere. As such, the phenomenon of rural labour migration is deeply related to general globalisation processes which work to reduce physical barriers for personal mobility, and thus labour. This applies both to the food industries – which are in focus in the present volume, reflecting their central role in the rural migration nexus – but also to other parts of rural labour markets (such as tourism and hospitality, health, and service provision) which increasingly recruit workers internationally. These global developments serve to shape or frame every migrant flow we discuss in this book, not simply as macro-level structures but also as everyday practices, ideas, attitudes, and outcomes (O’Reilly 2012).

Europe’s leading position in the world economy and relative affluence makes it an attractive destination for workers seeking better paid jobs and improved working conditions. There are no sound estimates for the total number of labour migrants in rural Europe. However, analysing available survey materials, Natale et al. (2019) suggest that about 5.1 million international migrants reside in the EU countries’ rural regions, less than half of whom were born in an EU country. The share of international migrants in rural areas varies greatly between states, from near zero in Romania and Bulgaria to 40 per cent in Luxemburg. In total, Natale et al. (2019: 5) estimate that five-and-a-half per cent of the EU’s rural population is made up of international migrants. This is about half the number of those living in towns (10.2 per cent) and one third compared with cities (14.5 per cent). In other words, while Europe’s rural regions house larger numbers of migrants, their populations nevertheless appear more homogeneous when compared with urbanised regions. These numbers include diverse categories of migrant, including workers, refugees, students, and retirees. In terms of labour migration specifically, Natale et al. (2019) estimate there were approximately 575,000 migrants working in the EU’s agricultural industries, which reflects an increase of 33 per cent between 2011 and 2017. However, real numbers are likely to be far higher (Natale et al. 2019, 12), and even more so if circular, non-residential migrants are included. For instance, more than 300,000 migrants, mostly Ukrainians, were given admittance for seasonal work in the Polish agricultural sector in 2017 (see Górny and Kaczmarczyk, Chapter 6). In conclusion (and accepting that records are likely to underestimate actual numbers), this circularity underlines the pivotal role of agriculture in the context of EU migration, both for its rural regions and more broadly, which features prominently in this volume’s composition.

Over the last three decades various geopolitical changes have propelled cross-border labour migration across the European continent, among which the collapse of the Communist regimes (1989–1990) and EU enlargements (2004 and 2007) stand out as particularly significant. Migration has largely flown westwards across the European continent, reflecting strong regional economic disparities within Europe, most pronounced between ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU members. In addition, many European countries recruit workers from the African countries, the Middle East and beyond. In several chapters of this volume, these recruitment practices form an important backdrop in understanding the potential of wealthier countries to capitalise upon poorer ones, as well as how such notions become taken for granted and therefore unquestioned by policy-makers and other powerful players, and sometimes the migrants themselves.

Furthermore, three ‘European crises’ provide an important backdrop for understanding international migration to Europe’s rural regions. The first is the 2008 financial crisis, which among other things led to mass unemployment and downscaling of welfare services across the continent. These are not static events that provide a simple backdrop to lives but are triggers promoting action and inaction, as is starkly illustrated in Fratsea and Papadopoulos’ chapter in this volume (Chapter 3) about the struggles of Romanian migrants in Greece to ameliorate the profound effects of the Greek crisis.

Second, the 2015 refugee crisis refers to the large numbers of refugees fleeing the Syrian war and other destinations in the Middle East and beyond, who eventually made their way to EU member states. Many of these 2015 migrants arrived in rural destinations and would try to find work in rural industries (see for instance Brovia and Piro, Chapter 4). These events demonstrated Europe’s role in the global migration nexus and raised q...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Section I Transforming Europe’s rural industries
• Section II Transforming Europe’s rural societies
• Section III Concluding remarks
• Index