Skip to main content
Article
Keeping Them in Their Place: Migrant Women Workers in Spain’s Strawberry Industry
International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food
  • Susan E. Mannon
  • Peggy Petrzelka, Utah State University
  • Arash Garrossian, Utah State University
  • Claudia Radel, Utah State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2012
Abstract

The idea of guest-worker migration has resurfaced in recent decades as the global agri-food industry has confronted a shortage of workers willing to take low-wage and often seasonal jobs. To date, there have been very few cases studies of these twenty-first century guest-worker programs and their role in managing contemporary labor migration. This article examines guest-worker migration in the strawberry industry of southern Spain. In this case, guest-worker programs at- tempt to regulate and enforce the circular migration of foreign workers in Spain. By making future work contracts contingent on migrants’ return to their country of origin, by recruiting migrant workers from various countries, and by target- ing women with dependent children, these programs help to discipline migrant workers into the rigors of circular migration. We argue that although the program has been lauded as a model of twenty-first century labor migration, it succeeds primarily by keeping foreign, low-wage, women workers ‘in their place’.

Citation Information
Susan E. Mannon, Peggy Petrzelka, Christy M. Glass, and Claudia Radel. 2012. “Keeping Them in Their Place: Migrant Women Workers in Spain’s Strawberry Industry.” International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food. Vol. 19:83-101.