Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Rogaly, Ben (2008) Intensification of workplace regimes in British horticulture: the role of migrant workers. Population, Space and Place, 14 (6). pp. 497-510. ISSN 1544-8444 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/11584/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version.
Copyright and reuse:Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University.Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available.Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. The paper draws on concepts developed in the US literature on agrarian capitalism. It then uses case histories from British horticulture to illustrate how growers have directly linked innovations involving intensification through labour control to their relationships with retailers. Under pressure on 'quality', volume and price, growers are found to have ratcheted up the effort required from workers to achieve the minimum wage through reducing the rates paid for piecework, and in some cases to have changed the type of labour contractor they use to larger, more anonymous businesses. The paper calls for further, commodity-specific and spatially aware research with a strong ethnographic component.
In this study, I focus on the agency of unorganised temporary migrant workers -people who travel away to work for just a few weeks or months. Such workers have been relatively neglected in labour geography. Perhaps surprisingly, given the focus on the agency of capital in much of his writing, I build on two arguments made by David Harvey. First, workers' spatial mobility is complex and may involve short as well as longer term migrations, and secondly that this can have significance both materially and in relation to the subjective experience of employment. The spatial embeddedness of temporary migrant workers' everyday lives can be a resource for shaping landscapes (and ordinary histories) of capitalism, even though any changes may be short-lived and take place at the micro-scale. The article is illustrated with case study material from research with workers in the agriculture sector in India and the UK, and concludes with more general implications for labour geographers engaged with other sectors and places.
This introductory essay and collection concern the social processes within which migration for manual work is located and which are influenced by that same migration. Writing from detailed empirical studies of migration in South and South-east Asia and Africa, the contributors provide illustrations of the importance and normality of migration in rural life. The studies show that the relationship between migration and rural change is complex and context-specific. Migration has often increased inequality, but in many cases also supported vulnerable livelihoods. Much depends on the social processes at work, the ways in which identities shift through migration and how gendered ideologies of work are deployed and change. Labour mobility usually serves the interests of capital, not only in ensuring labour supply, but also, often, in dividing workers; however, the power of capital relative to labour is contingent. We conclude this essay by exploring ways in which public policies can support migrants by making migration less costly and more secure, by reducing discrimination and enhancing access to health care and other services.social processes, migration for manual work, empirical studies, south and south-east Asia and Africa, rural change, labour mobility,
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