While vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 were launched worldwide, a drama has been unfolding in the Moroccan countryside. It has been marked, over the last couple of decades, by rapid agrarian transformation, manifestations of which have included expanding irrigation frontiers and the increasing growth of high-value crops. These dynamics rely strongly on female agricultural wageworkers. Although they earn low wages, their income is crucial and is used to care for loved ones by paying for school fees, rent, electricity, and medicines. These workers, therefore, cannot afford to quit their jobs. However, most female wageworkers in Morocco are employed without a contract or social security cover. While working in an informal environment and living already in a precarious situation, little is known about how the pandemic has affected them. In this article, we seek to supply some of this information by drawing on the authors’ commitment over almost a decade of covering female wage-workers’ experiences in different agricultural regions in Morocco. Additionally, since March 2020, we have conducted 30 phone interviews with female laborers and farmers in the Saiss and in the coastal area of the Gharb and Loukkos. Using the pandemic as a focus, our results illustrate the inherent contradictions upon which Morocco’s agricultural boom has been founded. Although many female laborers are de facto heads of household or contribute in fundamental ways to the household income, they continue to be considered as secondary earners or as housewives, leading to low structural wages. Moreover, these women assume the prime responsibility for all domestic tasks, which are not economically recognized or valued. Consequently, they face new challenges in addition to their already precarious situations. Reduced work opportunities and limited state support have led to financial and psychological hardship which jeopardize their own and their family’s survival.

In this paper we present a situated analysis of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the life of small-scale farmers and agricultural laborers in India, Algeria, and Morocco. We draw on data collected through phone interviews since April 2020. Inspired by feminist scholars, we analyze our findings thinking with—and entangling—the concepts of intersectionality, resilience and care. We firstly document the material impacts of the lockdown measures, focusing particularly on the experiences of single women farmers and laborers, whose livelihood and well-being have been notably compromised. Secondly, we unfold how different agricultural actors have come up with inventive ways to respond to the unexpected situation which they are facing. In doing so, we highlight the importance of considering the multiple and entangled socionatural challenges, uncertainties, and marginalizations that different agricultural actors experience, as well as the transformative potential of their inventive practices, which are often motivated and informed by notions of care.

À partir de la mi-mars 2020, les gouvernements algérien et marocain ont instauré un confinement pour lutter contre la propagation de la pandémie de Covid-19. Cela s’est traduit par la fermeture des marchés locaux et des restrictions de mobilité. Le traitement médiatique et scientifique de l’impact de la pandémie a porté principalement sur les zones urbaines, laissant de côté les expériences des ruraux alors même que les mesures restrictives sont arrivées en pleine campagne agricole. Cet article vise à combler partiellement cette lacune en analysant comment les petits agriculteurs, femmes et hommes des oasis et des extensions oasiennes, les jeunes producteurs et les ouvriers de deux régions oasiennes du Maghreb, ont vécu ces nouveaux défis. Pour ce faire, nous nous appuyons sur 150 entretiens téléphoniques menés avec des acteurs ruraux dans les vallées du Drâa (Maroc) et du M’zab (Algérie). En mettant leurs expériences au cœur de notre analyse, nous montrons comment la crise sanitaire a limité la capacité de la majorité des petits agriculteurs à écouler leur production agricole, et comment elle a mis à l’épreuve la pluriactivité des familles oasiennes, les rendant ainsi plus vulnérables. Puis, nous décrivons comment ces acteurs ont développé différentes pratiques de résilience, individuelles et collectives, comme la mise en place d’un marché du travail virtuel pour remplacer les traditionnels moquefs (places de recrutement des ouvriers), la transition vers des pratiques agroécologiques, la réinvention de la solidarité et de l’action collective.

No abstract