Almaceneras. Género y trabajo en los almacenes de manipulado de fruta en la región de Murcia

Abstract

Packaging warehouses have become central points for accumulation strategies of agribusiness, due to the growing importance of global chains in fruits and vegetables production for fresh. Technological and organizational innovations associated with this process take place, however, in segmented and devalued workspaces. Packing warehouses have tended to use vulnerable work force, mainly women, in close relationship with the subordinate role they occupy in their households and communities. Because of the feminization, work in the packing warehouses is an activity stable but discontinuous, central but precarious, post-fordist but socially undervalued. In the life of women working in the packing stores, her job involves into a roaming between productive and reproductive space, a cyclical and discontinuous temporality, which brings about a culture and a particular work identity. In this paper, we analyze these issues from a case study: fruit growing export of Vega Alta del Segura, in the region of Murcia. To do this, we will focus on in the process of feminization of work in packing warehouses and in cultures and work identities of women in these workplaces.

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

“…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).…”

“…Workers often narrate about the physical dimension of agricultural labour. First, the workers’ narratives confirm agricultural labour as a common source of accidents and health problems like back pains, contractures or cervical pain (Castellanos Ortega & Pedreño Cánovas, 2001; Gadea Montesinos et al., 2016). Rasheed lost his job after losing his left hand's ring finger when it hooked to a metallic chain connected to the pallet he was loading.…”

“…To contribute to this debate on social vulnerability and agency of international migrant workers in intensive agriculture in rural Europe, we engage with the arguments of a group of scholars who wrote about those dynamics in Murcia, Southern Spain (Gadea Montesinos et al, 2017;Pedreño Cánovas, 2014b;Pedreño Cánovas et al, 2015) and show how this literature relates to the wider European literature. Murcia is a paradigmatic case of a South European region where the historical emergence of wage-based industrialised FFVs production and its insertion in the European market has interacted with the recruitment of an international migrant workforce to reduce labour costs (Segura et al, 2002).…”

“…Agricultural labour can be seen as flexible in three ways: geographic (the spatial variability of the workplace), temporal (the variability in the duration of labour time) and remuneration (the variability in monthly wages; De Castro, 2014). Moreover, it entails considerable physical hardship (health problems like back pains, contractures or cervical pain are common) and exposure to accidents under variable climatic conditions (Castellanos Ortega & Pedreño Cánovas, 2001; Gadea Montesinos et al., 2016; Preibisch & Grez, 2010). Below, we explore these conditions and their consequences as a potential social vulnerability driver.…”

“…I tell her positive things about it, but what she is told is: “in the fields , there are exploitation, maltreatment and inequality”’. The stigmatisation of agriculture as an undesirable labour position, as 3D employment, has been recognised as an important dynamic of current global agriculture by many authors (e.g., Corrado et al., 2017; Gadea Montesinos et al., 2017; Gertel & Sippel, 2014). This evidence seems to indicate that labour in agriculture is neither part of the content of the workers’ idea of wellbeing and dignified life nor an important motivation to migrate.…”