Recruitment infrastructure within the agricultural and agrifood sector: Post-Soviet and neocolonial entanglements between “Eastern” and “Western” Europe

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into focus how nationstates manage to shut down borders while maintaining flexible labor recruitment. This challenging situation provoked more public discussion around inequalities within the agricultural and agrifood sector. However, reflections around labor conditions have remained limited. I argue that instead of merely pointing to certain aspects of the current labor conditions and demanding more regulations, a different point of departure is urgently needed. Through a genealogical approach to recruitment and rotation, this article aims to further politicize the discussion around the current recruitment infrastructure in the agricultural and agrifood sectors in Europe. I do this with my research on labor migration from Moldova to the European Union and Switzerland, where I consider the hypermobile life trajectories of workers within the agricultural sector. I am interested in the structures, goals and biopolitical implications as well as the involved ideologies that accompany the laws and regulations of the legal framework of such hypermobility between “Eastern” and “Western” Europe. I show how the involved citizenship laws and circular migration policies reveal entanglements through time and space that lead to neocolonial and post-Soviet regimes of labor control within Europe.

Against Single Stories of ‘Left Behind’ and ‘Triple Win’: On Agricultural Care Chains and the Permanent Subsistence Crisis

“…Within this context, Poland is one of the most important so called sending and receiving countries. As a result, the recruitment of workers from Poland to practically all wealthier European countries comes along with recruitment chains that involve workers from Ukraine and Moldova in the context of post-Soviet and neocolonial agricultural labor regimes ( Bolokan, 2020 ). Hence Moldova finds itself at the end of recruitment chains within the broader labor market.…”

“…This mobility regime has been implemented into a ‘circular migration’ policy that is referred to as a win-win-win solution. This development strategy is the basis for bilateral agreements between the European Union’s member states and countries outside the European Union that aim to recruit workers for a limited amount of time, thereby revealing the colonial patterns incorporated in post-Soviet and neocolonial labor regimes ( Bolokan, 2020 ). One of the first agreements was with Moldova, where this type of recruitment has become institutionalized and where non-/governmental organizations and further stakeholders control and manage these transnational flows.…”

Infrastruktura delegowania pracowników: przykład transgranicznego sektora opieki domowej

“…Jednakże większość prac empirycznych odnosi się do specyfiki krajów Azji Południowo-Wschodniej (Lin, Gleiss 2018;Lan 2019). W dużo mniejszym zakresie była ona stosowana do studiów nad systemami mobilności zarobkowej w krajach Unii Europejskiej, głównie w wymiarze zorganizowanego systemu rekrutowania pracowników do innych państw (Bolokan 2020;Chau, Schwiter 2021). Jeśli chodzi o kwalifikacje pracowników, najwięcej uwagi poświęcono rozważaniom nad organizowaniem migracji osób nisko wykwalifikowanych, zarówno z perspektywy państw przyjmujących, jak i eksportujących pracowników do określonych sektorów na całym świecie (przykład Filipin i zorganizowanego od lat 70.…”

Labor Recruitment and Coloniality in the Agricultural Sector: On Plantation Archives, Underclassing, and Postcolonial Masculinities in Switzerland

“…Contracts generally last for 3–9 months, but labor arrangements for as little as a few weeks at a time also exist. The precariousness of these workers is caused by their ‘hypermobility’ (Bolokan, 2023a, 2023b) and they have little chance of settling in Switzerland (Bolokan, 2020: 59). These workers face labor regimes of rotation, as they are forced to work at different farms in various European countries under multiple contracts or sets of arrangements.…”

“…These workers face labor regimes of rotation, as they are forced to work at different farms in various European countries under multiple contracts or sets of arrangements. They are excluded from employment protections, social security, and rights to which local workers have access (Bolokan, 2020: 58). As Swiss farmers are challenged to produce food amid a capitalist logic of competing national economies and liberalized markets, their demanding conditions are passed on to temporarily employed workers.…”