Seasonal workers wanted! Germany’s seasonal labour migration regime and the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic publicly exposed the urgent need for seasonal workers in agriculture. In Germany, an entry ban and entry quotas for seasonal workers at the beginning of the pandemic caused major attention. Taking this moment as magnifying glass, the article asks how the German seasonal labour migration regime is constructed (legally) and legitimated (discursively), and in how far the pandemic has caused shifts within this regime. Based on an analysis of the legal framework and the political discourse around seasonal work from 2018 to 2020 in Germany, the seasonal labour migration regime is characterised as just-in-time migration tailored to the needs of agricultural business, where migrants’ work force is not absorbed homogenously by precarious labour sectors, but rather specific groups of migrant workers are integrated differently through mechanisms of differential inclusion. Within this regime, seasonal workers function as outsourced labour, whose reproduction costs remain abroad. On the discursive level, the article shows how seasonal workers are produced as ‘wanted migrants’ by linking seasonal migration to the interests of the ‘homeland’. While the pandemic momentarily caused some shifts on the discoursively level, the article shows that the seasonal labour regime as a whole remains rather stable in time.

COVID capitalism: The contested logistics of migrant labour supply chains in the double crisis

“…In a similar vein, in ‘Seasonal Workers Wanted! Germany’s Seasonal Labour Migration Regime and the Covid-19 Pandemic’, Dorothea Biaback Anong (2024: 219–234) traces the transformation of migrant labour supply chains during the pandemic to diagnose the existence of a ‘seasonal labour migration regime’ that is essential for the very functioning of Germany’s agricultural industry. She also regards the pandemic-induced disruption of migrant labour supply chains as a ‘contrast agent’ (2) that made visible the essential role of seasonal labour migration in agriculture.…”