The devaluation of female labour in fruit and vegetable packaging plants in Spanish Mediterranean agriculture

Castro, Carlos de; Reigada, Alicia; Gadea, Elena

doi:10.1177/1350508419883387

Cited by 34 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…This adds an important perspective to the existing depictions of peri-urban space in successive immigrant re-locations [50] and urban-rural relations [34]. Livelihood diversification is grueling in its demands and complex regarding its linkages (on devalued, diversified labor of women immigrants in Spain, see [88]; on agri-food and environmental linkages, see [28]). Peri-urban spaces were the sites of their nearly constant struggles to coordinate informal farm and non-farm employment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Agri-Food Land Transformations and Immigrant Farm Workers in Peri-Urban Areas of Spain and the Mediterranean

Zimmerer

Jiménez-Olivencia

Ruiz-Ruiz

et al. 2020

Land

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Spain is a global hotspot of transformations of agri-food land systems due to changing production intensity, diets, urbanization, market integration, and climate change. Characteristic of the Mediterranean, these expanding intersections with the migration, livelihoods, and food security strategies of immigrant farm workers urge new research into the “who,” “how,” and “why” questions of the transformation of agri-food land systems. Addressing this gap, we communicate preliminary results from field research in the Granada and Madrid areas. We use a novel conceptual framework of linkages among distinct agri-food land systems and the roles and agency of immigrant farm workers. Preliminary results integrating a combined land- and labor-centric approach address: (1) how the recent and ongoing transformations of specific agri-food land systems are indicative of close links to inexpensive, flexible labor of immigrant farm workers; (2) how the connectivity among transformations of multiple distinct agri-food land systems can be related to the geographic mobility of immigrant farm workers and livelihoods (non-farm work, gendered employment, peri-urban residential location, labor recruitment); and (3) how the struggles for food and nutrition security among immigrant farm workers are indicative of links to local sites and networked agrobiodiversity. This study can help advance the nexus of migration-land research with expanding ethical, justice, and policy concerns of land system sciences in relation to the new suite of agri-food interest and initiatives.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Agri-Food Land Transformations and Immigrant Farm Workers in Peri-Urban Areas of Spain and the Mediterranean

Zimmerer

Jiménez-Olivencia

Ruiz-Ruiz

et al. 2020

Land

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“…Scientific literature has addressed the satisfaction of women workers in the fruit-and vegetable-handling sector. Researchers highlight aspects that affect satisfaction, such as the devaluation of women's work [20] or the need to improve working conditions in order to increase the satisfaction of working women, both in terms of physical and mental health [21][22][23].…”

Section: Understanding Rural Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rural Development from a Gender Perspective: The Case of Women Farmers in Southern Spain

Valenciano

Milán-García

Uribe-Toril

et al. 2021

Land

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This article analyses the contribution to local development by women workers in the fruit- and vegetable-handling sector in Almería (Spain) over the last five years (2015–2019). It is a continuation of research carried out during the period 2000–2014. Using data collected through surveys and focus groups, the aim is to ascertain if the results obtained in this analysis meet the condition of sustainability, i.e., whether the improvement in working women’s quality of life has been maintained over time, and whether these beneficial effects have multiplied. The results show that women workers in the fruit- and vegetable-handling sector are satisfied with their jobs and with the company they are working for. The existence of fixed-discontinuous employment contracts facilitates greater flexibility for women in terms of balancing work and family life. This main contribution of this study lies in extrapolating the sustainability of a local development model in regard to other initiatives that aim to increase women’s empowerment in the labour market.

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“…The prevalence of labour discourses in feminist NIDL studies began in particular with the work of Elson and Pearson (1981) who pointed out that the ‘nimble fingers’ and ‘docile dispositions’ which seemingly rendered women workers cheaper and more profitable to hire in third world global assembly lines were not natural characteristics inherent in them, but rather discourses which originated from how they were socialized in households and communities in ways that subordinated women – as well as their skills, value, the spaces they belonged to and their power – as a gender (cf. de Castro et al., 2020; Fernández‐Kelly, 1983; Wolf, 1992). Subsequent studies have examined the role of actors other than global capital, such as the state and trade unions, in constructing discourses which produce workers along particular cultural lines (e.g., Fernandes, 1997; Ong, 1987).…”

Section: Discourse and Labour In The Circuits Of Transnational Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping the discursive in labour geographies

Anant

Coe

2021

Geography Compass

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Geographical debates surrounding labour have hitherto tended to sideline its discursivity – that is its ongoing construction as a category of the economy – and the politics of the discourses of labour involved in this process. To address this lacuna, this paper engages with three bodies of scholarship in the social sciences which explicitly foreground the discursive construction of labour: work on subjectivity and power in the labour process; feminist investigations into gendered globalization processes; and studies on the discursive power of labour. These reveal labour discourses as multiscalar phenomena that operate at workplaces, as mechanisms of work organization and control within transnational capital circuits, as knowledge networks that underpin how labour is valued, and as resources for labour agency. The paper closes by proposing a distinctively geographical research agenda which involves mapping the discursive geographies of labour, examining how labour discourses are ‘placed’ and encountered, and exploring their role in building geographies of labour agency.

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The devaluation of female labour in fruit and vegetable packaging plants in Spanish Mediterranean agriculture

Cited by 34 publications

References 43 publications

Agri-Food Land Transformations and Immigrant Farm Workers in Peri-Urban Areas of Spain and the Mediterranean

Agri-Food Land Transformations and Immigrant Farm Workers in Peri-Urban Areas of Spain and the Mediterranean

Rural Development from a Gender Perspective: The Case of Women Farmers in Southern Spain

Mapping the discursive in labour geographies

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