INTRODUCTION
⌅The COVID-19 has made the structural deficiencies of the global agri-food system more visible than ever. Especially noteworthy have been the problems related to the management of labour force in intensive agriculture models in the south of Europe (Molinero, 2021Molinero, Y. (2021). The Problem is not Covid-19, it’s the Model! Industrial Agriculture and Migrant Farm Labour in the EU. EuroChoices, 0(0), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-692X.12308 ). The closure of borders has not only forced to seek alternatives, but it has also called into question the high dependence on migrant labour and their poor working and living conditions. Although agricultural workers have been labelled as ‘essential’ to ensure the non-interruption of food chains, this has not been translated into a greater guarantee of their basic needs and labour rights (Castillero, 2020aCastillero, S. (2020a). “Trabajar en tiempos de Covid. Fricciones de lo esencial en la producción alimentaria. El caso de los frutos rojos en la provincia de Huelva”. Revista Andaluza de Antropología, 19: 67-86. https://dx.doi.org/10.12795/RAA.2020.19.04 ; Pedreño, 2020Pedreño, A. (2020). “La cuestión jornalera entre dos crisis: condición inmigrante, desafiliación y riesgo de contagio”. Sociología del Trabajo, 96: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.5209/stra.70686 ). Quite the contrary, although some countries such as Italy had initiatives like the regularisation of migrant workers to ensure the supply of food and their access to health (Corrado and Palumbo, 2021Corrado, A. and Palumbo, L. (2021). Essential Farmworkers and the Pandemic Crisis: Migrant Labour Conditions, and Legal and Political Responses in Italy and Spain. In A. Triandafyllidou Migration and Pandemics: Spaces of Solidarity and Spaces of Exception, 145-166. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81210-2_8 ; European Migration Network, 2020European Migration Network. (2020). Inform # 3 - Maintaining Labour Migration in Essential Sectors in Times of Pandemic. https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/librarydoc/inform-3-maintaining-labour-migration-in-essential-sectors-in-times-of-pandemic-covid-19 ), in other European countries these initiatives have not succeeded. In this context, the concepts of “migratory utilitarianism” (Sayad, 1986Sayad, A. (1986). Coûts et “profits” de l’immigration. Actes de La Recherche En Sciences Sociales, 61, 79-82. https://www.persee.fr/doc/arss_0335-5322_1986_num_61_1_2308 ) or “economic utilitarianism” (Morice, 2004Morice, A. (2004). Le travail sans le travailleur. Plein Droit, 61(2), 2-7. https://doi.org/10.3917/pld.061.0002 ) have gained traction more than ever, stressing the use of temporary migrant workers for mere economic purposes.
The agricultural enclave of Huelva is no exception. Being the second largest producer of red fruits in the world with more than 378 tons in 2019 (FEPEX, 2019Federación Española de Asociaciones de Productores Exportadores de Frutas, Hortalizas, Flores y Plantas vivas (FEPEX) (2019). Datos del sector. https://www.fepex.es/datos-del-sector/exportacion-importacion-espa%C3%B1ola-frutas-hortalizas ) after California (USA), it has the capacity to hire about 100,000 people per campaign. Although there is no aggregate data on the sociodemographic composition of the labour force ̶ given the high incidence of informal work and the decentralisation of recruitment mechanisms ̶ , it is estimated that half of the workers (around 50,000) are of migrant origin1Data provided by several interviewees.. An important part of these (varying across the years) comes from the recruitment in origin programme (Gestión Colectiva de Contratación en Origen, GECCO), which since the campaign of 2009-2010 revolve solely around Moroccan women (Moreno, 2012Moreno, J. (2012). Movilidad transnacional, trabajo y género: temporeras marroquíes en la agricultura onubense. Politica y Sociedad, 49(1), 123-140. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_poso.2012.v49.n1.36525 )2See Molinero (2020, p. 145) for the evolution of GECCO’s quotas in the last 20 years in Huelva and in Lleida.. The rest are seasonal workers from Eastern Europe and migrant population residing in Spain that concatenate several campaigns across the country, plus some ‘sporadic’ migrant workers (Güell & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020Güell, B., & Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2020). Agricultural seasonal workers in times of Covid-19 in Spain (Issue ADMIGOV DELIVERABLE 3.3). http://admigov.eu/upload/Deliverable_D33_Guell_Garces_Temporary_and_Circular_Migration_Spain.pdf ).
Although seasonal workers’ programmes are a widely studied phenomenon, especially during the first decade of the 2000s until approximately 2015 (Arab, 2010Arab, C. (2010). La Migración Circular Femenina Marroquí in Huelva. Impact and Change. Obets. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 5(2), 165-174. https://doi.org/10.14198/OBETS2010.5.2.01 ; Gordo, 2014Gordo, M. (2014). La gestión colectiva de los contratos en origen (GECCO) como mecanismo de reclutamiento laboral: el protagonismo de las actividades agrícolas y de la provincia de Huelva. In M. Gordo & J. A. Márquez (Eds.), Estudio cuantitativo-cualitativo sobre transferencias del modelo de sistemas de movilidad de flujos migratorios en Huelva a otras provincias andaluzas (pp. 138-225). Editorial Fundación Asistencial y para la Formación, Investigación y Estudio (AFIES). https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/5137923.pdf ; Gordo et al., 2013Gordo, M., Márquez, J. A., & Jurado, J. M. (2013). La Fundación para Trabajadores Extranjeros en Huelva (FUTEH) y la gestión colectiva de los contratos en origen en Marruecos. AGIR: Revista Interdisciplinar de C. Sociales y Humanas, 1(1), 160-195. https://www.academia.edu/8323938/La_Fundaci%C3%B3n_para_Trabajadores_Extranjeros_en_Huelva_FUTEH_y_la_gesti%C3%B3n_colectiva_de_los_contratos_en_origen_en_Marruecos ; Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ; Macías et al., 2016Macías, I., Márquez, J. A., & Jurado, J. M. (2016). La contratación de origen de temporeros marroquíes para los campos españoles como experiencia de codesarrollo. Cuadernos Geográficos, 55(2), 173-194. https://revistaseug.ugr.es/index.php/cuadgeo/article/view/3910 ), the impact of the 2008 crisis and the decline of GECCO’s quotas led to a reduction of research in this field. Yet, since 2017 these flows have experienced an important rebound that has once again put on the table the deficiencies of the program and of the intensive agricultural model. In views of this gap, this article aims to shed light on the evolution of the GECCO programme in recent years and, especially, on the impact of the pandemic focusing on the group of Moroccan women. More particularly, the paper seeks to examine the intersectional forms of exploitation and discrimination embedded in the nature and modus operandi of the GECCO programme and point out how these have become more visible during the pandemic in three specific fields: recruitment, working conditions and living conditions.
To this aim, the analytical framework of intersectionality is used to unveil how the different social divisions (gender, ethnicity, class, etc.) are mutually constituted and are at the basis of structural inequalities reproduced by GECCO. This is in a context of progressive feminisation of agricultural work and a segmentation of the labour market on ethnic and sexual grounds (Gadea et al., 2015Gadea, M. E., de Castro, C., Pedreño, A., & Moraes, N. (2015). Jornaleros inmigrantes en la agricultura murciana: reflexiones sobre crisis, inmigración y empleo agrícola. Migraciones, 37, 149-169. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14422/mig.i37.y2015.007 ; Reigada, 2011Reigada, A. (2011). Reestructuración agraria, migración laboral y feminización del trabajo en Andalucía (España). Agricultura, Sociedad y Desarrollo, 8(1), 19-43. https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S1870-54722011000100002&script=sci_abstract ). As we will argue, in comparison to other migrant groups and autochthonous workers, female temporary labourers recruited in Morocco are exposed to specific forms of abuse and discrimination, mainly due to their condition of mothers from rural and poor areas. In close connection to the world-ecology theory of capitalism, this is also explained by the embeddedness of GECCO in asymmetric centre-periphery relations, where the productive work of Moroccan women in Spain is systemically linked to the reproductive work in their home country (Hellio & Moreno, 2017Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2017). Contrataciones en origen, deslocalización productiva y feminización del trabajo en la fresicultura del norte de Marruecos y el sur de España. Una historia en común. Navegar. Revista de Estudos de E/Inmigraçao, 3(5), 21-46. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01793010/document ). Moreover, the concept of ‘geographies of intersectionality’ (Rodó-Zárate, 2021Rodó-Zárate, M. (2021). Interseccionalitat. Tigre de Paper.) allows to point out how inequalities are also intersected with time and space in the construction of power relationships.
After this introduction, the article continues with the theoretical framework around the feminisation of agricultural work, the world-ecology theory of capitalism and intersectionality, by pointing out the links between them and their usefulness for the purpose of this paper. Then, a brief methodological note is pointed out referring to the project details that support the research. This is followed by a contextual framework on the evolution of the GECCO programme to date in the enclave of Huelva. Finally, the results are presented based on the three main themes of the article: recruitment, working conditions and living conditions, ending with some conclusions.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: FEMINISATION OF AGRICULTURAL WORK, WORLD-ECOLOGY CAPITALISM AND INTERSECTIONALITY
⌅The feminisation of agricultural work has been influenced by the increasing feminisation of international migration and the progressive labour incorporation of migrant women into labour markets of Western reception societies (Reigada, 2011Reigada, A. (2011). Reestructuración agraria, migración laboral y feminización del trabajo en Andalucía (España). Agricultura, Sociedad y Desarrollo, 8(1), 19-43. https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S1870-54722011000100002&script=sci_abstract ). On the one hand, international migrations have become feminised thanks to the role of women as pioneers of migratory chains. This role has led to a reinterpretation of the ‘immigrant’ from a purely economic and masculine point of view to give rise to a female figure as the head of the family that transforms work and family relationships, as well as the organisation of domestic groups (Parella, 2003Parella, S. (2003). Mujer, inmigrante y trabajadora: la triple discriminación. Anthropos.; Gregorio, 1998Gregorio, C. (1998). Migración femenina. Su impacto en las relaciones de género. Asparkía. Investigació Feminista, (15), 257-265. https://www.e-revistes.uji.es/index.php/asparkia/article/view/824 ). In the Spanish context, this role has been widely recognised in some groups of Latin American women, who have been inserted in the care and domestic sectors. However, the role played by certain groups of women (Eastern European or Moroccan) as protagonists of labour migration in the seasonal agricultural sector has been less explored and recognised (Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ). The economic and social crisis in the countries of origin and the demand for female and migrant labour in certain niches of the destination societies are key factors that have driven this new pattern (Reigada, 2011Reigada, A. (2011). Reestructuración agraria, migración laboral y feminización del trabajo en Andalucía (España). Agricultura, Sociedad y Desarrollo, 8(1), 19-43. https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S1870-54722011000100002&script=sci_abstract ). Beyond the most pressing economic motivations, female temporary workers also pursue circular migration for symbolic reasons related to migratory success and personal autonomy (Moreno, 2012Moreno, J. (2012). Movilidad transnacional, trabajo y género: temporeras marroquíes en la agricultura onubense. Politica y Sociedad, 49(1), 123-140. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_poso.2012.v49.n1.36525 ).
However, the incorporation of migrant women in niches like the seasonal work is highly determined by the segmentation of the labour market of host countries (Gadea et al., 2015Gadea, M. E., de Castro, C., Pedreño, A., & Moraes, N. (2015). Jornaleros inmigrantes en la agricultura murciana: reflexiones sobre crisis, inmigración y empleo agrícola. Migraciones, 37, 149-169. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14422/mig.i37.y2015.007 ) and the international labour division on ethnic and sexual grounds (Hirata, 1997Hirata, H. (1997). División sexual e internacional del trabajo. In H. Hirata & D. Kergoat (Eds.), La división sexual del trabajo. Permanencia y cambio (pp. 41-51). Argentina, Asociación Trabajo y Sociedad/CEM.) within the context of asymmetric relationships between the global North and South. The world-ecology theory of capitalism (Moore, 2015Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.) looks at this kind of relationships, where the central countries of advanced capitalism mobilise racialised labour force from the periphery to work, in this case, in the agricultural sector (Hellio & Moreno, 2021Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2021). La ecología-mundo bajo plástico: un análisis de la articulación entre la explotación de la naturaleza, el racismo y el sexismo en la producción de frutos rojos de Huelva. Relaciones Internacionales, (47), 125-142. https://doi.org/10.15366/relacionesinternacionales2021.47.006.).
From this perspective, human labour and extra human nature (the environment) are part of the same matrix from which processes of production and reproduction are analysed (Molinero & Avallone, 2017Molinero, Y., & Avallone, G. (2017). Produciendo comida y trabajo baratos: migraciones y agricultura en la ecología-mundo capitalista. Relaciones Internacionales, 33, 31-51. https://revistas.uam.es/relacionesinternacionales/article/view/6726 ). As Hellio & Moreno (2021)Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2021). La ecología-mundo bajo plástico: un análisis de la articulación entre la explotación de la naturaleza, el racismo y el sexismo en la producción de frutos rojos de Huelva. Relaciones Internacionales, (47), 125-142. https://doi.org/10.15366/relacionesinternacionales2021.47.006. explain, capitalist accumulation expands through commodity fronts (Moore, 2015Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.), seeking new territories (spatial or social) that have not yet been commodified and whose conquest opens new cycles of profitability. In this search, capitalism appropriates these territories and their “free gifts of nature” which include, among others, the free labour of women. Under this logic, capitalist accumulation is not only linked to the processes of labour exploitation, but also to the cheap or free appropriation of vital activities such as unpaid reproductive work. And this appropriation is possible thanks to its naturalization and its ideological devaluation compared to productive work. In this way, a systemic nexus is established between unpaid female and racialised work, and capitalist development, as other authors have also shown (e.g. Federici, 2018Federici, S. (2018). Caliban i la bruixa. Dones, cos i acumulació primitiva. Virus Editorial.).
The world-ecology theory of capitalism is in turn related to feminist theories focused on the nexus between production and social reproduction, also from a decolonial perspective (Molinero & Avallone, 2017Molinero, Y., & Avallone, G. (2017). Produciendo comida y trabajo baratos: migraciones y agricultura en la ecología-mundo capitalista. Relaciones Internacionales, 33, 31-51. https://revistas.uam.es/relacionesinternacionales/article/view/6726 ). In this sense, intersectionality appears as an analytical frame, which despite not having been used in this field yet, turns out useful to explain how this systemic nexus operates by looking at the mutual constitution of different axes of inequality. Even if the concept was coined by black feminists in the USA three decades ago (Collins, 1990Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: knowledge, power and the politics of empowerment. https://negrasoulblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/patricia-hill-collins-black-feminist-thought.pdf ; Crenshaw, 1989Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalising the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(8), 139-167. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf ) to account for the interrelation of social categories of gender, race and class, this has evolved into a whole field of study that provides theoretical and methodological approaches to different social phenomena (Cho et al., 2013Cho, S., Crenshaw, K. W., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 785-810. https://doi.org/10.1086/669608 ). In short, intersectionality allows to “locate social categories and divisions within a broader social framing that attends to power, hierarchy and context (both spatial and temporal)” (Anthias, 2013, p. 6Anthias, F. (2013). Intersectional what? Social divisions, intersectionality and levels of analysis. Ethnicities, 13(1), 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796812463547 ).
In this paper, intersectionality proves useful to understand how the interrelation of social divisions is reflected in specific forms of discrimination and exploitation embedded in the GECCO programme and how these differ according to the composition of temporary workers’ groups. Secondly, it is useful to understand how this interrelation is built in a specific time and context through the concept of ‘geographies of intersectionality’ (Rodó-Zárate, 2021Rodó-Zárate, M. (2021). Interseccionalitat. Tigre de Paper.). This argues the need to look at intersecting inequalities in close connection with the place and time where these occur, as well as at power relationships that exist in and are produced by places at a structural level. In this sense, “the social relations of space are experienced and interpreted differently by people with different positions” (Massey, 1994, p. 3 in Rodó-Zarate, 2021, p. 67Rodó-Zárate, M. (2021). Interseccionalitat. Tigre de Paper.). Following the case of GECCO, the living spaces offered by employers could be used and experienced differently depending on the composition of the migrant groups residing there. The same applies to the specific forms of abuse and control at workplaces, establishing a link between the material and ideological dimensions through gender ideologies around honour and the sexual division of labour (Hellio & Moreno, 2017Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2017). Contrataciones en origen, deslocalización productiva y feminización del trabajo en la fresicultura del norte de Marruecos y el sur de España. Una historia en común. Navegar. Revista de Estudos de E/Inmigraçao, 3(5), 21-46. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01793010/document ).
On a broader level, the intersection of social divisions with space and time relate to the centre-periphery relations between Spain and Morocco as a result of the colonial past, and to the emergence of Huelva as a border (Castillero, 2021Castillero, S. (2021). “La esencialidad del cuarto mundo. ‘Las marroquíes y los morenos’ en la salvaguarda de la producción alimentaria en la frontera sur”. Revista de Estudios Sociales 78: 128-143. https://doi.org/10.7440/res78.2021.08 ). As Hellio & Moreno (2017)Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2017). Contrataciones en origen, deslocalización productiva y feminización del trabajo en la fresicultura del norte de Marruecos y el sur de España. Una historia en común. Navegar. Revista de Estudos de E/Inmigraçao, 3(5), 21-46. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01793010/document argue, the birth of the GECCO programme is strictly linked to the delocalisation of Spanish red berries companies to Morocco in the late ‘80s. Since then, this has facilitated direct investments of capital, the transfer of know-how and the mobility of farmers, technical staff and workers from one country to the other. Even though both countries occupy an apparent similar peripherical position within the global agri-food chain, they maintain asymmetrical relationships displayed in the control of exports by foreign (and especially Spanish) companies based in Morocco. When it comes to the circulation of female workers, gender intersects with administrative vulnerability and the post-colonial condition to produce flexibility in each context. At the same time, circularity through regular contracts allows to establish a temporal, spatial and juridical border between the productive and reproductive spheres. This leads to the understanding of the phenomenon from a transnational lens, where the material, affective and symbolic resources are managed between two territorial settings (Moreno, 2012Moreno, J. (2012). Movilidad transnacional, trabajo y género: temporeras marroquíes en la agricultura onubense. Politica y Sociedad, 49(1), 123-140. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_poso.2012.v49.n1.36525 ).
Summing up, this article aims to fill a theoretical gap in the debate around feminisation of the agricultural work by bringing in the intersectional approach in straight relation to the feminist contributions of the world-ecology capitalism. Departing from the structural nexus between productive and reproductive work, the paper sheds light on the different forms of discrimination and labour exploitation of migrant women that are embedded in the nature and implementation of the GECCO programme. This is by focusing on the intersection of social divisions embodied by female temporary workers in three key elements of the programme (recruitment, working conditions and housing) in a specific spatiotemporal context.
METHODOLOGICAL NOTE
⌅This paper stems from a European research project (ADMIGOV3Full name: Advancing Alternative Migration Governance (ADMIGOV).) which has analysed migration governance models in different types of policies, including circular migration and recruitment in origin programmes applied to agriculture. This manuscript is focused on the case of Spain and is fed by qualitative research techniques that include 30 in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 32 stakeholders, a review of key official documents issued by the main stakeholders (e.g. collective agreements, reports, protocols), as well as a review of news (mostly from the main national newspapers) on the difficulties and problems arisen in the context of pandemic during the spring and summer of 2020.
In relation to the fieldwork, the interviews were conducted mainly face-to-face in three field trips: two in Lleida and one in Huelva. These two provinces were selected for being the two historical territories in Spain with higher quotas of GECCO workers (Molinero, 2020Molinero, Y. (2020). Dos décadas desplazando trabajadores extranjeros al campo español: una revisión del mecanismo de contratación en origen. Panorama Social, 31, 141-153. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219981 ). Whilst for this article we have only used half of the interviews related to the case of Huelva (15), the interviews conducted in Lleida have also been useful to understand structural dynamics of the agricultural work and the GECCO programme. Interviewees represent different organisations and institutions, including employers’ associations, individual employers, temping agencies, trade unions, regional and local administrations, NGOs and activists4In the case of Huelva, the interviewees belong to the following organisations: Freshuelva, anonym company, Subdelegation of the national Government, Regional Government of Andalucía, Provincial Government of Huelva, two City Councils, Jornaleras en Lucha, Confederación General de Trabajadores, Sindicato Andaluz de los Trabajadors, Mar de Onuba, Asisti, Asociación Pro-Derechos de Andalucía, Mujeres 24h, and Mujeres en Zona de Conflicto. .
Mobility restrictions obliged to conduct the fieldwork in a limited period of time between lockdowns (early Autumn 2020), which posed some difficulties of access to the field. Moreover, the management of agricultural seasonal workers has become a very sensitive topic in the last couple of years. In Huelva, the legal complaints for sexual abuse in 20185These complaints came out after a report in the German press echoed sexual abuses in the 2016-2017 campaign. Both cases report non-payment and poor working conditions on the one hand, and sexual harassment on the other. More details can be found in Güell and Garcés-Mascareñas (2020, p. 45-46). meant a turning point and since then, employers’ associations, temping agencies and farmers are very reluctant to participate in research studies. Nonetheless, the high number of interviews enabled to contrast data and complement different viewpoints from a wide range of actors. The analysis of data was conducted with Atlas TI and interviews were codified in order to keep anonymity.
EVOLUTION OF GECCO IN THE ENCLAVE OF HUELVA
⌅The enclave of Huelva has become an icon of the agri-food sector of red berries, being the second producer of the world after California and the first one in Spain (López-Sala, 2016López-Sala, A. (2016). Induced circularity for selective workers. The case of seasonal labor mobility schemes in the Spanish agriculture. Arbor, 192(777), a287. https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2016.777n1003 ), producing more than 90% of all berries in Andalusia (FEPEX, 2019Federación Española de Asociaciones de Productores Exportadores de Frutas, Hortalizas, Flores y Plantas vivas (FEPEX) (2019). Datos del sector. https://www.fepex.es/datos-del-sector/exportacion-importacion-espa%C3%B1ola-frutas-hortalizas ). While in the 1970s there were 700 hectares of strawberry fields (Molinero & Avallone, 2018Molinero, Y., & Avallone, G. (2018). Migration and Labour Force Needs in Contemporary Agriculture: What drives States to implement Temporary Programs? A Comparison among the cases of Huelva, Lleida (Spain) and Piana del Sele (Italy). CALITATEA VIEȚII, XXIX(1), 3-22. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/170606 ), in 2020 these have expanded up to 11,700 hectares, including all red berries (FEPEX, 2020Federación Española de Asociaciones de Productores Exportadores de Frutas, Hortalizas, Flores y Plantas vivas (FEPEX) (2020). Datos del sector. https://www.fepex.es/datos-del-sector/exportacion-importacion-espa%C3%B1ola-frutas-hortalizas ). This growth has implied a diversification of fruits, as well as a territorial dispersion across the province (Reigada, 2012Reigada, A. (2012). Más allá del discurso sobre la “inmigración ordenada”: contratación en origen y feminización del trabajo en el cultivo de la fresa en Andalucía. Politica y Sociedad, 49(1), 103-122. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fe46/92e2d65e778ecf2cf3ae6f2f53434781b657.pdf ).
The production system of this sector entails the maximum expression of the ‘just-in-time’ model, highly oriented to exterior markets (Pedreño, 2020Pedreño, A. (2020). “La cuestión jornalera entre dos crisis: condición inmigrante, desafiliación y riesgo de contagio”. Sociología del Trabajo, 96: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.5209/stra.70686 ; Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ). Moreover, Huelva only controls the phase related to cultivation, handling and packing of the global agri-food chain. Research and technological innovation at the beginning, and merchandise trading and distribution at the end are controlled by multinational and large companies, which are often based outside the enclave (Reigada, 2011Reigada, A. (2011). Reestructuración agraria, migración laboral y feminización del trabajo en Andalucía (España). Agricultura, Sociedad y Desarrollo, 8(1), 19-43. https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S1870-54722011000100002&script=sci_abstract ). This gives very little room of manoeuvre to local farmers to fix the price of the fruit. In fact, one of the few costs that they can adjust is the labour force. The increasing international competition and the need to import many means of production has resulted in a more and more scarce profitability since the 1990s (Hellio & Moreno, 2017Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2017). Contrataciones en origen, deslocalización productiva y feminización del trabajo en la fresicultura del norte de Marruecos y el sur de España. Una historia en común. Navegar. Revista de Estudos de E/Inmigraçao, 3(5), 21-46. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01793010/document ). Even if the sector still generates millions of euros of turnovers (López-Sala, 2016López-Sala, A. (2016). Induced circularity for selective workers. The case of seasonal labor mobility schemes in the Spanish agriculture. Arbor, 192(777), a287. https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2016.777n1003 ; FEPEX, 2020Federación Española de Asociaciones de Productores Exportadores de Frutas, Hortalizas, Flores y Plantas vivas (FEPEX) (2020). Datos del sector. https://www.fepex.es/datos-del-sector/exportacion-importacion-espa%C3%B1ola-frutas-hortalizas ), the fever of the ‘red gold’ of the 1980s has progressively faded out.
The conversion from a family model to an industrial one in the late 1980s (Molinero, 2020Molinero, Y. (2020). Dos décadas desplazando trabajadores extranjeros al campo español: una revisión del mecanismo de contratación en origen. Panorama Social, 31, 141-153. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219981 ) led to the need of more labour demand. In a context of economic growth after the entry of Spain in the EU (in 1986), Andalusian workforce found more opportunities in other sectors such as construction or services following higher labour expectations (Allepuz & Torres, 2018Allepuz, R., & Torres, T. (2018). Recruitment of agrarian temporary workforce in the campaigns for the fruit harvesting. Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales, 36(1), 107-123. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325882677_Recruitment_of_agrarian_temporary_workforce_in_the_campaigns_for_the_fruit_harvesting ). This shift left vacancies in the agriculture that were occupied by migrant workers, in a progressive process of ethnic substitution and feminisation of labour force (Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ). The first groups were Maghrebian (and to a lesser extent Sub-Saharan) migrant men, who precisely because of their (often) irregular and socioeconomic status, were ready to work hard in poor conditions. However, in the end of the 1990s, several mobilisations and struggles were organised to claim their regularisation and access to labour rights, which led to employers expressing their need to seek more stable and reliable workforce under a legal framework. In this sociopolitical context is when the programme of GECCO was born (Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ). Inspired by an experiment led by the Catalan agrarian union ‘Unió de Pagesos’ in 1999, it was implemented in other provinces like Huelva or Almería in 2000.
Despite the initial difficulties associated with a low index of return to the countries of origin (Molinero, 2020Molinero, Y. (2020). Dos décadas desplazando trabajadores extranjeros al campo español: una revisión del mecanismo de contratación en origen. Panorama Social, 31, 141-153. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219981 ), the programme improved following the method of ‘learning by doing’ (López-Sala & Godenau, 2015López-Sala, A., & Godenau, D. (2015). En torno a la circularidad migratoria: aproximaciones conceptuales, dimensiones teóricas y práctica política. Migraciones, 38, 9-34. https://doi.org/10.14422/mig.i38y2015.001 ). With the financial support of the EU (through the AENEAS and MARES I & II programmes), Huelva was regarded a model of reference across Europe (Molinero & Avallone, 2018Molinero, Y., & Avallone, G. (2018). Migration and Labour Force Needs in Contemporary Agriculture: What drives States to implement Temporary Programs? A Comparison among the cases of Huelva, Lleida (Spain) and Piana del Sele (Italy). CALITATEA VIEȚII, XXIX(1), 3-22. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/170606 ). Circular migration was argued to be a ‘triple win’ (Vertovec, 2007Vertovec, S. (2007). Circular Migration: the way forward in global policy? In Working Papers, 4. https://www.migrationinstitute.org/publications/wp-04-07 ): employers could meet labour demands, the governments could exert greater control over illegal migration, and the countries of origin ―in principle― could benefit from co-development through remittances and the increase of migrant workers’ capabilities (Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ; Hellio, 2017Hellio, E. (2017). ‘They know that you’ll leave, like a dog moving onto the next bin’: Undocumented male and seasonal contracted female workers in the agricultural labour market of Huelva, Spain. In D. Perrota, A. Corrado, & C. de Castros (Eds.), Migration and Agriculture: Mobility and Change in the Mediterranean Area (pp. 198-216). https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01621350/document ).
In the last 20 years, the enclave of Huelva has gone through three phases: a) exponential growth with a peak of around 40,000 workers (1999-2007), b) decrease and stagnation around 2,000 workers as a result of the economic crisis (2008-2015), and c) recovery, from 2016 until today (Molinero, 2020Molinero, Y. (2020). Dos décadas desplazando trabajadores extranjeros al campo español: una revisión del mecanismo de contratación en origen. Panorama Social, 31, 141-153. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219981 ). In 2017, 18,206 contracts in origin were issued and in 2018 nearly the same (18,880). In the campaign of 2019-2020 there were supposed to be 19,698, but due to the pandemic only 7,081 were finally formalised. In the current campaign (2020-2021), 14,000 contracts were approved affecting around 12,800 women6The data since 2017 has been provided by the Subdelegation of the Government in Huelva and it refers to contracts (not necessarily workers, although for these years there should not be a big gap between contracts and workers). The data of 2021 refers to a press release: https://elpais.com/espana/2021-06-01/el-conflicto-pone-en-peligro-el-regreso-a-marruecos-de-12600-temporeras-de-la-fresa.html .
Whilst in the first ten years there was a mixture of nationalities including Morocco, Poland and Romania as the three largest countries, since 2010 there have been contracts only with Moroccan women. The entry of Eastern European countries in the EU and the failure of other pilot agreements with countries like Senegal, Ukraine or Philippines fostered the exclusion of these nationalities (Molinero, 2020Molinero, Y. (2020). Dos décadas desplazando trabajadores extranjeros al campo español: una revisión del mecanismo de contratación en origen. Panorama Social, 31, 141-153. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219981 ), perceived as too mobile and unreliable. On the other hand, further grounds strengthened the agreement with Morocco: its geographical location (incurring lower economic costs of travel), the political interests of the EU for exploring the hiring of seasonal workers with third country nationals, a common colonial history between the two countries and the possibility to apply very specific criteria of selection according to the needs of production (Molinero, 2020Molinero, Y. (2020). Dos décadas desplazando trabajadores extranjeros al campo español: una revisión del mecanismo de contratación en origen. Panorama Social, 31, 141-153. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219981 ; Hellio & Moreno, 2017Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2017). Contrataciones en origen, deslocalización productiva y feminización del trabajo en la fresicultura del norte de Marruecos y el sur de España. Una historia en común. Navegar. Revista de Estudos de E/Inmigraçao, 3(5), 21-46. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01793010/document ; Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ; Gordo, 2009Gordo, M. (2009). La contratación en origen de rumanos para actividades agrícolas de temporada en España. Cuadernos de Geografía, 84(Idl), 237-262. https://www.uv.es/cuadernosgeo/CG84_237_262.pdf ).
Although recruitment in origin policies have been regarded to entail many advantages for employers and public administrations based on the availability of cheap, flexible and reliable labour force, these are less evident for migrant workers. As displayed in the results of this research, several processes of exclusion and discrimination take place already in the recruitment, which then continue in the fields and in the living spaces.
DISCRIMINATION AND ABUSES IN FEMALE SEASONAL WORK FROM AN INTERSECTIONAL LENS
⌅Recruitment
⌅In the last decades, the ideal type of temporary worker and its associated narratives have changed depending on the labour needs and the sociopolitical context (Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ). In the late ‘80s and ‘90s, with the first temporary migrant workers (Maghrebian men) before GECCO was put in place, the selection criteria were built upon issues of gender, ethnicity and class. In this case, gender was constructed around the idea of manliness, following the profile of agricultural workers that was more common among autochthonous men. However, with the start of GECCO, the narrative changed and migrant women appeared to be most suited for this job, appealing to the stereotyped feminine skills (delicateness, tidiness) and character (more obedient and less conflictive) (Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ). The first contingents were mainly Eastern European women (from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria), but when these entered the EU and became citizens of full rights, it was more difficult to reach them7Flows from Eastern Europe continued to come for the campaign, but not under GECCO. Agrarian associations used their previous contacts to organise contracts in origin privately, especially during the economic crisis, where the official quotas of GECCO drastically decreased to compensate the high unemployment rates among local workers (Molinero, 2018).. This is when employers went back to Morocco, but this time to look for women.
As part of the bilateral agreement between Spain and Morocco within the GECCO programme, the national agency of labour promotion in Morocco (ANAPEC) follows very specific criteria to find the ideal type of temporary worker. In the first couple of years, there was a considerable number of quite young women from urban areas with little experience in agriculture. This led to a very high rate of escapes (fugas): 90% in 2002 and 50% in 2003 (Arab, 2020Arab, C. (2020). Las señoras de la fresa. La invisibilidad de las temporeras marroquíes en España. ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo.), which obliged authorities and employers to redesign the ideal type. In this ‘learning by doing’ (López-Sala and Godenau, 2015López-Sala, A., & Godenau, D. (2015). En torno a la circularidad migratoria: aproximaciones conceptuales, dimensiones teóricas y práctica política. Migraciones, 38, 9-34. https://doi.org/10.14422/mig.i38y2015.001 ) the recruitment process was ‘refined’, by adding a key ingredient to ensure their return to the country: motherhood. This feature was in turn related to other very important characteristics, such as rural origin, an age band of 25-45 years old, few socioeconomic resources and little education.
In this sense, there is a clear intersection of gender, ethnicity, class, age, rural origin, cultural background and motherhood that conform a unique type of worker that perfectly fits the needs of production. Whilst gender, class and ethnicity have always been there (with Maghrebian men and Eastern European women), in Moroccan women motherhood becomes fundamental, establishing a systemic nexus between production and reproduction. As Hellio (2017)Hellio, E. (2017). ‘They know that you’ll leave, like a dog moving onto the next bin’: Undocumented male and seasonal contracted female workers in the agricultural labour market of Huelva, Spain. In D. Perrota, A. Corrado, & C. de Castros (Eds.), Migration and Agriculture: Mobility and Change in the Mediterranean Area (pp. 198-216). https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01621350/document puts it, their productive role in Spain cannot be understood without their reproductive role in Morocco, because it is precisely the family care obligations what makes them return to their home country. The median age also implies a sense of maturity and responsibility that previous younger Moroccan women did not entail so much. On the other hand, the rural origin is straight related to low levels of education and socioeconomic status that conform women with little resources to confront situations of abuse and exploitation. Finally, culture and religion also play a role, since being Muslim from an Arab country like Morocco implies a set of gender ideologies that include behaviours of confinement and respect for patriarchal structures, where the employer (a man) is often perceived and treated as a father.
These categories need to be understood as mutually constituted and if we do not analyse them as being interrelated, we cannot understand -from a capitalist point of view- GECCO’s success in the last decade. Nonetheless, this success has been built thanks to the explicit exclusion of other types of workers who are not entitled to be elected. Being embedded within the guidelines of the GECCO programme, such exclusion constitutes a clear case of institutional discrimination, which in turn is intersectional in views of the intrinsic interrelation of different axes of inequality. Such statement is also recognised in a report written by Women’s Link Worldwide for the United Nations last April 2020 as an action of advocacy in defence of Moroccan’s women rights8Source: “Carta urgente de alegaciones a los procedimientos especiales de Naciones Unidas”.. During the selection process, women are asked for their civil status, and they need to prove that they have children under their responsibility to access a contract, although this is not stated in any bilateral agreement or ministerial order. Moreover, they are not properly informed about their rights and labour conditions in a comprehensive language for them, which is a form of trickery. Besides the high rates of illiteracy in rural Morocco, the contract is written in French and no comprehensive oral explanations are given.
With the pandemic and the closure of borders, GECCO has been severely affected, especially in 2020. Employers could not receive the 10,000 women that were expected to come between mid-March and the end of the season in June9This led to some protests by Moroccan women to claim the Spanish and the Moroccan governments a diligent solution after having invested resources to prepare the trip to Huelva, and considering that they depend on this job to sustain themselves and their families. This happened in 2020 and in 2021. Some news raising this issue: https://elpais.com/espana/2021-04-09/temporeras-marroquies-se-manifiestan-por-no-poder-trabajar-en-la-campana-de-la-fresa-en-huelva.html; https://www.bladi.es/manifestacion-temporeras-casablanca-huelva,9937.html . The subdelegation of the government in Huelva also had to manage the return of 7,000 women that had arrived in the first and second phases (between December 2019 and March 2020), who could not return to Morocco until July, with a few exceptions. This posed much stress to the administration and employers, trying to seek alternatives among (mainly) migrant workers residing in Spain who were also affected by unemployment in other sectors. Efforts were made to keep about 1,700 Moroccan women who remained in Spain employed, by widening their contracts or relocating them in other companies, even if they worked fewer days, as stated by the government’s subdelegation office10For a deeper analysis of how labour demand was covered in the context of crisis caused by the pandemic see Doomernik, Garcés-Mascareñas and Güell (2021).. However, the majority were concerned about spending their savings from previous months and wanted to go home in a climate of much uncertainty and fear caused by the pandemic. On the whole, labour shortages and the reduction of consumption linked to the difficulties of distribution outside Spain affected in a 20% reduction of production11 https://sevilla.abc.es/agronoma/noticias/cultivos/freson/fresa-huelva-coronavirus/ .
Considering that Morocco has closed its borders since the start of the pandemic and as a demand expressed by employers since the last years, the government initiated conversations with other countries to explore possibilities of recruitment (e.g. Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Moldavia). However, travelling overseas to do the selection process with all the mobility restrictions is currently a big challenge and it would be impossible to find thousands of workers in due time. In the end, the Spanish government negotiated a cordon sanitaire with Morocco to allow the recruitment of a maximum of 14,000 women for the campaign of 2020-2021 (Güell and Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020Güell, B., & Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2020). Agricultural seasonal workers in times of Covid-19 in Spain (Issue ADMIGOV DELIVERABLE 3.3). http://admigov.eu/upload/Deliverable_D33_Guell_Garces_Temporary_and_Circular_Migration_Spain.pdf )12According to a recent piece of news, the government will launch a pilot project with Honduras next year in order to decrease the dependency on just one country. Source: https://elpais.com/espana/2021-06-01/el-conflicto-pone-en-peligro-el-regreso-a-marruecos-de-12600-temporeras-de-la-fresa.html . In this sense, although logistics are not easy, the pandemic has showed the large dependence of the red berries sector on temporary workers’ schemes and the difficulties to find feasible alternatives without questioning the basis of the current agricultural model.
Labour conditions
⌅As part of the trickery of the recruitment process in Morocco, the contractual terms and conditions announced in the home country are not always respected once in Spain. According to the ministerial order of GECCO, workers are to be employed full-time at least 75% of the whole duration of their contract, allowing up to 25% of non-working days under some exceptions (e.g. bad weather). However, it is a common practice to hire workers with a ‘contract for project work and services’ (contrato de obra y servicio) instead of a temporary contract for the whole stay, which allows employers to adjust the working days depending on workers’ behaviour and productivity. Consequently, temporary labourers do not know when they will start or finish their work. Moreover, the trial period of 15 days is sometimes extended to one month.
On another vein, temporary workers often do not receive a copy of their contract and when they do, this does not always entail the same conditions they were told in Morocco. In addition, they are not entitled to change the job without the permission of the government, which means that if they are dismissed or deregistered before the end of their visa they are left totally unprotected and fall into irregularity in case they do not want to return voluntarily. Considering the debt which they have incurred to go to Spain, voluntary return is not always an option. This vulnerability could even increase if as a result of this situation they fall into networks of human trafficking, as warned by several local NGOs. On the other hand, the reduction of working days or early dismissals have obvious consequences in sending fewer remittances to their families in the country of origin, colliding with the principle of co-development of circular migration.
Another trickery that entails GECCO is that temporary workers have it very difficult to get a residence permit after three or four years of consecutive campaigns through the legal mechanism of ‘social rooting’ (arraigo social) of the Aliens Law 4/2000, contrary to what they are told in the country of origin. This is another reason why some Moroccan women decide to stay illegally after repeating several campaigns and witnessing that this possibility hardly ever comes to reality. In relation to salaries, as it is the case of other temporary workers, they do not always receive what it is stipulated, especially since the recent increase of the minimum wage. Extraordinary hours are hardly ever paid correctly, and breaks are not always respected. On the other hand, interviewees also report cases of degrading treatment, threats of dismissals or deportations and punishments by employers and (especially) middle-ranking positions (manijeros), even if the latter are often previous migrant temporary workers.
With the pandemic, workers have been submitted under much more stress under the pretext that there was not enough labour demand13This has also been confirmed in the study of Corrado and Palumbo (2021).. Some women complained about having to work many extra hours (including double shifts in plants), whereas others were concerned for having little work during the extra months they had to stay. Moreover, mobility restrictions (two persons by car) also affected Moroccan women living in isolated places next to the fields (as Castillero, 2020bCastillero, S. (2020b). “Producción alimentari intensiva, migraciones y género: la industria del fruto rojo en la provincia de Huelva, España”. Maguaré, 34(2): 113-136. https://doi.org/10.15446/mag.v34n2.92582 points out too). In this sense, the pandemic has posed extra difficulties to reach the towns and satisfy their needs (buying food, etc.). Luckily, in Huelva there were hardly any cases of COVID in 2020’s campaign. According to some, this might have been because the index of contagion in the region was low, but also because there were very few tests done and companies put pressure on workers so that they did not make it public if they had symptoms, as revealed by an NGO member.
Finally, Moroccan temporary workers are also object of sexual harassment and in some cases of sexual abuse, as it was widely reported in the two aforementioned legal complaints of 2018 and confirmed in other studies (e.g. Castillero, 2021Castillero, S. (2021). “La esencialidad del cuarto mundo. ‘Las marroquíes y los morenos’ en la salvaguarda de la producción alimentaria en la frontera sur”. Revista de Estudios Sociales 78: 128-143. https://doi.org/10.7440/res78.2021.08 ). Considering the extreme difficulties that migrant women face to lodge a complaint and the consequences it has on their lives, these cases just represent the tip of the iceberg, but underneath other forms of recurrent symbolic violence may exist. The Ethic, Labour and Social Responsibility Plan of the employers’ association Interfresa (Plan de Responsablidad Ética, Laboral y Social de Interfresa, PRELSI) is a mechanism that was initially created to identify potential cases of sexual abuse after the complaints of 2018. Yet, as interviewees affirm, since consultants organically depend on Interfresa, they end up being little neutral and trustful on the eyes of employees. The proof is that such cases only come to the light, once women decide to stay illegally and get out of GECCO (as also confirmed by Moreno, 2012Moreno, J. (2012). Movilidad transnacional, trabajo y género: temporeras marroquíes en la agricultura onubense. Politica y Sociedad, 49(1), 123-140. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_poso.2012.v49.n1.36525 ).
According to several interviewees and the Women’s Link Worldwide’s report, all these irregularities in the hiring practices constitute a fraud. Yet, what it is important to point out is that many of these labour and sexual abuses that Moroccan women endure are also a reflection of their position of vulnerability in intersectional terms. Other male and female migrants (e.g. Maghrebian men or Eastern European women) and autochthonous temporary workers (i.e. Andalusian women) may also face them, but their suffering is experienced differently. As pointed out in several interviews, Moroccan women undertake the harshest tasks, being at the bottom of the internal hierarchy of job positions. Yet, as theorists of intersectionality would argue, it is not so much a question of who suffers more in a kind of “Oppression Olympics” (Platero, 2012Platero, L. (Raquel). (2012). Intersecciones: cuerpos y sexualidades en la encrucijada. Edicions Bellaterra.). They key is rather to understand the specific realities that ̶in this case ̶ Moroccan temporary workers experience, as a result of their social positioning in the power and labour structure of GECCO.
This whole scenario also raises questions about sustainability: how these irregularities can go on without consequences? Even if it is not the scope of this paper, answers refer to systems of checks and balances like labour inspection, union representation, collective mobilisation of civil society and temporary workers’ agency. As for labour inspection, the subdelegation of the government complains about the lack of human resources, while trade unions and NGOs point to some degree of connivance between the inspection body of the province of Huelva and the entrepreneurial sector. During the months of lockdown, labour inspections were fewer than usual and telematic, which proved to be quite ineffective. However, after much pressure from the civil society and the media, in May 2020 the Minister of Work ordered more labour inspections with the support of the body of inspectors of Madrid in the whole country. In the case of Huelva, this was especially relevant to uncover more irregularities, as also confirmed by Corrado and Palumbo (2021)Corrado, A. and Palumbo, L. (2021). Essential Farmworkers and the Pandemic Crisis: Migrant Labour Conditions, and Legal and Political Responses in Italy and Spain. In A. Triandafyllidou Migration and Pandemics: Spaces of Solidarity and Spaces of Exception, 145-166. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81210-2_8 .
As for union representation, migrant workers (recruited within or outside GECCO) cannot participate in union elections, since they hardly ever comply with the requirement of having a work contract of at least 6 months to be elected. This results in sometimes managers being the union delegates and in a general lack of representation of migrant temporary workers’ interests. On the other hand, there are multiple NGOs engaged in collective action and in the defence of temporary workers’ rights, which greatly contribute to make the deficiencies of the model more visible. However, migrant temporary workers have few resources to engage in processes of social criticism. This does not mean that Moroccan women do not possess agency to express their discontent and face the oppressions they live. The legal complaints of 2018 actually represent a turning point in this respect, by questioning the core of a recruitment program that was designed as an example of ethical and orderly migration for 20 years. Moreover, the escapes from the programme can also be interpreted as a form of collective and individual resistance and a sign of its erosion (Hellio and Moreno, 2021Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2021). La ecología-mundo bajo plástico: un análisis de la articulación entre la explotación de la naturaleza, el racismo y el sexismo en la producción de frutos rojos de Huelva. Relaciones Internacionales, (47), 125-142. https://doi.org/10.15366/relacionesinternacionales2021.47.006.). On the other hand, despite all abuses, the experience of leading a migration process as breadwinners has also many implications in terms of positive recognition, change of gender roles, social mobility and empowerment when they get back to Morocco (Zeneidi, 2017Zeneidi, D. (2017). Gender, temporary work, and migration management. Global Food and Utilitatian Migration in Huelva, Spain (Mobility &). Palgrave Macmillan.).
Housing and living conditions
⌅The temporary scheme of GECCO obliges farmers to provide workers with housing. Although there is a wide variety among the more than 2,000 lodgings spread along more than 3,500 farms14Data provided by the Subdelegation of the Government in Huelva., modular constructions close to the fields and far from towns are a common pattern. According to a recent report, 30% of lodgings for Moroccan women do not comply with the minimum conditions (e.g. dampness, overcrowding, floors made of sand) (Hernández, 2018Hernández, M. (Coord.) (2018) Realidad de los asentamientos en la provincia de Huelva. Análisis, diagnóstico y propuestas 2017. https://www.apdha.org/media/Informe-Asentamientos-Mesa-Integracion-Huelva.pdf ). Many interviewees (activists and members of NGOs, such as Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha or APDHA) also confirm this trend. Whilst a few places are always mentioned as a good practice (e.g. Agromartín), in others there might be no drinking water, only one burner to cook for 12 people, one bathroom without hot water or no fans. If we add the effects of the pandemic, it is clear that shared rooms in little spaces do not facilitate quarantines or anti-COVID measures.
For NGOs and trade unions that mediate with employers to improve the living conditions, it is not always an easy endeavour, since the understanding of the ‘minimum conditions’ for some employers can be dubious. Last year, due to the pressure of the media, the Annual Ministerial Order of GECCO included an annex of nine pages to specify the ‘minimum conditions’ that these housings should have in the campaign of 2020-2021. In this sense, some interviewees of organisations like the Sindicato de Trabajadores Andaluz (SAT), Mujeres 24h or Mujeres en Zona de Conflicto expressed their scepticism that all employers would be able to fully comply them.
Apart from the bad housing conditions, a key concern of many Moroccan women is the tight control over mobility, spaces and bodies. This does not only affect the workplace, but also the living space and the mobility between spaces. Moreover, employers control women’s behaviour ̶including sexual practices̶ and blame them for not planning their pregnancy and motherhood when this happens in Spain, under an ethnocentric and sexist perspective. This management framework can be compared with what Goffman (1961)Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Anchor Books. refers to as “total institution”. Managers and employers have a far-reaching power in their need to optimise labour and control migration.
The lack of an entrepreneurial culture that is sensitive to the management of female migrant workers amplifies bad praxis. Even those employers that comply with the law and want to protect labourers and solve problems of cohabitation may adopt a patronising attitude, as if Moroccan women were their children. Punishments of non-working days, the control on their mobility or the holding of their passports are good examples, even if employers are not aware of it. At the same time, women recognise the figure of the employer as ‘their father’, in accordance with the patriarchal culture of the rural areas where they come from. In this relationship, gender roles and ideologies around morality and honour are mobilised from Morocco to Huelva (Hellio and Moreno, 2017Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2017). Contrataciones en origen, deslocalización productiva y feminización del trabajo en la fresicultura del norte de Marruecos y el sur de España. Una historia en común. Navegar. Revista de Estudos de E/Inmigraçao, 3(5), 21-46. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01793010/document ), reinforcing the intersection of inequalities with the spatial notion of border in a post-colonial context.
In 2020’s campaign, there was the official instruction that housing for GECCO workers had to be guaranteed until their return home, even if they were not working. However, several problems came out related to pregnancy and illnesses. Even if these problems have always been there, the pandemic has accentuated and complicated their management significantly. The extension of Moroccan women’s visa until July multiplied the number of pregnant women (92), births (32), and assisted women for health-related issues (300), according to data of Mujeres en Zona de Conflicto. Since the majority of housings are not prepared for mothers and babies, they had to be reallocated in shelters or separate spaces within lodgings.
In this context, we can see how the condition of motherhood needed for the production turns against the interests of employers when this occurs in the Spanish territory, breaking the ‘balance’ of the systemic nexus between productive and reproductive roles. In turn, becoming mother in Spain is associated with illegitimate sexual practices under the label of ‘prostitutes’ (Arab, 2020Arab, C. (2020). Las señoras de la fresa. La invisibilidad de las temporeras marroquíes en España. ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo.), treating women as mere objects in the service of economic needs. In this sense, we could argue that whereas pregnancy and early motherhood is expected to be ‘delocalised’ in the South, it only turns a significant value in the North once this comes to a more advanced stage.
On the other hand, the pandemic has also strengthened the importance of the ‘health status’ in the intersection of the different axes of social divisions. There were several women that got very sick in a situation of extreme vulnerability (e.g. cases of cancer, chronic kidney failure or hernias). Some already knew that were ill and run out of medication, initially foreseen for 3 months. Others developed the disease once in Spain and others may have not been fully aware of their health situation and it became more complicated due to the whole stress of COVID. In some cases, sick women were left aside by employers and PRELSI mediators (who did not always have enough resources), creating many tensions between the NGOs that were assisting them and farmers.
The lockdown also complicated the situation; in many cases assistance had to be done by phone and services of translation were rarely available. Ambulances did not go to the settlements or isolated lodgings to pick up sick women and access to medical aid centres was very restricted if it was not for COVID (unless it was very serious). In some cases, NGOs accompanied women to the hospital, but only if this was requested by the employer. Once in the hospital, members of the NGO were not allowed to get in, so many women had to suffer their pain by themselves. In other cases, the management was also difficult because they were not given their health card once they arrived in Spain, which constitutes another irregularity of the programme.
Finally, NGOs also assisted sick Moroccan women who were previous GECCO workers living irregularly in informal settlements. Although their presence there dates back to 2018 (before that they tended to live in garages within towns), neither farmers nor institutions feel responsible for the persistence of slums and poverty endured by ex-seasonal GECCO workers and undocumented migrants. It is rather perceived as an independent reality of the farm labour market and seasonal recruitment programs (Hellio, 2017Hellio, E. (2017). ‘They know that you’ll leave, like a dog moving onto the next bin’: Undocumented male and seasonal contracted female workers in the agricultural labour market of Huelva, Spain. In D. Perrota, A. Corrado, & C. de Castros (Eds.), Migration and Agriculture: Mobility and Change in the Mediterranean Area (pp. 198-216). https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01621350/document ; Güell and Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020Güell, B., & Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2020). Agricultural seasonal workers in times of Covid-19 in Spain (Issue ADMIGOV DELIVERABLE 3.3). http://admigov.eu/upload/Deliverable_D33_Guell_Garces_Temporary_and_Circular_Migration_Spain.pdf ).
CONCLUSIONS
⌅This article has shed light on the several forms of exploitation and discrimination embedded in the nature and modus operandi of the Spanish circular migration programme of temporary workers called Gestión Colectiva de Contrataciones en Origen (GECCO) from an intersectional perspective. To do so, the research has empirically focused on the agricultural enclave of red berries in Huelva for being the province that historically entails the highest quotas of seasonal workers and for hosting a highly feminised labour force under an industrial intensive agricultural model (Molinero, 2020Molinero, Y. (2020). Dos décadas desplazando trabajadores extranjeros al campo español: una revisión del mecanismo de contratación en origen. Panorama Social, 31, 141-153. http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219981 ). Emerging as a perfect source of cheap, reliable and flexible workforce, since 2009 GECCO has prioritised Moroccan women, applying stereotyped female attributes to the red berries sector’s needs (Gualda, 2012Gualda, E. (2012). Migración circular en tiempos de crisis: mujeres de Europa del este y africanas en la agricultura de Huelva. Papers. Revista de Sociologia, 97(3), 613-640. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/papers/v97n3.436 ).
Following the quite novel analytical approach of intersectionality within the studies of feminisation of agricultural work, results have shown how the processes of discrimination and abuse cannot be understood without examining the social positioning of Moroccan women within the power and labour structure of GECCO. Such positioning is marked by the mutual constitution of different axes of inequality that lay across women’s identities and experiences within systemic centre-periphery relationships. But how particularly is this intersectionality reflected in female seasonal work? To answer this question, the analysis has focused in three key aspects of GECCO’s programme: recruitment, labour conditions and living conditions. Starting with recruitment, GECCO entails a clear form of institutional intersectional discrimination based on the exclusive selection of Moroccan women of middle age from rural areas with family responsibilities. In this sense, the interplay of motherhood with gender, ethnicity, rural origin, age, and cultural background conforms an ideal type of worker that can easily be submitted to hierarchical power relationships by employers.
Once in Huelva, several frauds and trickeries take place when the promised working and living conditions are not accomplished (e.g. working less than 75% of their stay). In this sense, besides the usual abuses that other temporary workers like autochthonous labourers, (undocumented) migrants or agricultural workers from Eastern Europe suffer (e.g. underpayment, precarious conditions), Moroccan women are exposed to other forms of abuse. Their dependence on particular employers by contract leaves them in a very difficult position to express any discontent or leave the programme if they want to repeat future campaigns. Even if they manifest several forms of agency, their poor education and language skills, and the reproduction of traditional gender roles and ideologies by workers and employers reinforce patterns of exploitation that are even sexually materialised. As for the living conditions, this is highlighted in the tight control of their mobility (by even retaining passports and confining them in limited spaces) and in patronising attitudes on their sexual behaviour and decisions around pregnancy, abortion, and motherhood. As a matter of fact, some even argue that GECCO grants less mobility and freedom to their workers in comparison to informal arrangements with undocumented migrants, and GECCO may end up ̶paradoxically̶ being less protective (Hellio, 2017Hellio, E. (2017). ‘They know that you’ll leave, like a dog moving onto the next bin’: Undocumented male and seasonal contracted female workers in the agricultural labour market of Huelva, Spain. In D. Perrota, A. Corrado, & C. de Castros (Eds.), Migration and Agriculture: Mobility and Change in the Mediterranean Area (pp. 198-216). https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01621350/document ).
Furthermore, this article acknowledges that such processes of discrimination and abuse need to be circumscribed within a specific temporal and spatial framework. In other words, intersectionality needs to be geographically located in order not to essentialise the experiences of migrant women and provide dynamism to its interpretation (Rodó-Zárate, 2021Rodó-Zárate, M. (2021). Interseccionalitat. Tigre de Paper.). As for the most immediate temporal framework, the pandemic has clearly tensioned the intensive agricultural model by making its deficiencies more visible than ever and by adding new axes of inequality such as the health status of women in the management of illnesses, pregnancy and abortions. It has also evidenced more than ever how the systemic nexus between productive work in Spain and reproductive work in Morocco is only valid if early motherhood is delocalised in the global South.
Taking a larger temporal scale, one must refer to the embeddedness of GECCO in (post)colonial relationships that foster the vulnerable position of female temporary workers. In this sense, inequalities experienced in Morocco are also reproduced in Spain. Following the conceptualisation of Huelva as a border (Castillero, 2021Castillero, S. (2021). “La esencialidad del cuarto mundo. ‘Las marroquíes y los morenos’ en la salvaguarda de la producción alimentaria en la frontera sur”. Revista de Estudios Sociales 78: 128-143. https://doi.org/10.7440/res78.2021.08 ; Hellio and Moreno, 2017Hellio, E., & Moreno, J. (2017). Contrataciones en origen, deslocalización productiva y feminización del trabajo en la fresicultura del norte de Marruecos y el sur de España. Una historia en común. Navegar. Revista de Estudos de E/Inmigraçao, 3(5), 21-46. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01793010/document ), it is not only about the import/export of labour demand between the two territorial settings, but also of non-material resources (e.g. traditional gender ideologies operating in working and living spaces). At the same time, as argued by theorists of world-ecology capitalism (Moore, 2015Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.), this is possible thanks to the naturalisation of free (or cheap) reproductive work in the country of origin. In sum, the systemic nexus of productive and reproductive work emerges as a cornerstone of the accumulation of capital and the functioning of global agri-food chains.