Starting in the middle of the 1980s the intensive agricultural production of high value horticultural products was restructured, transforming the economic and demographic dynamics of many rural communities. The high level of modernization of the agrifood industry in terms of technology and production, as well as its focus on external markets and intensive use of labor, has introduced very strong processes of capital and labor mobility into the territories where they operate (Goodman and Watts, 1994; McMichael, 1994; Basok, 2002; Ruhs, 2006; Rogaly, 2008; Martin, 2013; Gertel and Sippel, 2014; Corrado, de Castro and Perrota, 2017; Rye and O’Reilly, 2020). Labor relations in these global agricultural factories must be highly flexible and production is ruled by the seasonal discontinuity of the crops and by the changing demands of the markets. In these agricultural communities, the national labor force has gradually been replaced by foreign workers with different legal and migratory statuses, including resident immigrants, workers who settle temporarily while taking part in the seasonal circuit and workers recruited under seasonal labor mobility schemes (López-Sala and Godenau, 2015). The presence of migrant workers during planting and harvesting campaigns has become one of the most significant aspects of the communities where agribusiness is located (Molinero-Gerbeau, 2020a; Avallone, 2014) and is one of the characteristic elements of what Woods defined as a “global countryside” (Woods, 2007).

The dynamics of this global agroindustrial regime are also present in the Spanish case. The transformation of the Spanish agricultural sector has had serious repercussions on its labor market. Even during acute employment crises national labor has gradually been replaced by foreign workers due to the poor employment conditions and instability of agricultural field work, caused by climatic variations and the volatility of demand, the improvement of economic and living conditions in the areas where this type of agriculture has flourished, and the low status of agricultural field work (López-Sala, 2016a; Corrado, 2017; Molinero-Gerbeau, López-Sala and Serban, 2021). Spanish agriculture has been restructured thanks to the availability of an abundant, cheap, flexible and mobile foreign labor force, and this process has shaped migration policies and revealed the interrelationships between capital, labor and mobility, consolidating global and transnational systems of exclusion (Parreñas, Landolt, Goldring, Golash-Boza and Silvey, 2021; López-Sala, 2016b; Basok and López-Sala, 2016), which impose regimes of disciplinary power (Basok and Belanger, 2016).

During the spring of 2020, the lockdown that accompanied the health crisis raised alarms among agrifood companies and political leaders in the run-up to many of the agricultural campaigns that take place in Spanish territory. In those first months, public debate and political action focused on the foreseeable problems in covering the demand for workers that accompany the most intensive periods of production and harvesting in those campaigns. As in the case of other countries (Palumbo and Corrado, 2020; Hooper and Le Coz, 2020; ILO, 2020; Molinero-Gerbeau, 2020a), the centrality of migrant labor in the sustainability of this sector prompted some exceptional measures on the part of the Spanish government ¹ (Güell and Garcés-Mascareñas, 2020). The mechanisms to boost employment in the sector, both of unemployed nationals and resident immigrants, were accompanied by a relaxation of travel restrictions for EU workers from Romania and Bulgaria who are usually employed in Spanish agriculture between March and October. The most immediate institutional response was therefore aimed at guaranteeing production through the supply of workers, which was in line with the central objectives that have modulated the labor migration policy in the agricultural sector for several decades. In the context of the health crisis and the lockdown, a public narrative emerged around the essential nature of this work, mostly carried out by migrant workers, to guarantee not only the viability of the sector, but also the food security of the population as a whole.

However, in the summer months of 2020, the public debate took a new direction marked by the health risks associated with the presence of seasonal workers during the campaigns, which activated an alternative narrative of danger and the proliferation of unsanitary spaces. Spanish public opinion became aware of the appalling living conditions of workers employed in the agriculture by the outbreaks of coronavirus in various regions of Aragon and Catalonia, the hundreds of seasonal workers living on the streets of Lleida and the unsanitary conditions of informal settlements in Huelva, Almeria or Albacete. The health crisis has revealed many of the structural and endemic problems that have existed in this sector over the last two decades: the high volume of foreigners in an irregular situation, the miserable informal settlements and substandard housing in which they are forced to “reside”, and the extreme physical and social vulnerability of the workers, including those employed under official seasonal labor mobility schemes. However, these structural problems have traditionally been ignored by the administration, whose policies have focused on managing the mobility of migrants while neglecting the needs of migrant workers present in the territory.

Research on how the pandemic has affected migrant agricultural workers in different geographies has shown that the health crisis has exacerbated the forms of exploitation they suffer (Palumbo and Corrado, 2020; Haley, Caxaj, George, Hennebry, Martell, and McLaughlin, 2020; Molinero-Gerbeau, 2021) and heightened their labor, social and health vulnerability (Basok and George, 2020; Tagliacozzo, Pisacane and Kilkey, 2021). However, the emergence of the narrative on their “essential role”, which was incorporated in the political discourse, together with the visibility of their poor working and living conditions, have generated, promoted or consolidated several struggles based on what we can call the right to live in dignity. ² The objectives and strategies of these struggles are diverse, but they highlight the emergence of a migrant activism linked to specific agricultural enclaves, but which also form part of a broader movement for social justice that can be articulated autonomously or through alliances with civil society organizations.

Our starting premise is that in the Spanish case these struggles have been caused by three types of tensions that have become particularly intense during the Covid-19 pandemic: the tension between essentiality and disposability, between temporality and permanence, and between an active and a passive citizenship (Isin, 2009). This activism has highlighted the emergence of new subjectivities on the part of immigrant workers employed in the agricultural sector and expressed through collective “performances of defiance” (Basok and Belanger, 2016). Through the analysis of these struggles in the Spanish case, the article aims to delve into an element that continues to receive insufficient attention in migration studies. This analysis has made it possible to show the common elements and differences between various types of demands and mobilizations, revealing the complexity and specificity of these struggles, but also their common goal of having the right to dignity. This “migrant politics of rural discontent” (Papadopoulos, Fratsea, and Mavrommatis, 2018), fueled by the structural problems that migrant labor in agriculture has faced, has been largely made possible by the health crisis, as the visibilization of the “seasonal problem” has created opportunities that have driven collective action and revealed workers’ agency.

This article further argues that this mobilization transcends the residency-based citizenship claims that have been the focus of most analyses of struggles around the citizenship of migrants with precarious statuses (Nyers, 2010). The diversity of migratory and legal statuses and mobility patterns of migrant workers employed in agriculture contrasts with the similarity of the forms of labor exploitation and physical and housing insecurity they experience, as well as, in the context of this crisis, with the emergence of a shared awareness of the essential nature of their work. Hence, these claims are linked to what some authors have defined as a “rightful presence” (Squire and Darling, 2013) or as “a politics of presence” (Darling, 2017).

Although there are several agro-exporting enclaves throughout Spain, the article focuses on the cases of Huelva (Andalusia) and Lleida (Catalonia). These are two of the most relevant agricultural enclaves in terms of the volume of “migrant labor”. Moreover, the particular seasonality of crops in both provinces (strawberry, red fruits and citrus in the first case and stone fruit in the second) explains to a large extent the diversity of migrant labor itineraries. The workers employed in the harvests include not only resident immigrants, but also circular seasonal migrants recruited under mobility schemes, seasonal agricultural workers from European countries and immigrants in an irregular situation. The selection of these cases is also due to the authors’ previous knowledge of the dynamics of labor mobility and its evolution over the last two decades in these provinces as a result of two previous research projects. ³

The analysis presented in this article relies on extensive empirical material from different types of sources. In particular, we draw on reports, public statements, websites, the press and secondary literature. Information on the various collectives analyzed in this article, how they work and their links with other social organizations was gathered through the testimonies of their spokespersons in different media and social networks. These instruments were also used to identify their main demands, as well as the actions (acts) and key events of their mobilization. For this purpose, the contents of the websites of these organizations and platforms were analyzed, information that was contrasted with a thematic analysis of their twitter accounts ⁴ and with press articles published in the newspapers El País, El Diario, Público and El Salto ⁵ .

Migrant activism has scarcely been addressed to date in social movement literature, largely because the most influential theories in this field - resource mobilization theory and the opportunity structure approach - consider migrants as uncontentious actors due to the legal obstacles they face, the scarcity of resources, and their limited political and discursive opportunities (Steinhilper, 2018). Therefore, in Steinhilper´s opinion, these mobilizations are considered “an anomaly” in this literature (Steinhilper, 2021). In recent years and more decidedly in the “long summer of migration” scenario, the various forms of migrant activism have been gaining attention among social movement scholars (De la Porta, 2018; Nicholls and Uitermark, 2017). Some scholars have gone so far as to offer a mea culpa, noting that migrant activism was one of the main blind spots in this literature (Eggert and Giugni, 2015). Others, meanwhile, have highlighted the potential contributions that the study of their collective action can have in this field (Mora, Rodríguez, Zermeño and Almeida, 2018).

At the beginning of the last decade Basok indicated the need to open a dialogue on migrant activism and highlighted the weakness of encounters between social movement studies and migration studies (Basok, 2010). Beyond some pioneering studies (Mezzadra, 2004; Tyler and Marciniak, 2014), Isin’s contribution on “acts of citizenship” (Isin, 2008) and its analytical wake in the more recent literature on the mobilization of undocumented migrants, anti-deportation movements or struggles against border regimes, has been the most important contribution in the migration studies field (McNevin, 2011; Nyers and Rygiel, 2012; Barbero, 2012; Ataç, Rygiel, and Stierl, 2017). Despite recent bridges built between the two literatures (Steinhilper, 2021; Bloemraad and Voss, 2020) and the promise it offers, research remains highly fragmented across different fields. The common elements emanate more from the research agenda, without being exhaustive: labor rights, access to legal status and citizenship in the case of undocumented migrants and refugees, anti-internment and anti-deportation movements, border regimes, the “right to the city”, and more recently, civil society solidarity.

Analyses of migrant activism, beyond their orientation, have additionally had an urban bias, although recent research has agreed on the need to incorporate other “geographic settings” (Schmid-Scott, Marshall, Gill and Bagelman, 2020; Rye and O’Reilly, 2020). To date, the scarce research on the mobilization of seasonal workers in agricultural enclaves has been addressed in the rural studies field, where some analytical work has been done on traditional and new social and peasant movements (Woods, 2008). This approach has been more abundant among scholars from North American and Southern European countries, where we have witnessed significant growth of these agro-industrial enclaves and the massive incorporation of migrant workers (Corrado, 2011; Caruso, 2011; Choudry and Thomas, 2013; Avallone, 2017; Cohen and Hjalmarson, 2018; Rye and Scott, 2018). These contributions have dwelt on various struggles and dimensions of the collective action of seasonal agricultural migrants, highlighting the extent of the obstacles and constrictions they encounter in their mobilization derived not only from their irregularity, but from other factors such as their status as temporary workers (Caruso, 2017), the segregation and dispersion of their accommodations or their social isolation (Perrota, 2015). In parallel, other contributions have shown that despite political and discursive constraints, certain contexts drive links and coalitions with other precarious migrant collectives or with various local and national civil society actors that can favor mobilization (Papadopoulos, et.al., 2018).

Our thesis is that the visibility and increased self-perception of migrants as essential actors in the functioning of a basic sector in the country’s economy (food production) have driven a mobilization which, although fragmented and volatile, has ended up channeling the voice of one of the most precarious and subaltern segments of society. Although these aspects explain the temporality of this mobilization, in some cases these struggles are anchored in the emergence of previous alliances that have been consolidated over time.

Despite the restrictions imposed on mobility and the temporary suspension of the right to assembly due to Covid-19, throughout the spring and summer of 2020 mobilizations proliferated in the agricultural enclaves of Hueva and Lleida. This fragmented mobilization across diverse geographies, struggles and organizations has been, to some extent, a milestone in the dynamics of migrant activism in Spain. Throughout the last three decades, its scenarios have been big cities and border territories. Despite the long and well-described presence of immigrants in Spanish agricultural areas, the mobilization of these workers has been subject to additional obstacles and has had less impact than other forms of activism in the media. This mobilization in times of pandemic has gravitated around three demands that have agglutinated what we refer to as the “struggles for the right to a dignified life”. Faced with precarious legal status, appalling housing conditions, labor exploitation and health insecurity, migrants employed in agriculture have demanded legal status, housing and to work in dignified conditions.

The health crisis has generated greater vulnerability for migrant workers employed in Spanish agriculture. In this context has worsened their legal, social and physical fragility, which had already been undermined by several decades of structural problems that have created chronic situations of labor exploitation, their spatial and housing marginalization and ghettoization, as well as their social and relational isolation. However, the context of the health crisis has also provided visibility to this collective and made it possible for them to channel different forms of mobilization, which although anchored in a prior background of contacts and alliances with other civil society organizations, have undergone, with all the caveats about their future, a certain boom. These forms of protest, although precarious and volatile, have placed migrant agricultural workers at the center of social and academic attention for the first time in Spain’s recent migration history. In order to confront their supposed “disposability”, migrant workers have appealed to and constructed a narrative of their essentiality as actors who make a crucial contribution to this economic sector and, in the context of confinement and mobility restrictions, also to the food security of Spanish society as a whole. This narrative has been articulated as part of their struggle for the right to be part of and participate in the localities where they live, despite their precarious legal status and their temporary, or quasi-temporary, residence in many cases. Thus, against the idea of temporality as a mechanism of exclusion and indifference, agricultural workers have appealed to their structural presence. In this sense, these claims are in line with some of the questions raised by Squire and Darling, although referring to refugees and migrants in urban contexts: “how presence may be situated as a claim to rightfulness” and, how can we explore “those claims that are centered on a framing of justice rather than one of hospitality” (Squire and Darling, 2013; Darling, 2017). Finally, as opposed to the more orthodox, albeit changing, view in social movement literature of “the migrant” as an uncontentious actor, as critical citizenship studies have shown, migrants, despite the serious limitations and restrictions they encounter in the daily situations of marginalization they suffer, have become political actors, performing new political subjectivities that have transformed not only collective action, but citizenship itself expressed in various ways, most notably in the language of “active versus passive citizenship” (Isin and Nyers 2014; Isin 2009). Their mobilization also offers very good opportunity to foster a necessary and very promising dialogue between social movement studies and migration studies.

The analysis carried out in the agricultural enclaves of Huelva and Lleida has also shown the construction of inclusive transversal and intersectional solidarities that have given rise to hybrid mobilizations, dynamics that have also recently been pointed out in the case of other geographies in the context of the health crisis (Zajak, Stjepandić and Steinhilper, 2020; Ataç, Rygiel and Stierl, 2021). This analysis has revealed that not only are the rights being claimed transversal (legal status, labor rights, housing rights, health rights and the right to water), but the profiles of the migrant workers involved in these struggles also include a range of migration and legal statuses. The #RegularizationYa movement transcends geographical areas and economic sectors. Alliances with feminist collectives, anti-racist organizations and movements in defense of food sovereignty have also been decisive in the articulation and channeling of the demands of platforms such as Fruita amb Justicia Social or Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha. This analysis, therefore, points to the need to deepen and broaden studies on migrant activism in Spain, not only to explore alternative paths that have been neglected by recent research but also to delve into the interrelationships between mobility, citizenship and the formation of political subjectivities that are reflected in alliances and struggles that cut across diverse legal, labor and racial statuses.