Purity and danger in Spanish agriculture: farm workers during the pandemic

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to carry out a sociological analysis of the implications of what could be referred to as the paradox of farm labourers during the pandemic. That is, their designation as essential workers turned them simultaneously into high-risk workers and a source of public alarm. Based on the analysis of the logics of purity and danger of Mary Douglas (1991), this article analyses how some of the public health strategies developed by the institutions during the pandemic contributed to reinforcing the invisibility and vulnerability of migrant workers. The article shows how, being placed in the realm of the impure and dangerous, foreign agricultural workers were not able to receive the health care they required, and their living spaces thus became environments conducive to the spread of the virus. Through an exploration of secondary sources, a review of pertinent documents and in-depth interviews with key informants, this article firstly offers a description of the institutional process by which foreign agricultural workers in the Region of Murcia were converted into essential workers facilitated the spread of infections. Secondly, it explores the link between the precariousness of the working and living conditions of farm labourers and the absence of the ethics of self-care, which was at the heart of the chain of Covid-19 infections suffered by this population. Finally, it focuses on institutional responses to the threat posed by the threat posed by increased infections among immigrant farm workers.