IS221_Week NINE_2024

On The NewS

Romanian fruit pickers flown to UK amid crisis in farming sector

IS221, LECTURE DR NAZANIN SHAHROKNI

5 March 2024

The Migrant Crisis

DOMESTIC WORKERS

Entrepreneurs

'Full-blown depression': Most Latina domestic workers grapple with housing, food insecurity. Rodríguez is among more than 20,000 Spanish-speaking domestic workers, many of them mothers who are breadwinners in their households, who reported rapid and sustained losses of jobs and income due to the pandemic, resulting in housing and food insecurity over the past six months.

In the U.S., immigrants are almost twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as native-born U.S. citizens. Immigrants represent 27.5% of the countries’ entrepreneurs but only around 13% of the population. Similarly, about one-fourth of all technology and engineering companies started in the U.S. between 2006 and 2012 had at least one immigrant cofounder. And this pattern extends beyond the U.S.

Surge in Hate Crimes in the U.K. Following U.K.'s Brexit Vote

HBR

NBCNEWS

Personal is global

Romanian fruit pickers flown to UK amid crisis in farming sector

One plane was due to land in Stansted airport on Wednesday afternoon, with another landing on Thursday with 150 people onboard. Matthew Purton, the head of commercial aviation at Air Charter Services, said the company had tendered for six more flights “for a mixture of farms” in the coming weeks, which could see 450 workers flown to help avert food shortages.

Romanian workers are being flown in to help feed Britain amid a continuing recruitment crisis in the agriculture sector. Special charter flights have started flying into the UK from Bucharest with desperately needed workers for British farms that risk losing their crop of early summer fruit and vegetables because of the coronavirus lockdown.

Fruit pickers pick strawberries at a farm in Hereford. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/romanian-fruit-pickers-flown-uk-crisis-farming-sector-coronavirus

GERMANY

13 million

13 million

RUSSIA

12 million

USA

51 million

SAUDIARABIA

INTERNATIONAL Migration: An Overview

These more recent movements might be regarded as a sort of reverse colonisation (Bennett 1964), as millions of workers move from the economically exploited margins of the global economy to the centres of production, in the main as ‘volunteers’ or as casual cheap labourers, but sometimes under duress, as manufacturing workers, maids and nannies, gardeners and cleaners, construction workers and sex workers, bartenders and into numerous other forms of work, servicing the demands of more affluent populations.

Receiving Countries

+info

Number of International Migrants

281 million

51% increase since 2010

% of International Migrants

3.6% of the global population

0.7% increase since 2000

Sending Countries

MEXICO

12 million

CHINA

11 million

INDIA

18 million

RUSSIA

10 million

Europe

87 million

Northern America

59 million

Northern Africa & Western Asia

50 million

MIGRATION DATA PORTAL

HUNGARY

BELGIUM

BACKLASH

ITALY

U.S.A

Stealing Jobs?

Fiscal Burden?

Dying Towns ReVIVED

BBC

SouthEUSummit

OxfordEconomics

https://southeusummit.com/europe/italy/migrants-revive-dying-italian-towns/

https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/recent-releases/8747673d-3b26-439b-9693-0e250df6dbba

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37577620

Italy’s demographic decline, compounded by ageing populations of remaining inhabitants and low birth rates, can spell a death sentence for localities, particularly in the historically poor South. Though far from a cure-all, accepting and integrating migrants is proving to be a restorative practice for many of the strikingly beautiful, but increasingly vacated, Italian towns.

No evidence has been found that immigrants take away jobs from native Brits. However, the assertion that immigration has put pressure on wages is supported by a 2015 paper from the Bank of England: A 10% point increase in the proportion of immigrants working in the service sector is associated w/ a 1.88% reduction in pay. However, a 10% point increase is a lot. Over 19 years, between 1997 and 2016, the proportion of non-UK nationals working in the UK rose only 7.2% . The impact of immigration is dwarfed by the effect of the strength of the economy and its growth.

The average European migrant arriving in the UK in 2016 will contribute £78,000 more than they take out in public services and benefits over their time spent in the UK, and the average non-European migrant will make a positive net contribution of £28,000 while living here. By comparison, the average UK citizen’s net lifetime contribution in this scenario is zero.

Debunking myths about migration

Showtime

What everyone gets wrong about farm work?

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

05

04

03

01

02

ENABLERS

REASONS

CONDITONS

IMPLICATIONS

REACTIONS

- Governance Regimes- Humanitarian Rescue Missions - Transnational Actors

Shifts in the Global Economy

Push & Pull Factors

- Working Conditions- Living Conditions

- Development- Remittances- Gender Relations & Household Dynamics

Structural transformations & informalization of production

Changes in technology and communications

Commodification of Care

Global Processes Contributing to & intensifying immigration

Population growth; inadequate educational institution and social security

Stable population; population decline; welfare state benefits; social security

Demographic Factors

Dictatorship; bad governance; conflict; human rights violation

Democracy; rule of law; pluralism; peacel; protection of human rights

Political Factors

Unemployment; low wages; poverty; low living standards

Labor demand; high wages; high consumption & living standards

Economic Factors

Ecological disaster; dissertification; lack of natural resources; water shortage

Better environment; protection of natural resources

Ecological Factors

Family or clan decision; information flow; media

Diaspora; ethnic community; information flow

Jaccob, Dina. (2013). Euro-Mediterranean Security and Cooperation: Immigration Policies and Implications. 10.2139/ssrn.2479970.

The ‘‘precariat’’ The large numbers of workers surviving under very precarious working conditions and low levels of social protection worldwide

Migrant Working conditions

See: Parrenas, Rhacel (2015) Servants of Globalization. Stanford University Press.

Investment capital has been able to take advantage of wide differences in labor costs across the world by shifting from higher to lower wage economies, but this has not been matched by commensurate ability on the part of labor in low-wage economies to move toward higher-wage contexts. The constant threat of shifting investment to ever lower cost areas has served to erode the economic and political power of labor relative to capital and undermine its capacity to bargain for a fairer share of the benefits of globalization. Likewise, capital has benefited from the insecurity that immigrant labor faces in receiving countries since this insecurity weakens workers’ ability to voice their demands and contributes to precarious labor conditions. (Baneria et al. 2012)

Who Benefits from migration?

04

03

01

02

Fueling development?

Top Remittance Recipients

Definition of Remttances

Different Types of Remittances

While higher incomes & remittances resulting from migration might be beneficial to the individual & their household in the sending country, the brain drain argument implies that, because migrants have left, development has slowed down.

India ($83.1 billion); China ($68.4 billion); Mexico ($38.5 billion); the Philippines ($35.2 billion); and Egypt ($26.8 billion)

Compensation of Employees + Personal Transfers

International Remittances; Internal Remittances; Social Remittances

Migration processes can also potentially lead to a drain of unskilled labor, either through guest worker programs or undocumented migration flows. In theory this should have a positive effect on development, by raising wages in the agricultural or construction sectors in the sending country and leading to higher incomes. But it can also produce other outcomes, such as interregional relay or chain migration. One well-known example is the US’s recruitment of labor from Puerto Rico around World War II, which led to labor shortages in agriculture in Puerto Rico that were subsequently filled by migrants from the Dominican Republic seeking higher wages than at home. In turn, Haitian migrants filled the labor shortage created in the Dominican Republic (Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey 2010). Meanwhile, peasant agricultural production declined in the Dominican Republic and Haiti as rural communities were drained of many of their most productive members. (Baneria et al. 2012).

STATES

HUMANITARIAN AID

Carceral Humanitarianism From Moral Economy to Political Economy (See D. Fassin 2005)

Securitization of Migration Control & Contain

International organizaiton

Global Migration Governance

Protection of Migrants' Labor, Political and Human Rights Financially Dependent on Rich Industrialized Countries

Global migration governance can be defined as the norms and organizational structures which regulate and shape how states respond to international migration.Global migration governance can be defined as the norms and organizational structures which regulate and shape how states respond to international migration.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/

RURAL MEXICO FARMING

LOS ANGELESService-work

unionized

I will stay US = progress & freedom

PARTIDA

feminized labor

mode of communal governance:exclusive

URBAN MEXICO

1980s-1990s

1960s-1970s Land Privatization

SAN DIEGOFarm- work

not unionized

RETORNO

male-dominated labor

I will go back US = racism & exploitation

mode of communal governance:inclusive

police control & violence

Migration pathways shaped by

sending site's socio-political structure

pathways to politics

mode of state control

Every migrant has a story and these stories matter

receiving site's socio-political structure

Studying and Working with Migrant Communities

The book makes three arguments: 1. Local-level practices of power ("modes of state control") mediate migrants' decisions to move, as well as their attitudes toward the receiving country 2. Political agency is processual as migrants navigate their local histories and their particular destinations 3. Gender informs both modes of state control and migrants' political strategies The book does this through relational, cross-border comparison: 1. to understand how conditions on the ground shaped internal community dynamics, leading two groups to interact differently with similar macrolevel dynamics. 2. communities are not treated as bounded units that can be divided. Instead the book shows how hometowns and destinations are part of the same process: hometowns shape where migrants go, and destinations influence migrants' engagement with their natal homes.

Undocumented Politics: Place, Gender, and the Pathways of Mexican Migrants (Abigail Andrews 2018)

MAIDIN AMERICA

Enabling Factors

Job Type

Labor Conditions

Implications

Global Care Chain

Reactions

THE GLOBALIZATION OF CHILD CARE AND DOMESTIC WORK

WATCH THE SHORT VIDEO IN THE PREVIOUS SLIDE.

READ THIS ARTICLE ON THE GUARDIAN [CLICK HERE]

Address the following question. Discuss their migration pathways.

Identify the pull factors, push factors, working conditions, pathways to politics, and migration implications for the characters presented in the article and in the video. In your 750-word essay engage with Arlie Hochschild's The Nanny Chain and Abigail Andrews's chapter on Undocumented Politics. When discussing the pull and push factors draw on our discussions on Global Inequality and Uneven Development.

Assignment prompt with detailed instructions will be posted on Canvass by Friday, March 8th.

Maria Full of Grace (2004)

Storyline

María Álvarez, an independent, feisty, and underpaid seventeen-year-old Colombian rose packager is stuck in a tedious life and a dead-end relationship with her good-for-nothing boyfriend, Juan. And as if things weren't bad enough, an unexpected pregnancy and an ugly altercation with her unfair boss will tempt María to accept the risky offer to become a drug mule, smuggling drugs from Bogotá to New York City. But, as things rapidly spiral out of control, suddenly, the option of an early retirement and a peaceful future for both María and her unborn baby begins to fade away. Is there a way out from this hopeless predicament?

No class next week!

I'll be in Taiwan and you'll be working on your assignments.