Migrant territories as spaces of Articulation Of National And International Migration. Four cases of mexican context

Abstract

The production of flowers, fruits and vegetables in Mexico configure a highly dynamic sector in terms of performance, value of exports and jobs. This is a sector that operates in a predatory way, both of natural resources in areas where it is situated, and of the labor force used, resulting in around a high mobility among workers involved in these crops. This situation is paradoxical because, on the one hand, it shows the existence of an advanced agriculture, highly modernized, comparable to that available in developed countries and, on the other hand, this agriculture is inserted in a national context of rural poverty and of general degradation living conditions of workers. This article examines four cases in the Mexican context that reflect the very development of modern agriculture is in the hands of large companies connected to global capital. This connection to local agriculture and the global capital is generating strong mobility processes and circuits of different types and spaces with a high relational density in which different groups involved (local and migrant, indigenous and mestizos, return migrants, circular or settled population). The aim of this paper is to see, at the level of these areas of intensive agriculture, how mobilities are generated and how chains of national and international migration are produced, the way they connect with the labor markets at several scales, the mechanisms favoring the creation of small clusters of settlements that serve as stepping stone to reach new destinations and/or new markets, and how each group give a meaning to those areas of intensive agriculture and make them a part of its territory migration or its movement.