Beyond the ‘orderly immigration’ discourse: recruitment in country of origin and the feminization of labor in the strawberry fields.

Abstract

Food production globalization, the feminization of work and international migration flows are some of the fundamental dynamics that converge in the current context of intensive agriculture in Andalusia. This article seeks to address the social construction of the labor market in the intensive cultivation of strawberries in Huelva, more specifically in the context of the introduction of a system of quotas and recruitment in country of origin for female workers from Eastern Europe and Morocco. From the perspective of feminist anthropology and on the basis of a qualitative methodology, the following questions are analyzed: the various factors that influenced the adoption of this hiring policy, its characteristic elements, the changes it has caused in the composition of the workforce and patterns of migration, and the forms of organization and segmentation of agricultural work that accompany it. The analysis of these issues will allow for an open debate on the logic and implications of this system, which tends to be defined as the “ideal model of orderly migration”.