Pubblicata Martedì 16 Aprile 2024 11:41
VII AGROMIG INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR - MIGRATIONS, AGRIFOOD AND RURAL CHANGE
University of Calabria 23-24 May 2024
The international AGROMIG network has gradually developed around research-based discussions on labour migration issues in agrifood and rural areas, collaborating through the organisation of dedicated seminars and collective publications. The events held in Bergamo (2013), Murcia (2014), Athens (2015), Madrid (2017), Marseille (2018), and Agadir (2019) debated the issues of migration in relation to the transformations of agri-food systems and rurality, through theoretical and empirical contributions, involving scholars from different (sub)disciplines, and drawing from the fields of rural sociology, rural geography, critical agrarian studies, labour processes, migration studies, livelihoods studies, gender and intersectional studies, and political ecology. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions on mobility and public events suspended opportunities for confrontation (i.e. a latest event scheduled for 2020 in Sibiu was cancelled). However, these dramatic events also brought to public attention the relevance of migrant workers in the international agrifood system, as well as the precarious conditions and deprivation of rights they suffer.
Consequently, public and private debates and interventions have focused on promoting the adoption of new technologies on the pretext of reducing labour dependency, ensuring decent working conditions and a sustainable use of resources and inputs. Actually, it is worth mentioning how, during the last years, rural areas have become the terrain of new social conflicts, new practices of exploitation and reproduction of labour, but also the settings for the humanitarianism of non-governmental and non-profit organisations, or private-public interventions for sustainability. Innovations are also produced by grassroot and civil society groups together with workers. Thus, the relationships, practices and strategies of the various actors involved in these dynamics and their impact on the organisation of production and work need to be understood more deeply in the making of the corporate-environment food regime.
Policy interventions and mechanisms, both formal and informal (i.e. feminisation, informalisation, racialisation), are also promoted to expand the recruitment pool of the temporary workforce in agrifood. Notwithstanding, alarms about labour shortages on the part of employers, restrictive migration policies persist, resulting in unprotected and precarious irregular migrants and refugees in rural areas. In the contemporary era, characterised by the dramatic and growing rise of regressive populism and populist nationalism, right-wing political groups are feeding off the rancorous and anti-immigration sentiments in rural areas fundamentally suffering from the contraction of public policies and the agrarian crisis. It is important to understand how these dynamics play together, what interests and social actors are involved, and what are the effects on rurality and labour.
Both in and out migrations are often produced by or participate in the transformations of agriculture, land and productive assets, nature and value chains, in the Global North as well as in the Global South. Migrant wage workers are crucial for agrifood capitalist development, but at times they are also important for the reproduction of small farms and rural communities in crisis. Rural areas also host migrants who decide to take up farming autonomously. How do gender, class and race differences affect these processes? What kind of conflicts, obstacles or opportunities do they experience? How do commodity and land rushes affect migration and labor organization? How do the ecological transformations or transitions impact on the organisation and condition of labour, and which role do migrant workers play within them?
This seminar aims to analyse these processes of change by highlighting cases in different countries and regions, in order to capture similarities and differences, but also to deepen our knowledge of issues and regional contexts that are still poorly investigated, and to make innovative theoretical contributions.
Migration as a subjective experience has both dimensions of out-migration and in-migration. Migration is again a litmus test for reading social transformations, at origin as well as at destination also in this case agrifood and rural changes.
Scientific Committee:Apostolos G. Papadopoulos (Harokopio University) - Loukia-Maria Fratsea (Harokopio University) - Carlos De Castro (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) - Gennaro Avallone (University of Salerno) - Mimmo Perrotta (University of Bergamo) - Ruth McAreavey (Newcastle University) - Yoan Molinero Gerbeau (Universidad Pontificia de Comillas) - Mohamed Bouchelkha (Université Ibn Zohr/Agadir) - Saturnino Jun M. Borras Jr. (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam) - Cristian Alarcon Ferrari (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) - Alicia Reigada Olaizola (Universidad de Sevilla) - Andrés Pedreño Cánovas (Universidad de Murcia) - Frédéric Décosse (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) - Isabella Giunta (Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, Ecuador) - Elena Gadea (Universidad de Murcia) - Marta Guadalupe Rivera Ferre (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas) - Juana Moreno Nieto (Universidad de Cádiz) - Alin Croitoru (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu) - Monica Serban (Romanian Academy) - Martina Lo Cascio (University of Palermo) - Maura Benegiamo (University of Pisa) - Emanuele Leonardi (Università di Bologna) - Catia Zumbano (CREA) -Marco Fama (Università di Bergamo) –Local Organizer Committee at UNICAL: Carmelo Buscema, Gilda Catalano, Giuliana Commisso, Alessandra Corrado, Mariafrancesca D'Agostino, Elisabetta Della Corte, Silvia Sivini, Giovanna Vingelli, Annamaria Vitale, Stefano Mori, Camilla Macciani, Karen Urso, Mario Pullano, Carlotta Ebbreo, Mauro Conti, Mario Coscarello,
Sponsorship:
AIS (Associazione Italiana di Sociologia) – Sezione Sociologia dell’Ambiente e del Territorio
http://www.sociologiadelterritorio.it/
ICAS (Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies) is an international network of like-minded scholars, activists and scholar-activists. It is coordinated from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
https://www.iss.nl/en/research/research-networks/initiatives-critical-agrarian-studies
Other partner projects:
SWIFT: Supporting Women- led Innovation in Farming and Rural Territories is a 4 year funded Horizon Europe project set up with the purpose to advance the position of women and LGBTQI+ persons in farming, and to investigate how agroecological processes can promote gender equality
DiJUST: Digital Food and Just Transition. Sustainability and Labour in Agriculture 4.0
FoodAct: Action Research for Sustainable Food Security in times of Crisis - Agroecology in Sweden, Italy and Chile