While the migration regimes of the Global North have over the last half a century shifted toward the criminalisation of cross-border migration, their economies have perpetuated the illegal migration flows to continue to exploit cheap labour, particularly in the low-paying sectors such as farming. This border geography of criminalised yet encouraged illegal migration sustains the agricultural sectors in the south of the US and across Europe.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made it evident that the global food production system is fragile — undermined by decades of economic streamlining, worker abuse and extractivism that have crippled social and ecological systems from being able to absorb and deal with major disruptions. Once the lockdowns and border closures were imposed in early 2020, and the migration flows were interrupted, the countries such as Britain, Germany or Austria had to organise special fly-in programmes for workers from Eastern European countries so that they could come pick their asparagus and salad. These workers and their communities were provided with no epidemiologically safe accommodation nor medical care.
To counter such migration regimes, Sezonieri (https://sezonieri.at) — an activist-led and trade-union supported campaign for the rights of migrant agricultural workers in Austria — has been working with seasonal workers to prevent exploitation, improve working conditions and help enforce their rights to minimum wage, overtime, health coverage, vacation and accommodation. In their outreach activities, Sezonieri's activists go to farms to meet the workers, thus facing the threat of being charged with trespassing on private land.
In the midst of the pandemic, when there were even stricter limits to such canvassing, they have focused on putting a list of demands onto the political agenda - for higher wages, better sanitary conditions, compensation for the increased health risk incurred by migrant agricultural workers, as well as for the abolition of nativist and anti-migrant discourses, the de-criminalisation of migration, and the creation of a more just system of food production.
