Migrant Workers in Horticulture: An Ethnographic Study

Drawing on workplace ethnography at a farm in the East of England and interviews with former participants on the UK's temporary foreign worker programme, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, this book contributes to understanding of the everyday work and living experiences of migrant workers in horticulture. In particular, it reveals the influence of supermarket-driven supply chains and of immigration status. Based on original research, the author details the everyday experiences of living on a camp and hard labour, exposing the realities at the bottom of the supply chain. Due to retailer demands for quality and volume of produce, workers experience injury, exclusion and restricted working conditions. Workers' responses to their living conditions include the spending of their weekly wage in local towns and cities. Such spending contributes to the creation of transnational identities. Migrant workers however cannot overcome the identities imposed on them by the processes of racialisation that occurs as a result of perceptions of them by employers, local nationals and the State. Comparisons are also drawn with experiences of seasonal migrant workers in other countries.