Migrant Farmworkers in 'Plastic Factories: Investigating Work-Life Struggles [Paperback]

This book provides a fine-grained ethnographic examination of the everyday negotiations and conflicts taking place in greenhouses and packinghouses in an agricultural district in south-eastern Italy (Sicily). In a highly competitive global scenario, driven by multinational corporations and large retailers, small and medium-sized farms largely rely on migrant labour to fill their demand for casualized, flexible and low-paid jobs. By taking the reader into the plastic factories where the author was hired as a farmworker, this book sheds light on the struggles  around the employment contract, the wage and the body  which take place every day between employers and employees. 

The book contributes to broadening the understanding of the dynamics innervating food production worldwide by recognizing the pivotal role of migrant labour not only as a factor in the restructuring of global supply chains, but also as an actor shaping these processes through its own unpredictable strategies.

Chapter 1. Entering the workplaces.- Chapter 2. What does it mean to work by the day? Trust relationships, job contracts, formal and informal regulations.- Chapter 3. The body at work: Performativity, Weakness, Beauty.- Chapter 4. Struggling for a fair wage: negotiations and conflicts around the salary.- Conclusion.The book is skilfully wrought and a rewarding read. Alongside pictures of workers living and working conditions, Valeria Piro uses the neat and succinct format demanded of a Palgrave Pivot author to tell her quite complex story in an engaging and digestible style. ... Migrant farmworkers is an impressive book that deserves a wide readership. (di Ben Rogaly, SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE, Issue 131, 2023)