African Immigrant Workers in Spanish Agriculture

Abstract

This paper explores reasons for the uneven employment of African workers in Spanish agriculture. Examining employment patterns at a provincial level, it explores why there is a concentration in certain regions of Spain. Focusing on the province of Girona, the study utilizes interview responses from African workers, employers and key local informants to explore reasons for African employment, as well as examining the working conditions of African labourers. It finds that Spanish workers have come to reject farming as an occupation, just as farm employers have come to favour African labourers over possible Spanish labour sources. Whether within or outside the farm sector, the vast majority of African workers do unskilled work, on poor pay, in occupations associated with inferior social status, with short periods of employment, in jobs that are rarely part of a promotion ladder. For many African immigrants, this means they have to shift into and out of farm work repeatedly, while those who stay in farming usually do so on a poor contractual footing. With the majority of immigrant African workers seeing Spain as their permanent home, the paper concludes by noting that the work experiences of African labourers strongly support segmentation theory ideas on the development of niches for particular kinds of workers. This is seen as having potentially detrimental long-term consequences for issues of social exclusion, as well as restricting the pace of productivity improvements in the farm sector.