Overview

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.

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9783030745110

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Reviews

This little book by Valeria Piro tells us about the daily grind of diverse nationality farm workers in south-east Italy (in Sicily to be precise) in rich ethnographic detail. The insights are subtle, insightful and meaningful for our understanding of work-life struggles far beyond the specific case. ... People could enjoy this book if they are interested in migration and nation/race, contemporary ethnography, in team work ... . This longitudinal ethnographic study is multi-dimensional, inclusive, complex, vivid and powerful. (Karen O'Reilly, Ethnic and Racial Studies, October 17, 2022)

Author Information

Valeria Piro is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in labour sociology at the University of Padova and a teaching fellow in Sociology of Migration at the University of Bologna, Italy.  

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