Essential farmworkers and the pandemic crisis: migrant labour conditions, and legal and political responses in Italy and Spain

The Covid-19 emergency has exacerbated this situation, revealing the precariousness of migrant labour in the agri-food system and, simultaneously, its essential role in this sector. Indeed, since the outbreak, a rise in the demand for essential goods has also meant that workers in key sectors such as agri-food have been recognised as fundamental to the economic and societal functioning of EU countries. At the same time, the pandemic has sharply disclosed the limits of long supply dynamics (in terms of price distortion, unfair competition, and distribution dynamics) as well as the conditions of exploitation and vulnerability experienced by many migrant farmworkers. An evident tension therefore has emerged between containing the pandemic through mobility restrictions, on the one hand, and preventing labour shortages (especially in core sectors) and addressing migrants’ situations of vulnerability, on the other.