A Southern European model of migrant agricultural labour: two case studies in Andalusia (Spain) and Calabria (Italy)

In the last three decades many rural areas of the countries bordering the Northern Mediterranean are undergoing major transformations. Agricultural industrialization and entrepreneurship have been promoted by policies and investments; small and medium farms have turned as growingly dependent from long buyer-driven agri-food chains. At the same time, an additional factor has appeared: the emergence of an immigrant workforce and the large dependence of the agricultural sector on its existence, both to develop and to reproduce. This phenomenon has been known as «the Mediterranean model of migrations». This contribution focuses on the transformation processes that have affected two zones with similar characteristics in Southern Europe: Andalusia (Southern Spain) and Calabria (Southern Italy). It presents an analysis based on the reconstruction of the phenomenon by means of quantitative and qualitative data, capturing the transformations that occurred between 2010 and 2020, especially in specific agricultural enclaves of Southern regions.