Seasonal workers wanted! Germany’s seasonal labour migration regime and the Covid-19 pandemic

Bibliographic Data

ID6352860
AuthorsDorothea Biaback Anong (0000-0002-8376-0552)
Year2024
Volume44
Issue2
Pages219-234
Publication date2024-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3268 • E-ISSN: 1467-9256
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02633957231168039
PMID40479086
OpenAlexW4375950328
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited16

The COVID-19 pandemic publicly exposed the urgent need for seasonal workers in agriculture. In Germany, an entry ban and entry quotas for seasonal workers at the beginning of the pandemic caused major attention. Taking this moment as magnifying glass, the article asks how the German seasonal labour migration regime is constructed (legally) and legitimated (discursively), and in how far the pandemic has caused shifts within this regime. Based on an analysis of the legal framework and the political discourse around seasonal work from 2018 to 2020 in Germany, the seasonal labour migration regime is characterised as just-in-time migration tailored to the needs of agricultural business, where migrants’ work force is not absorbed homogenously by precarious labour sectors, but rather specific groups of migrant workers are integrated differently through mechanisms of differential inclusion. Within this regime, seasonal workers function as outsourced labour, whose reproduction costs remain abroad. On the discursive level, the article shows how seasonal workers are produced as ‘wanted migrants’ by linking seasonal migration to the interests of the ‘homeland’. While the pandemic momentarily caused some shifts on the discoursively level, the article shows that the seasonal labour regime as a whole remains rather stable in time

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Biology · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Demographic economics · Economics · Geography · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Outbreak · Pandemic · Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 · Employment and Welfare Studies · Medicine · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Virology

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