Published Article

July 28, 2022

Letizia Palumbo, member of the VULNER Italian team and leader of the WP on human trafficking, published the article 'Exploitation in the Agri-Food Sector in Europe - A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Migration and Labour Regimes in Producing Migrants’ Vulnerabilities' as part of the Special Issue Migrant Labour in the Agri-Food System in Europe: Unpacking the Social and Legal Factors of Exploitation of the European Journal of Migration and Law.

Although political attention has been devoted to the exploitation of migrant farmworkers in Southern Europe, migrant workers also experience exploitive practices in the agri-food systems of Northern EU countries. Building on critical studies on vulnerability and exploitation and on migration and labour regimes, and drawing on the papers in this Special Issue of EJML, this article critically compares labour migration policies and models for labour market regulations in Northern and Southern European countries (specifically Italy, Spain, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands), underlining how policies and legislation on migration and labour mobility have contributed to creating specific situational vulnerabilities – especially with respect to the interplay of legal status, nationality and gender – which are exploited within agri-food systems. While there have been relevant national initiatives aimed at addressing the rights of migrant farmworkers during the pandemic, in most of the examined European countries these have mainly consisted of short-term and reparative measures which fail to address the root causes of vulnerabilities to exploitation.

The article is available via Brill Publishing here. (The full article will be available from January 2023.) 

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