Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit
'Harvest work, migration, and the structured phenomenology of time'
Abstract
The paper draws on Rosa's three dimensions of the structured phenomenology of time - daily time, longer time, and historical time - as a conceptual lens to analyse the lived experiences and structural framing of temporary farm work in the UK and to address the question: how is it that short-term precarious work remains the accepted solution for agricultural work even under conditions that challenge the status quo. We draw on qualitative research with farmers and workers conducted prior to and during Brexit and Covid-19. We note that farmers and workers alike have found ways to accept and adjust to seasonal migrant labour as a taken-for-granted solution to the pressures of daily farm life. Further, farmers contend that seasonal migrant work is essential to secure the longer-term viability of their farms, while migrant workers' longer-term view involves delayed gratification in a 'dual frame of reference'. Local workers, alternatively, cannot imagine farm work as providing a long-term future. When looking historically at farm life, farmers and workers alike invoke changing epochs, to explain current conditions as the conditions of our times, and thus to deny their own agency. Structural-economic shifts are thus never addressed and other ways of doing things never imagined.
You might also be interested in :
Do I deserve to belong? Migrants' perspectives on the debate of deservingness and belonging
The notion of belonging, prominent in social sciences, has been recently used extensively in relation to Central Eastern European migrants in the UK.
Subversive citizens: using EU free movement law to bypass the UK's rules on marriage migration
In 2012, new and restrictive spousal reunification laws were implemented in the UK. EU free movement rules, however, have enabled British citizens to circumvent those restrictions by residing for a period in another Member State, and then returning with their family member to the UK.
The impacts of international migration on the UK's ethnic populations
The United Kingdom faces demographic uncertainty, as negotiations for leaving the European Union (Brexit) proceed. Brexit has implications for international migration into and out of the UK, dependent on future immigration policy and on how attractive the UK will be as a labour market.
Migrant dentists, health system responses and future challenges: a case study of the United Kingdom and Australia
Dentists, managing highly prevalent oral disease are in demand across the world and hence potentially highly mobile. Both the United Kingdom and Australia, continue to be favourable destinations for migrant dentists.