Project Overview

The UK food and agriculture sector relies on seasonal migrant workers to plant, harvest and pack fruit and vegetables. Over 90% of seasonal workers in the UK are migrants. The COVID-19 pandemic has put significant strains on recruitment and protection of seasonal workers, yet they remain essential to ensure food security throughout the UK during the pandemic.

This project examines the everyday experiences of seasonal agricultural migrant workers and farmers throughout harvest seasons 2020 and 2021. Using remote qualitative interviews and data analysis, findings will support policy interventions from our policy impact partner – the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – and other stakeholders for which we will prepare monthly reports including comparative international analysis. Furthermore, we have co-produced, with our charity impact partner New Europeans, information materials adapted to the needs of seasonal migrants. These resources can be accessed here. To engage with wider audiences, we are creating a web-based interactive monitor and a virtual exhibition.

The project Feeding the Nation: Seasonal Migrant Workers and Food Security during COVID-19 Pandemic  is a collaboration between the University of Leeds and the University of Oxford funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to COVID-19.

The project has 6 key objectives: (1) to provide information in real time on worker recruitment and retention in order to support evidence-based rapid interventions and mitigate risks for UK the food supply; (2) to provide information to limit contagion on farms; (3) to document the experiences of seasonal workers and farmers; (4) to inform decisions on the post-Brexit immigration system in light of possible future pandemics; (5) conceptually, to contribute to theories about the high demand for migrant labour in periods of high unemployment and (6) and to debates on the contributions of low skilled migrants as key workers.

Significance of the research and its contributions

With efforts to increase recruitment of local workers having little success (27 April 2020 The Telegraph), seasonal migrant workers remain indispensable for horticultural work and, thus, vital for the sustainability of domestically produced fresh food during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2020 picking season, only a third of the agricultural workforce needed is in place (Secretary for Environment, 19th of May 2020). Travel restrictions make it difficult for British farmers to recruit from abroad. Farmers have mobilised to charter flights privately and to even persuade sending states, such as Romania, to waive bans on international travel (The Times, 15 April 2020).

The current challenges extend beyond recruitment and migration decisions. Once in farms, workers live in shared on-site tied accommodation, raising questions about contagion. An epidemic in UK farms would affect the country’s food supply. In recognition of such challenges, the Select Commons Committee Environmental, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee has launched two inquiries (2020a, 2020b).

There is little support in the community tailored for the needs of seasonal migrant workers. As they tend to live on farms, charities have difficulties in reaching this community. From the migrants’ perspective, they find it difficult to find advice, avoid falling victims to gangmasters and encounter obstacles in understanding their rights, particularly access to health care or the EU Settlement Scheme.

COVID-19 has made additional UK labour available with many local residents becoming unemployed, yet there has been no decrease in the demand for seasonal migrant workers (Barbulescu and Vargas-Silva, 2020). Traditional theories of labour migration provide little insights on such scenarios of major disparities between high local labour demand and high local labour supply. Therefore, conceptually the project seeks to understand the dynamics of migrant recruitment and migration decisions in times of excess labour supply and increase work risk exposure through the prism of seasonal migration in horticulture.

In 2018, it was estimated that 94% of the 75,000 seasonal workers in the UK were EU nationals (House of Commons 2018: 4). These workers arrive in the UK using EU freedom of movement. After immigration from the EU being central to the Brexit debate (Favell and Barbulescu 2018) and a key driver of the Leave vote (Menon and Evens 2017), low skilled EU migrants were routinely framed as unwanted. The proposed post-Brexit immigration rules limit the access of EU nationals to low-skilled jobs in the UK (Fernández-Reino, Sumption and Vargas-Silva 2020). Conceptually, the project will also contribute to this debate on the re-framing of low skilled migrants following COVID-19 when many serve as key workers maintaining essential services risking their health and that of their families.

Furthermore, in addition to contributing to the short-term need to ensure a food supply in the upcoming months, this project informs discussions on the optimal post-Brexit immigration system. A scheme to recruit seasonal workers from non-EU countries after Brexit (Seasonal Workers Pilot) is being tested, but it is small (10,000 in 2020 and 30,000 in 2021) and contingent on visas, which limits its capacity to address sudden events as COVID-19.

Complementing and in dialogue with our academic work, we are developing a series of artistic sketches based on photographs taken by migrant workers themselves. The sketches seek to illustrate the everyday lives of the migrants who develop temporary communities on farms across rural Britain. Our team works closely with the artistic illustrator to contour and interrogate research findings. The illustrations will be curated for an exhibition and they will be collected in an artistic book.

Methodology

The project relies on remote methodologies (e.g. videoconference interviews, data analysis), and includes qualitative interviews organised in WP1 and WP2.

WP1 – Qualitative interviews with seasonal migrant workers to understand and document their experiences from recruitment, travel, quarantine, safe work, stay and return. Interviews will focus on their decision to migrate in the current pandemic context, their access to information about medical guidelines, health care and welfare provision in the UK, work and safety conditions in farms, and transnational arrangements in countries of origin and the likelihood of returning to the UK for the next picking season.

WP2 – Qualitative Interviews and surveys with growers of horticulture in the UK to identify different strategies in addressing labour shortages and recruiting migrants, what their labour needs for the ongoing seasons are and what are the challenges in recruiting, retaining and ensuring safe work during COVID19.

WP3 – Analysis of statistical datasets on seasonal migration in order to understand the ‘new’ demand for data in the context of COVID-19. This analysis will inform future food security strategies, by putting emphasis on the need to collect and report specific information on seasonal work.

WP4 – Comparison of seasonal migration responses in Germany, Spain and the United States, three countries hit differently by the COVID-19 outbreak.

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