Keeping Them in Their Place: Migrant Women Workers in Spain's Strawberry Industry

Abstract

The idea of guest-worker migration has resurfaced in recent decades as the global agri-food industry has confronted a shortage of workers willing to take low-wage and often seasonal jobs. To date, there have been very few cases studies of these twenty-first century guest-worker programs and their role in managing contemporary labor migration. This article examines guest-worker migration in the strawberry industry of southern Spain. In this case, guest-worker programs at-tempt to regulate and enforce the circular migration of foreign workers in Spain. By making future work contracts contingent on migrants' return to their country of origin, by recruiting migrant workers from various countries, and by target-ing women with dependent children, these programs help to discipline migrant workers into the rigors of circular migration. We argue that although the program has been lauded as a model of twenty-first century labor migration, it succeeds primarily by keeping foreign, low-wage, women workers 'in their place'.

Full text

Keeping Them in Their Place: Migrant Women Workers
in Spain’s Strawberry Industry
SUSAN E. MANNON, PEGGY PETRZELKA, CHRISTY M. GLASS AND
CLAUDIA RADEL
[Paper rst received, 31 March 2011; in nal form, 2 September 2011]
Abstract. The idea of guest-worker migration has resurfaced in recent decades as
the global agri-food industry has confronted a shortage of workers willing to take
low-wage and often seasonal jobs. To date, there have been very few cases studies
of these twenty-rst century guest-worker programs and their role in managing
contemporary labor migration. This article examines guest-worker migration in
the strawberry industry of southern Spain. In this case, guest-worker programs at-
tempt to regulate and enforce the circular migration of foreign workers in Spain.
By making future work contracts contingent on migrants’ return to their country
of origin, by recruiting migrant workers from various countries, and by target-
ing women with dependent children, these programs help to discipline migrant
workers into the rigors of circular migration. We argue that although the program
has been lauded as a model of twenty-rst century labor migration, it succeeds
primarily by keeping foreign, low-wage, women workers ‘in their place’.
Introduction
Since the 1980s, agri-food restructuring has transformed many marginal rural com-
munities into centers of high-value food production (Watts and Goodman, 1997).
Such revitalization has created a demand for low-skilled workers in communities
once dened by high rates of outmigration. Invariably, the workers lured into these
low-wage jobs are immigrant workers, who have been moving beyond traditional
immigrant gateways and into new destinations as a result. From the plains states of
the U.S. Midwest (Gouveia et al., 2005), to farming communities in southern Europe
(Kasimis, 2005), the arrival of foreign-born workers has caused more than a little
tension. Many of these destinations are ill-equipped and often unwilling to serve a
culturally distinct, linguistically diverse, and mostly low-income immigrant popu-
lation (Goździak and Martin, 2005; Massey, 2008). In addition, the rise in undocu-
mented migration that typically occurs in these contexts inspires social anxiety and
a call for closed borders. Business demands for immigrant workers and community
Susan E. Mannon is Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Department of Sociology, Social Work
and Anthropology, Utah State University, 0730 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-0730, U.S.A.;
e-mail: <susan.mannon@usu.edu>. Peggy Petrzelka and Christy M. Glass are Associate Pro-
fessors at Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology, Utah State University,
Logan, UT, U.S.A. Claudia Radel is Assistant Professor at College of Natural Resources, Utah
State University, Logan, UT, U.S.A.
Int. Jrnl. of Soc. of Agr. & Food, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 83–101
ISSN: 0798-1759 This journal is blind refereed.

84 Susan E. Mannon et al.
demands for closed borders have left many rural communities at something of an
impasse. In response, some policy-makers have embraced an alternative: bring im-
migrants in as temporary guest workers and send them home when the work is
done (Martin, 2003).
In the mid-twentieth century, guest-worker programs were popular in both the
United States and Western Europe, where labor shortages frustrated seasonal labor
recruitment. Such programs came to an end in the 1960s and 1970s as political op-
position grew and economic crises deepened on both sides of the Atlantic (Martin,
2003; Castles, 2006). But talk of guest workers resurfaced when the agri-food in-
dustry reorganized in the 1980s. By the 1990s, countries like Germany and Spain
were reinventing guest-worker programs for twenty-rst century economic needs
and political realities (Castles, 2006). And though guest-worker programs are still
controversial in the United States, they have been debated, most recently in the Utah
legislature (Romboy, 2011). The contemporary appeal of guest workers is more or
less the same as it was mid-century. Employers can access a steady supply of low-
wage workers, control workers through the terms of the contract, adjust the size of
their work-force with ease, dismiss guest workers as they see t, mitigate anti-immi-
grant sentiment in the local community, and avoid some of the social anxieties that
surround undocumented migration. The advantages of guest workers are perhaps
all the more critical in an era of ‘lean’ agri-food production, since securing a exible,
low-wage work-force is central to employers’ ability to provide quality, low cost
products to the market-place (Rogaly, 2008). Guest workers may also prove critical
to new immigrant destinations, where the presence of immigrants has become po-
litically and socially contentious.
What do these twenty-rst century guest-worker programs look like? And how do
they work? To explore these questions, we examine a set of guest-worker programs
that have arisen in southern Spain, where strawberry production has expanded in
recent decades. Strawberry harvesting is extremely labor-intensive and done exclu-
sively by hand. With few resident workers willing to partake in such work, growers
have recruited heavily from outside of Spain, from Eastern Europe and North Africa
in particular. They have targeted mostly women with children. Growers not only
perceive women as being a more obedient work-force, but they view women’s more
‘delicate’ hands as being ideal for high-value food production. To the architects of
the guest-worker programs, women’s family responsibilities also tug them back to
their country of origin once the harvest ends. Spanish and European Union (EU) o-
cials have lauded these programs as an ‘ethical’ approach to migration because they
resolve Spain’s demand for seasonal labor while ensuring the return of workers,
and the money they earn, to labor-exporting countries (Martin, 2008a). We shall ar-
gue that the real appeal of these programs is that they help keep foreign, low-wage,
women workers ‘in their place’ – obedient, hard-working, and ultimately back in
their country of origin.
Global Foods, Migrant Workers
To understand the role that guest-worker programs play in managing labor migra-
tion, we must rst consider restructuring in the agri-food industry. Since the second
half of the twentieth century, there have been at least two major trends in agricultur-
al production. The rst trend is the globalization of agri-food production and distri-
bution. Though a global agri-food system has existed since at least the sixteenth cen-

Keeping Them in Their Place 85
tury, economic and technological changes in the second half of the twentieth century
made the global sourcing of food more extensive. Specically, free trade agreements
and advancements in long-distance transport and refrigeration gave agri-food rms
the ability to supply global food chains year round (Watts and Goodman, 1997).
The second trend is the exibilization of labor. In a competitive global market-place,
wherein prot margins are slim and consumer tastes are volatile, rms want ex-
ibility in adjusting the size of their work-force, the wages paid to workers, and the
conditions under which work is performed. To this end, many agri-food rms have
mirrored strategies in the industrial sector by contracting out production (Little
and Watts, 1994), hiring workers through temp agencies or on short-term contracts
(Raynolds, 1994), and relying on women, migrants, and minorities to meet labor
needs (Collins, 1993). Though exible work arrangements can be advantageous to
workers, they tend to result in less employment security and fewer labor protections
(Kalleberg, 2000).
These trends in agri-food production have changed the landscape of rural com-
munities in various ways. To begin, new crops and food industries have expanded
into many communities, revitalizing rural and regional economies (Raynolds, 1994;
Gouveia et al., 2005). Because labor market exibility is so central to these new agri-
food industries, new patterns of labor force participation have often cropped up
alongside these industries (Rogaly, 2008; Preibisch, 2010). Migrant workers, for ex-
ample, feature prominently in these industries because they can be paid less and/or
hired and disbanded with relative ease. Such workers may not have documents to
work and reside in these communities, resulting in a social layer of workers that are
stripped of most labor and social rights. Social scientists have looked at how the re-
cruitment of immigrant workers by agri-food employers has given rise to immigrant
communities in non-traditional destinations (Goździak and Martin, 2005; Massey,
2008). These non-traditional immigrant destinations tend to feature weaker immi-
grant social networks, fewer ethnic-based services, and less adequate social services,
which can strain community relations and immigrant well-being (Bump, 2005). Of
course, not all migrant workers permanently settle in these destinations. In countries
that have guest-worker programs, the push for exibility has led many employers to
hire temporary foreign workers, who live temporarily in host communities, return-
ing home to their country at the end of their contract (Rogaly, 2008; Preibisch, 2010).
In addition to migrant workers, studies have identied the growing use of wom-
en workers in agri-food industries (Collins, 1993; Raynolds, 1994). Indeed, Standing
(1999) argues that the growing preference for women workers and the rise in more
precarious forms of work signal a ‘feminization of labor’ in industries worldwide.
By putting a premium on cost-cutting competitiveness, economic restructuring has
led to employer preferences for workers who are willing to take low-wage, insecure
jobs (Standing, 1999, p. 585). These workers are most often women who have entered
competitive labor markets to help sustain their families in the face of economic cri-
sis and household poverty. The growing reliance on low-wage women workers has
been well documented in studies of export manufacturing (Elson and Pearson, 1981;
Lee, 1998; Salzinger, 2003) and agri-export production (Collins, 1993; Raynolds,
1994; Lee, 2010) in the global South. There is also research on the growing number of
immigrant women workers in the global North (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Parreñas,
2001; Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). Most of latter research focuses on immi-
grant women in female-dominated occupations like domestic work.

86 Susan E. Mannon et al.
To date, few studies have analysed women migrant workers in the agri-food in-
dustry of the global North. One notable exception is Preibisch and Encalada (2010),
who study the participation of Mexican women in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural
Workers Program. Under the terms of this guest-worker program, employers are
allowed to select their employees on the basis of nationality and sex (Preibisch and
Encalada, 2010, p. 297). For the most part, employers in this program prefer men,
with women constituting as little as 2% of the migrant work-force. To explain this
preference, the authors point to long-held perceptions in Canada that farm-work
is men’s work. On the supply side, women are constrained by prevailing gender
norms, which frame their outmigration as an act of bad mothering and a sign of
sexual indiscretion. Thus, female migrants in this case are viewed as ‘unusual par-
ticipants’ in seasonal labor migration (Preibisch and Encalada, 2010, p. 290).
1
The Spanish case highlighted in this article reveals employer preferences for
women migrant workers. And in this regard, the guest-worker programs coming
out of southern Spanish may be viewed as constituting a exible labor strategy par
excellence. The workers, in this case, are migrant, seasonal, and female – exible
(read: vulnerable) in almost every respect. Moreover, and perhaps more interesting,
these guest-worker programs are being touted as examples of ‘ethical’ migration
(Gerson, 2007a) and a model that should be replicated in other countries considering
long-term migration xes (Márquez et al., 2009). If the Spanish case is being viewed
as a model for twenty-rst century migration, we should look closely at the features
of these guest-worker programs and the migrant labor forces on which they rely. In
the section that follows, we trace the rise of these programs and our methods for
studying them in depth.
Return of the Guest Worker
Countries in North America and Western Europe experimented with guest-worker
programs during and after World War II in response to labor shortages (Martin,
2003; Plewa and Miller, 2005). Most of these programs ended by the mid-1970s as
unemployment and opposition to guest-worker programs rose among native-born
workers. By the 1990s, western countries began to experiment anew with circular
migration programs. Having ended the Bracero program in 1964, for example, the
United States established limited guest-worker programs like the H-1B program
for skilled professionals and the H-2A program for agricultural workers (Martin,
2003). Guest-worker programs also sprang up in countries like Canada, the United
Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Spain (Martin, 2003, 2008b). In con-
trast to earlier guest-worker programs, which were structured as large-scale national
programs, the newer programs tended to be small in scale and negotiated through
bilateral agreements with individual labor-exporting countries.
2
Martin (2008a, p. 9)
estimates that there were some 200 such agreements in the world by 2000.
As a country currently playing host to guest workers, Spain is something of a
unique case. Historically, the country was a net exporter of migrants. Demographic
and economic changes, however, turned the country into a net importer of migrants
in the 1980s. During that decade, the country’s birth-rate declined dramatically,
leaving the country with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Also during
the 1980s, Spain joined the EU and experienced a major economic boom that lasted
throughout the 1990s (Martin, 2008a). These changes meant that Spain faced labor
shortages in industries like construction and agriculture. Faced with expanding op-

Keeping Them in Their Place 87
portunities elsewhere in the economy, native-born workers all but abandoned these
industries, leaving employers to look to immigrants to ll these jobs. The resulting
growth in Spain’s foreign-born population has been nothing short of spectacular.
In the early 1980s, less than one percent of Spain’s population was foreign born. By
2010, 12% of the country’s population of 45 million was foreign born, the vast major-
ity from Romania, Morocco, and Ecuador (Migration News, 2010).
Until 1985, Spain had an ‘open door policy’ toward immigrants, who were as-
sumed to be in Spain only temporarily as they made their way northward into other
parts of Europe (Plewa and Miller, 2005). Immigrants, for example, were not re-
quired to have a visa to enter the country.
3
By the mid-1980s, the growing demand
for foreign workers and Spain’s ascension into the EU changed the country’s over-
all approach to migration. As the economy expanded, the country’s undocumented
immigrant population grew. Immigrants from Africa, for example, began arriving
by small boats across the Strait of Gibraltar to work without permits. The question
for Spanish authorities became how to balance the economic demand for foreign-
born workers with the political need to control undocumented migration (Arango
and Martin, 2003). In response, the country implemented its rst modern immigra-
tion policy (Ley de Extranjería) in 1985. The law included nes, though no criminal
penalties, for employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants. By 1993,
Spain also had a system in place (contingente system) to grant temporary work visas
to immigrants, though immigrants could apply while living in Spain (Plewa and
Miller, 2005).
The piecemeal attempts by the Spanish government to regulate the inux of for-
eign-born workers were not exactly successful. Immigrant workers regularly over-
stayed their work visas, creating a layer of Spanish society that had no rights. In
addition, undocumented immigrants were regularly legalized, creating a system of
‘hidden regularization’ (Plewa and Miller, 2005; Márquez et al., 2009). Facing mount-
ing pressure from the EU and its own citizens, the Spanish government passed a
new immigration law in 2000 (Ley de Extranjería LO 8/2000). Although this law
gave documented immigrants similar rights and freedoms as Spanish citizens, the
law ended mass legalizations and required that foreign workers obtain temporary
work permits before entering the country (Arango and Martin, 2003; Plewa and
Miller, 2005). As part of this immigration overhaul, the Spanish government signed
bilateral migration agreements with countries who agreed to assist in controlling
undocumented migration to Spain. In exchange, workers from these countries re-
ceived preference in obtaining temporary work visas (Plewa and Miller, 2005, p. 73).
Those countries with which Spain signed agreements included: Poland, Bulgaria,
Romania, Colombia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Morocco (Márquez et
al., 2009).
4
In this article, we consider one Spanish province’s experience with temporary mi-
grant workers. The province of Huelva is located along the coast in southern Spain
and is dominated by agriculture, the cultivation of strawberries in particular. The
vast majority of guest-worker contracts issued each year by Spain are for work in
Huelva, making this province a good case of guest-worker migration. In addition,
a number of guest-worker pilot projects have been developed by ocials in Car-
taya, a locality in the Huelva province that produces much of the strawberries that
Huelva exports. Given the expansion of the strawberry industry, Cartaya has seen a
dramatic inux of foreign-born workers. By 2009, its population of 18 000 was over
17% foreign born (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2009). The guest-worker experi-

88 Susan E. Mannon et al.
ments that Cartaya initiated have catapulted it into the international limelight due
to their apparent success. One project receiving much attention targets women with
dependent children in Morocco. The idea behind the program is that women will be
more likely to return to their country of origin at the end of their contract if they have
children at home waiting for them. In the remainder of this article, we consider these
experiences and experiments with guest-worker migration. We are particularly in-
terested in how particular immigrant workers have been constructed as ideal guest
workers.
To explore the Huelva case, we draw on secondary literature and eld-work on
migrant workers in Spain’s strawberry industry. Most of the academic literature on
the subject has been limited to the elds of economics and political science, though
the subject has received some sociological attention by academics in Spain. To in-
vestigate some of our more sociological questions, we conducted preliminary eld
work in Morocco and Spain. In 2008, the second author traveled to Morocco to
study development initiatives in a rural Berber village in the Ouarzazate Province
of southern Morocco. Historically, the village has been characterized by high rates
of male outmigration and female subsistence farming. Women’s paid work has been
minimal, typically involving the selling of eggs or bread. But the women became
a target of recruitment for Spain’s strawberry industry in the years preceding the
second author’s eld-work. Over the course of three months, the second author con-
ducted some 30 interviews with women in the village about various development
initiatives in the area. Of these women, six were considering applying for Cartaya’s
guest-worker program and one woman had already participated in the program.
The second author explored how the women in the village perceived this opportu-
nity, why the women considered applying to the program, and what the experience
was like for the woman who participated.
In 2011, the rst three authors followed up on this information by conducting
qualitative research in Cartaya. During the strawberry harvest, they spent 10 days
in Cartaya interviewing migrant workers, strawberry employers, and local ocials.
The rst author speaks Spanish and acted as translator for interviews with Spanish
employers and ocials. The second author speaks Moroccan Arabic and acted as
translator for interviews with migrant workers. In total, they conducted interviews
with eight migrant women workers from Morocco. Though this was a relatively
small number, the interviews were intensive and involved multiple visits to the
women’s residences. They also conducted structured interviews with three trade
union ocials, two industry representatives, two city ocials, and two academics
that have studied the case. One of the city ocials was the mayor of Cartaya, Juan
Millán Jaldón, who was the primary architect of the guest-worker programs. They
supplemented these interviews with eld observations of three migrant worker
houses, a large strawberry farm, a strawberry co-operative, and community life in
Cartaya. In the sections that follow, we report the major ndings from this research.
Modeling Circular Migration
The strawberry industry serves as a prime example of agro-restructuring in Spain
and the increased reliance on migrant workers, guest workers in particular. Since
the 1960s, coastal land in Spain’s southern province of Huelva has been taken up in
the production of strawberries, otherwise known as ‘red gold’ (Márquez et al., 2009)
(see Figure 1). Such production expanded markedly after 1986 when Spain joined

Keeping Them in Their Place 89
the EU (Rural Migration News, 2008). By 2008, Spain was producing some 300 000
tons of strawberries per year, most of which was exported to Germany, the United
Kingdom, and France (Martin, 2008a, p. 19). Today, Spain is the leading exporter
of strawberries, producing almost 10% of the world’s strawberries (Rural Migration
News, 2010). Though some aspects of strawberry production have been mechanized,
the process of planting and picking is still done primarily by hand.
Historically, strawberry production in Huelva was dominated by family farms
and family labor. This changed when Spain joined the EU. The larger Spanish econ-
omy was ourishing and Spaniards were eager to take advantage of other, more
lucrative job opportunities. Between 1985 and 2005, the percentage of the Spanish
workforce employed in agriculture declined from 16% to 5% (Martin, 2008a, p. 17).
As a result, export agriculture in Huelva, which was expanding rapidly, became a
‘magnet for migrants’ (Martin, 2008a, p. 17). In our interview with Mercedes Gordo,
a historian at the University of Huelva, Gordo emphasized that it was not simply
a labor shortage that created a demand for migrant workers. It was a shortage of
exible workers – those willing to take precarious, low-wage, and labor-intensive
jobs in agriculture. Indeed, as Rogaly (2008) explains, there has been a concentration
of power among global retailers (e.g. Walmart), who have been able to appropri-
ate a greater share of the value of fresh produce. Faced with lower prot margins,
growers have sought out workers who are willing to work under intense working
conditions, at low wages, and for whatever period of time is demanded of them
(Preibisch, 2010). These are often immigrant workers (Rogaly, 2008).
As the previous section noted, Spain rst admitted temporary foreign workers in
1993 under an earlier contingente system. Under this system, employers who could
not nd enough Spanish workers could request temporary foreign workers. Im-
migrants, both documented and undocumented, could apply for temporary work
permits while living in Spain (Plewa, 2009). Between 1997 and 2000, some 25000
permits were issued annually for the Huelva Province alone (Plewa, 2009). Moroc-
can immigrants, who had become a sizable undocumented population in Spain by
this time, obtained the vast majority of these permits (Plewa and Miller, 2005).
5
As
with most foreign workers who obtained such permits, Moroccans rarely returned
Figure 1. Map of Spain.

90 Susan E. Mannon et al.
to their country of origin at the end of their contract. Instead, they resettled into
Spain as undocumented immigrants. It was, in part, the growing size of this un-
documented population that prompted the Spanish government to implement a
new system of temporary work visas. Beginning in 2001, those workers whose coun-
tries had signed bilateral agreements with Spain were given preference in obtaining
temporary work visas. By signing such agreements, these countries agreed to assist
Spain in controlling undocumented migration and to help Spain recruit temporary
workers. From this point on, the only legal route for immigrants to work and reside
in Spain was to obtain a temporary work contract while in their country of origin.
These contracts are referred to as ‘contracts in origin’ because they are negotiated in
the migrant’s home country.
The rst wave of guest workers to arrive in Huelva in 2001 under this new tem-
porary work program included 540 Polish workers and 198 Moroccan workers (see
Table 1) (Plewa, 2009, p. 226). In the years that followed, the use of guest workers
expanded dramatically, both in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of the sending
countries involved. Between 2006 and 2008, some 30 000 guest workers were con-
tracted annually. In addition to Poland and Morocco, they came from such countries
as Romania, Bulgaria, Ecuador, and Colombia (Plewa, 2009, p. 226). Workers typi-
cally come on six-to-nine month contracts to work during the strawberry harvest,
which begins in February (Rural Migration News, 2010). Before recruiting temporary
foreign workers, strawberry growers must rst certify that they cannot nd enough
Spanish, EU, or legally resident foreign workers to ll their labor needs and they
must do so some 105 days before the expected start date (Martin, 2008a, p. 19). Five
employer organizations have sprung up in Huelva to assist growers in this certi-
cation process: Freshuelva, ASAJA, APCA, COAG and UPA-CORA (Martin, 2008a;
Plewa, 2009). Individual employers submit their request for guest workers to one
of these organizations, which then submit employer requests to a Labor Migration
Taskforce, which certies the labor shortage and approves the employer requests
(Plewa, 2009). These requests must be approved a second time at the national level.
Typically, the government approves fewer requests than employers submit (Plewa
and Miller, 2005).
Though the certication process is meant to ensure that a labor shortage actually
exists, there has been much controversy around the process.
6
One strawberry grower
we interviewed indicated that the process of certication was more symbolic than
anything. Even in the present economic crisis, he cannot nd resident workers to
work the strawberry harvest. In 2010, the Spanish government gave him a list of
30 names registered with the unemployment oce. He was required to call these
Country 2000–
2001
2001–
2002
2002–
2003
2003–
2004
2004–
2005
2005–
2006
2006–
2007
2007–
2008
Bulgaria 0 0 0 508 604 941 2,577 4,000
Colombia 0 149 177 105 82 8 2 0
Ecuador 0 0 15 8 64 26 12 0
Morocco 198 336 95 635 1,094 2,330 1,946 12 000
Poland 540 4,954 7,535 8,811 7,361 9,796 - 3,500
Romania 0 970 4,178 10 933 13 186 19 153 26 278 11 000
Ukraine 0 0 0 0 0 0 724 4,000
Total 738 6,409 12 000 21 000 22 391 32 254 31 539 34 500
Source: Plewa, 2009.
Table 1. Huelva’s temporary foreign workers by country of origin, 2001–2008.

Keeping Them in Their Place 91
names before his requests for temporary foreign workers would be approved. Out
of 30, only three showed up to work. And in all three cases, the individuals worked
for a month before quitting. By law, agricultural workers must work 35 days to qual-
ify for 180 days of unemployment benets. According to this and other employers
(Plewa, 2009), many resident workers simply work the 35-day minimum to qualify
for unemployment.
Union representatives are skeptical of these claims (Plewa and Miller, 2005). In an
interview with representatives from one of Spain’s major trade unions, for example,
representatives insisted that there are plenty of resident workers who would take
these jobs. It is dicult to assess the validity of either claim, but it is clear that one of
the incentives of contracting guest workers, at least where employers are concerned,
is that the contract ties guest workers to a specic employer for an established period
of time (usually six to nine months). In short, the guest worker, unlike the Spanish,
EU, or legally resident foreign worker, cannot leave to seek employment elsewhere
(for a similar nding in Britain’s horticultural industry, see Rogaly, 2008).
Once certied to import guest workers, growers rely on the ve business organi-
zations to recruit workers. These organizations work with labor recruiting oces in
labor-exporting countries (Martin, 2008a; Plewa, 2009). Job applicants must ll out a
questionnaire, provide medical and criminal records, and complete an extensive in-
terview about their work experience, family structure, and future plans. After selec-
tion, guest workers are issued personal identication numbers by the Spanish Min-
istry of the Interior, which authorizes them to obtain temporary work visas (Martin,
2008a, p. 19). As part of the bilateral agreements, growers must supply housing that
conforms to state regulations, organize transportation to and from Spain, and pay
for half of the worker’s transportation costs (Márquez et al., 2009). While they are
under contract, guest workers are entitled to most labor and social rights, includ-
ing a minimum wage, free health care and medical aid, and social security benets
(Plewa and Miller, 2005, pp. 76–77). Workers who complete a harvesting cycle, re-
turn to their country of origin, and check in with a Spanish consulate are given hir-
ing preference in subsequent years. This hiring preference is the primary incentive
for workers to return home at the end of their labor contract. Guest workers who
complete at least three years of fullling their contracts, including the stipulation
that they return home, may apply for permanent residency. These applications are
considered on a case-by-case basis.
Huelva’s wholesale adoption of these reforms and the sheer volume of temporary
foreign workers that it contracts have prompted Spanish and EU ocials to watch
Huelva’s experience with guest-worker migration closely. Their overall assessment
is that it has been a resounding success, so successful that, in 2007, the European
Commission Vice President began encouraging other countries to adopt the ‘Huelva
model’ (Gerson, 2007a; Márquez et al., 2009). The criteria such ocials are using to
deem the model a success are not altogether clear. But one area in which the Huelva
model is arguably successful is in providing a semblance of control over the migra-
tion ‘problem’. In an era of agro-industrial restructuring, immigrant workers are
touching down in new destinations where there is a demand for exible, low-wage
labor. Whether it be rural Virginia (Bump, 2005) or rural Greece (Kasimis, 2005),
there has been a ‘settling out’ of immigrants into rural places. This trend puts pres-
sure on the social service infrastructure of rural communities and sparks anxiety
among local residents, who fear an increase in crime, economic competition, and a
dilution of core community values and identity (Gozdziak and Martin, 2005). Huel-

92 Susan E. Mannon et al.
va’s guest-worker program resolves some of this pressure and anxiety by regulating
the employment and working conditions of migrants and by ensuring that migrant
workers return home.
Strawberry growers and government ocials declared in interviews that immi-
grants were well received in Huelva. There were no community tensions, they insist-
ed, and no xenophobic response to the seasonal inux of migrant workers. Because
we did not survey a cross-section of Huelva communities, we cannot say whether
this is the case. But assuming this is true, it could be that the guest-worker programs
helped to ease tensions that had been brewing as a result of a lax migration policy
and a large population of undocumented workers. Indeed, it was the growing issue
over undocumented migration that prompted the Spanish government to overhaul
its migration policy and to tackle its temporary foreign-worker program.
Under the new system, immigrants wishing to work in Spain must obtain a tem-
porary work contract in their home country and they must leave at the end of their
contract. Though guest workers are guaranteed considerable labor and social rights
under this system, the terms of these contracts help keep foreign workers in low-sta-
tus jobs, in one place of employment, and, ultimately, in their country of origin. In a
sense, the new approach to guest-worker migration helps ease the tensions wrought
by undocumented migration by keeping immigrants ‘in their place’. Of course, the
system is not perfect. Martin (2008a, p. 18) estimates that some 40% of guest workers
fail to return to their country of origin under this system. Thus, Spanish ocials and
employers have had to use other tools to ensure that foreign workers fall in line with
the dictates of the new guest-worker model.
Constructing Temporary Workers
The bilateral labor agreements that serve as the centre-piece of Spain’s experiment
with guest workers tend to be with labor-exporting countries with which Spain has
some geographic, economic, or political relationship. For example, Spain’s colo-
nial history with Latin America helps explain the agreements with countries like
Ecuador. Likewise, Spain’s inclusion in the EU and the ties to this regional block
among Eastern European countries help explain the agreements with countries like
Romania. Geographic proximity to and historical migration streams from countries
like Morocco help explain agreements with particular African countries. After the
2000 immigration law was passed, and after various bilateral agreements had been
signed, Huelva’s strawberry growers had a choice of countries in which to recruit
strawberry workers. Though they would eventually contract a small pool of work-
ers from Ecuador and Colombia, most growers were never enthusiastic about con-
tracting from Latin America due to the high transportation costs involved (Rural
Migration News, 2008; Márquez et al., 2009). Instead, they turned initially to workers
in Morocco and Poland.
Morocco was not at all an unusual country from which to recruit workers. After
all, Moroccan workers had long been contracted to work the strawberry harvest
under the earlier contingente system. But Spain had a history of strained diplomatic
ties with Morocco. Moreover, the much-publicized murder of a Spanish woman by a
Moroccan national in a neighboring province had resulted in ethnic tension (Plewa
and Miller, 2005). Thus, Huelva concentrated most of its recruitment eorts in Po-
land. According to Mercedes Gordo, who has studied the recruitment of Polish guest
workers extensively, Spain had a special interest in Poland. Poland’s looming ascen-

Keeping Them in Their Place 93
sion into the EU signaled the potential for new consumer and investment markets.
Thus, Spain had an interest in furthering diplomatic ties with the up-and-coming
EU member. Poland, of course, had its own interests in negotiating the agreement.
With high rates of unemployment, it was interested in job opportunities abroad for
Polish workers. Whatever the case, the decision to concentrate recruitment in Poland
caused more than a little resentment among resident Moroccan workers, who had
enjoyed most of the temporary work visas up until this time (Plewa, 2009).
Polish guest workers remained the preferred labor source in Huelva until 2004.
Under the terms of the guest-worker program, migrants who return home at the
end of their employment contract are given preference for hiring the following year.
Thus, many of the guest workers in the early 2000s were Polish ‘repeaters’. But it is
also the case that the number of guest workers expanded dramatically and grow-
ers continued to bring in more Polish workers. Indeed, the number of Polish guest
workers contracted in Huelva rose from 540 in 2001 to 8,811 in 2004 (Plewa, 2009, p.
226). Gordo attributes the preference for Polish workers to the fact that employers
were prone to stick with workers with whom they were familiar. In 2004, however,
Poland was admitted into the EU. As members of the EU, Polish citizens have full
labor mobility, meaning that they may reside and work in any EU member state.
Poland’s ascension into the EU signaled a decline in Polish guest workers for at least
two reasons. First, the infusion of EU dollars into Poland meant a more dynamic
Polish economy that could retain at least some of its work-force. Second, the ability
to work anywhere in the EU compelled many Polish workers to migrate elsewhere
in Europe where opportunities were more lucrative (Plewa, 2009). Anticipating the
departure of Polish workers, Huelva had begun looking to Romania to ll a greater
share of its guest-worker contracts in 2002. Thus, by 2004, the number of Romanian
guest workers (10 933) had surpassed the number of Polish guest workers (8,811)
(see Table 1) (Plewa, 2009, p. 226). Until 2007, Romanian workers constituted the
largest contingent of temporary foreign workers in Huelva.
Like Polish workers in 2004, many Romanian workers left the strawberry elds
for more lucrative jobs once Romania became a member of the EU in 2007 (Martin,
2008a). Though many Polish and Romanian workers continue to work as seasonal
laborers in the strawberry industry, their numbers are far lower. Faced with anoth-
er shortage of temporary foreign workers, Huelva decided to grant an increasing
number of seasonal contracts to Moroccans workers. In 2008, following Romania’s
ascension into the EU, 12 000 of the 34 500 contracted workers in Huelva were from
Morocco (35%), up from 635 (3%) in 2004 (see Table 1) (Plewa, 2009, p. 226). Again,
Moroccan workers have long been a major source of low-wage labor in Spain and in
Europe more generally. Indeed, since gaining its independence from France in 1956,
Morocco has become one of the world’s top labor-exporting countries (Haas, 2007).
But as immigration policies tightened in Europe throughout the 1980s, Moroccan
migrants began to remain in Europe permanently rather than attempt a more circu-
lar pattern of migration. As a result, circular migration rates among Moroccans are
among the lowest of all immigrant groups in Europe (Haas, 2007). This has given
Moroccan workers something of a bad reputation as guest workers. According to
Mercedes Gordo, Spain turned to Morocco as a last resort after facing a shortage of
Eastern European guest workers.
Whether the racial and cultural features of the Moroccan population exacerbated
the poor reputation of Moroccan immigrants is dicult to say. Moroccan immi-
grants are overwhelmingly Muslim and have physical features that tend to mark

94 Susan E. Mannon et al.
them as North African. Walking through the heart of Cartaya, it is indeed easy to
distinguish Moroccan from Spanish, especially where the women are concerned.
Moroccan women typically wear ankle length skirts and head scarves. They rarely
sit in cafes and are more likely to congregate in small groups on the plaza. The lan-
guage dierences between them and the Spanish population cement this segrega-
tion, such that Moroccan women tend to live on the fringes of Spanish society. Given
that Moroccan men historically dominated Moroccan migration to Spain and have
been in Spain longer, Moroccan men tend to be a bit more integrated. They know
more Spanish, they interact more socially with Spaniards, and they blend in more
in terms of dress and appearance. But by our observations, there were no signicant
numbers of Moroccan men at cafés, which would be customary in Morocco. And it
is clear that even Moroccan men tend to restrict themselves to Moroccan-dominated
social spaces such as Moroccan shops.
The Spanish growers and ocials we interviewed insisted that there were no ra-
cial or cultural tensions between the Spanish and Moroccan populations. One grow-
er admitted that he was nervous when recruiters rst started sending him Moroccan
workers. He was unfamiliar with the culture, he explained, and he was accustomed
to Eastern European workers at that point. But once they started working, he was
impressed with their work ethic. As another grower explained to a reporter for the
Christian Science Monitor: ‘Any business owner wants people who will get up early,
work all day, that don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t go to the discotheque’ (Gerson,
2007b). One of the growers interviewed continues to employ Polish and Romanian
workers on a seasonal basis. But he also asks for Moroccan guest workers each year.
Unlike the Polish and Romanian workers, the Moroccan workers do not have labor
mobility. Their contracts are tied to a specic employer. Thus, the grower never has
to worry about them leaving to work on another farm, for another industry, or in
another country. As for any tensions that the seasonal presence of Moroccan work-
ers might produce in the surrounding communities, they are minimized by housing
most guest workers outside the towns and near the strawberry elds.
From the history of Huelva’s guest-worker program, it appears that Spanish
growers and ocials are constantly chasing a new labor pool to meet the seasonal
demand for workers. Just when they secure one pool of workers (e.g. Polish work-
ers), the supply dries up and they must look elsewhere (e.g. Romania and Morocco).
Though Morocco has no plans to enter the EU, Spain is not settling on Morocco as
its sole source of guest workers. In recent years, Spain has conducted pilot guest-
worker programs with countries like Senegal, the Philippines, and the Ukraine. It
has also considered programs with Mali and Moldova.
7
However arduous this con-
stant searching for guest workers might be, there is some logic to constructing a pool
of diverse guest workers. Sachs and Alston (2010) note that agricultural employers
rely on hiring a diverse work-force as a way to stoke ethnic tension and discipline
workers. Under the terms of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, for
example, employers are permitted to pick the social characteristics (i.e. the gender,
race, and ethnicity) of guest workers. Using racial essentialisms (e.g. Jamaicans are
stronger), employers segment migrant workers into dierent jobs. This practice al-
lows them to discipline workers by encouraging ethnic competition, preventing in-
ter-ethnic socializing, and reminding workers of their ‘disposability’ (Preibisch and
Encalada, 2010, pp. 304–306).
Interviews with strawberry growers and migrant workers indicated that Polish,
Romanian, and Moroccan workers are not channeled into dierent positions. And

Keeping Them in Their Place 95
observations of strawberry harvesting conrmed this. In addition to working side
by side, migrant workers from dierent countries typically live together in dormito-
ries, houses, or trailers. Inter-ethnic relations appeared to be relatively co-operative.
Even so, the presence of migrant workers from other countries serves as a constant
reminder to migrant workers that theirs is not the only country participating in the
program. At any moment, another bilateral agreement might be signed and another
nationality might come to dominate the strawberry harvest. The Moroccan migrants
interviewed, for example, were concerned about their reputation as Moroccan work-
ers. They wanted to be known as hard workers and reliable migrants. Though we
cannot say whether it is a conscious strategy on the part of Spain, recruiting guest
workers from dierent countries has the eect of reminding guest workers of their
replaceability and ensuring that guest workers will work hard to protect their future
work prospects. In their eorts to keep workers compliant and otherwise ‘in their
place’, Spanish ocials and employers have at least one other tool in their arsenal,
namely the use of a feminized work-force. To this nal, critical ingredient in Huel-
va’s model of migration we now turn.
Managing Migrant Mothers
From the beginning, the guest-worker agreements developed in southern Spain tar-
geted women migrants. When employers rst started recruiting from Poland, for
example, they expressed a preference for women workers, though this was not a
requirement. And when Spain and Senegal signed a bilateral labor agreement in
2007, strawberry growers requested women in particular (Martin, 2008a, p. 20). Giv-
en this preference for women workers, well over 95% of the guest workers recruited
to Huelva have been women (Márquez et al., 2009). Growers justify their prefer-
ence for women with the argument that strawberries are delicate produce, requiring
‘delicate’ hands for harvesting (Márquez et al., 2009). These arguments echo justi-
cations for the predominance of women in global assembly plants, where women’s
‘nimble’ ngers and ‘agreeable’ disposition supposedly make them well suited for
routine assembly work (Elson and Pearson, 1981; Lee, 1998). In reality, the prefer-
ence for women is due primarily to women’s lower wages and weaker attachment to
labor markets, which make them an ideal source of cheap, exible labor (Elson and
Pearson, 1981; Lee, 1998). Indeed, it was not until export agriculture expanded and
growers came to rely on immigrant workers that the area’s agricultural work-force
became feminized. Before this time, farm-workers were predominantly men.
According to Mercedes Gordo, the rst wave of women Polish guest workers
were mostly between the ages of 18 and 25. They tended to be single and childless.
As such, they had a reputation for partying, mingling with men, and showing up
late for work. Thus, between 2002 and 2003, the prole of the woman guest worker
began to change. As Huelva expanded its recruitment into other countries in Eastern
Europe (e.g. Romania and Bulgaria), growers expressed a preference for women a
bit older (25–30) who were married with children.
8
Of the temporary work visas is-
sued in Romania in the 2000s, for example, over half were to women between the
ages of 26 and 55, suggesting a major target was women who were married with
children (Bleahu, 2004). Whether these older women were, in fact, more productive
as workers, we cannot say. But it is clear that employers began to have a particular
idea of the most appropriate women workers for the strawberry harvest, namely

96 Susan E. Mannon et al.
women who would focus on work and limit their movements to the strawberry
elds and residential camp.
Married women with children were construed as the ideal strawberry worker in
at least one other respect, namely that they would return to their families in their
country of origin at the end of their employment contract (Márquez et al., 2009).
According to Mercedes Gordo, the strawberry growers are less concerned about
the possibility that guest workers will not return to their country of origin. They
are solely interested in workers that will come in on short-term labor contracts and
work hard for the duration of the contract. It was the Spanish government that was
most interested in ensuring that guest workers returned home at the conclusion of
their contract because it was the Spanish government that was concerned with con-
trolling undocumented migration. To ocials, mothers were ideal migrants. They
had family responsibilities, which ensured both their hard work under contract and
their return home to their country of origin. Here, Spanish ocials were drawing on
particular notions of privatized motherhood, which assume that women are tied to
family responsibilities and emotionally attached to children such that they would be
unlikely to risk permanent or long-term separation from home and hearth (for more
on the notion of privatized motherhood, see Nakano Glenn et al., 1993).
The targeting of women with children comes into sharp focus when we consider
the case of Morocco. In 2004, the city of Cartaya received a $1.6 million grant from
the EU-sponsoring agency AENEAS to develop a circular migration program be-
tween Spain and Morocco that had ‘co-development’ features (Gerson, 2007b; Mar-
tin, 2008a). ‘Co-development’ features refer to those program features that are aimed
at enhancing economic development in the migrant’s country of origin and ensur-
ing the migrant’s return to their country of origin (Martin, 2008a). In its rst two
years, the program was a colossal failure; fewer than half of the Moroccan guest
workers returned to Morocco at the end of the work contract (Martin, 2008a, p. 20).
The problem of non-return prompted an important change in the program, namely
only mothers under 40 with children in Morocco could participate (Gerson, 2007b;
Martin, 2008a).
9
It is a little unclear who came up with this strategy, though at least
one Huelva ocial and all three union representatives we interviewed insisted that
it was the Moroccan government. Regardless, some 26 000 Moroccan mothers ap-
plied for the program and 5,500 were selected in 2007. As one strawberry grower
remarked ‘We are looking for women with family responsibilities, so that when they
nish their work and collect their money they will want to go back to see their fam-
ily, their children’ (Gerson, 2007b).
For their part, the migrant women interviewed understood clearly why they were
being targeted as guest workers. They had heard that the guest-worker program
had been open to all Moroccans, but that Moroccans had not been returning, thus
the requirement that the workers be mothers. In order to submit an application, the
women were required to show documents indicating the ages of their children. The
migrant women themselves reinforced the case for recruiting migrant mothers. Men,
they argued, sit around too much and are more likely to complain, whereas women,
and mothers in particular, are more hard-working and less likely to talk back to the
boss. Though they were all mothers, the women were an otherwise diverse group.
Their ages ranged from 26 to 42. About half were married and half were divorced.
The number of children they had ranged from one to eight, though ve of the eight
women had only one to two kids. The majority of the women was from rural areas
and had worked in agriculture before participating in Spain’s strawberry harvest,

Keeping Them in Their Place 97
thought at least two were from towns. Almost all of the women left their children in
the care of their parents while they traveled to Spain to work. And most were using
the money to build houses in Morocco.
When asked whether they had ever considered not returning to Morocco at the
end of their employment contract, the women insisted that they had no incentive to
do so. Though they knew of other Moroccan workers that had chosen not to return,
these workers ended up working as undocumented workers for less than minimum
wage. The women had seen that by returning, they would be given preference for
rehiring the following year. And by having temporary work permits, they would
earn the minimum wage and enjoy basic labor rights. Though the women men-
tioned missing their children, especially since most of these women were on nine
month contracts and had been coming to Spain for well over three years, it was not
their family responsibilities that convinced them to return. Rather, it was the fragile
promise that they would be able to earn money each year in Spain. Regardless of the
mechanism making these women compliant guest workers, the targeting of women
with children appears to be resolving the issue of non-return. In 2007, more than 90%
of the workers returned to Morocco at the end of their contract. The approach of tar-
geting migrant mothers has been considered a resounding success and an example
of ‘ethical migration’ by Cartaya’s mayor, Juan Millán (Gerson, 2007b).
The centrality of motherhood to notions of the ideal worker in this case is note-
worthy. Though the literature had examined how women have been constructed as
an ideal global work-force, few studies have found mothers to be a target of global
labor recruitment. Certainly, motherhood has gured prominently in narratives of
women’s international migration. But in most cases, it has been constructed as an
obstacle to women’s migration. Women are expected to take care of households and
families, remaining literally in the home to do so. Their departure to work outside
the home or, worse yet, outside the country, is taken as a transgression of traditional
gender norms and the ideal of privatized mothering. Thus, employers, the state, and
women themselves must go to great lengths to facilitate women’s labor mobility and
construct their work in gender-appropriate and respectable ways (Hondagneu-Sote-
lo, 2001; Parreñas, 2001). The discourses that endorse women’s work and outmigra-
tion – what Oishi (2005) refers to as social legitimacy – typically emerge as countries
are brought into the fold of the global economy and experience a feminization of
labor. Social legitimacy is an important determinant of large-scale female outmigra-
tion (Oishi, 2005).
It is also the case that motherhood and the cultural ideals thereof can help disci-
pline a feminized work-force. In Lee’s (1998) analysis of factory production in China,
one factory exploited women’s roles as wives and mothers to increase managerial
control. Referring to the ‘matron workers’ employed in the plant, Lee (1998, p. 158)
notes that ‘their children’s well-being and needs anchored women in a constrained
working mother’s life, and their children’s future justied the hardships it brought’.
Preibisch and Encalada (2010) nd a similar situation among the Mexican women
recruited to work as guest workers in Canada: ‘Women frequently spoke of their
migration as a sacrice that could create alternative futures for their children by
providing the education they never had’ (2010, p. 300). In the case of Moroccan mi-
grant mothers in Spain, the possibility of returning each year to earn money for their
families was enough to convince them to comply with the labor-intensive work re-
gime and the conditions of the labor contract. Thus, in this case and others, women’s
ties to families and children may help discipline them into being obedient migrant

98 Susan E. Mannon et al.
workers. And motherhood may be construed by employers and state ocials as a
basis for, rather than an obstacle to global labor recruitment.
Conclusion
In Sassen’s (1998) view, globalization makes national borders economically mean-
ingless but politically meaningful.
10
Goods, money, and people move across national
borders in greater numbers, but political life remains organized around national po-
litical bodies, borders, and identities. Labor mobility in particular inspires anxiety in
host societies about labor competition, ethnic diversity, and increased crime. Against
the real or imagined threat of immigrants, national constituencies push for a tighten-
ing of ‘porous’ borders and protection from the ‘ood’ of immigrants from the global
South (Sassen, 1998; Parreñas, 2001). This is especially true in the rural communities
that are now the destination for a new generation of migrant workers. The contradic-
tory impulses of globalization – to transcend and reinforce borders – often lead to
symbolic gestures by the state to control and/or restrict immigration. In the United
States, for example, law-makers attempt to placate nationalist sentiments by milita-
rizing borders, while turning a blind eye to the rampant use and abuse of immigrant
workers (Massey, 2003).
A more comprehensive solution to the immigration ‘problem’, according to Mas-
sey (2003) and others (Castles, 2006; Martin, 2008a), is a guest-worker approach that
would accommodate the needs of businesses searching for low-wage workers, com-
munities searching for secured borders, and migrants searching for a livelihood.
Spain’s guest-worker program oers a migration model that ts somewhere between
closed militarized borders and open labor mobility. As a migration alternative, it has
been watched closely by policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic. By restricting
immigrant entry to these guest-worker programs, Spain has attempted to control its
undocumented population and ease the social anxieties that undocumented migra-
tion begets. In some respects, this model is quite successful. Migrants have gained
access to job opportunities abroad and they have sent money back home to help
support families. Spanish growers, in turn, have enjoyed a steady supply of workers
and Spanish ocials have managed to ensure a good portion of these workers return
home. But we have argued that the Huelva experience is successful in at least one
other respect, namely in keeping migrant workers ‘in their place’. By this, we mean
that under the Huelva model, migrant workers are restricted to particular employ-
ers and to low-status jobs that resident workers reject; they are compelled to work
hard through the threat of their replacement by migrants of other nationalities; and
they are encouraged to return home with the promise that they will receive another
opportunity to earn money for their family. Thus, at the end of the employment con-
tract, migrants go back to their country of origin, workers retreat as a reserve army
of labor, and women disappear back into the home.
To the extent that the Huelva model institutionalizes a temporary, insecure form
of work and harnesses a predominantly female labor force, it represents the femini-
zation of labor in the starkest of ways. Though it is clear that most temporary migra-
tion programs draw explicitly on gender constructs (Martin, 2003), very few studies
have examined temporary labor migration management through a gender lens. For
example, in Basok’s (2000) otherwise superb comparison of the US Bracero program
and Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program, the gender of the worker is
neither a key variable, nor a key mechanism through which states manage tempo-

Keeping Them in Their Place 99
rary migration and return. Likewise, Plewa’s work on European guest-worker pro-
grams does not address the gendered nature of these programs (Plewa and Miller,
2005; Plewa, 2009). As we have shown with respect to the guest-worker agreements
coming out of southern Spain, essentialist ideas about women’s abilities and respon-
sibilities help ensure that migrants will not stay in Spain and will not challenge low
wages and bad working conditions. Gender, in this case, is crucial to how employers
harness and discipline a temporary, migrant work-force. And motherhood, in par-
ticular, has become a basis for labor recruitment and control. It would be interesting
to see if women migrants redene motherhood over time and/or use it as a basis
for protesting the decline in temporary work contracts and/or working conditions.
With the global recession, Spain’s economy has slowed. In 2010, the unemploy-
ment rate was almost 19%, the highest in the EU (Migration News, 2010). Thus, in
2011, only 5,000 Moroccan women were contracted as guest workers and many of
the migrant women interviewed complained of a lack of work. It is clear that Spain’s
current economic crisis has caused a decrease in the hiring of migrant workers. Even
so, Spanish growers insisted that resident workers – even unemployed resident
workers – would not take these jobs and that they would have to continue import-
ing guest workers to sustain the agro-export industry. The mayor of Cartaya, Juan
Millán, predicted that as soon as the economy picked back up, the numbers of guest
workers would rebound. He also pointed to the looming fertility crisis in Europe
and in Spain in particular, which will create a labor shortage regardless of the state
of the economy. At a fertility rate that is below replacement, Spain will have to ac-
cept immigrant workers in some form or fashion. All the more reason, he argued, to
promote a migration model that is not so much about keeping migrant workers out,
as it is about (to use our own words) keeping them ‘in their place’.
Notes
1. This is not to say that Canadian employers do not express preferences for women migrants in certain
instances. For tasks like packing fruit and cutting owers, women are seen by employers as having ‘a
ner, lighter touch’ and more patience (Preibisch and Encalada, 2010, p. 302).
2. According to Martin (2003), twenty-rst century guest-worker programs also have more goals and ob-
jectives. Their purpose is not simply to x temporary labor shortages, but to reduce illegal migration
in labor-importing countries and to encourage development in labor-exporting countries.
3. This policy changed in 1991, when Moroccans were required to have a visa to enter the country (Aran-
go and Martin, 2003). One year later, Spain imposed a visa requirement on individuals from Latin
America, as well.
4. More recently, Senegal has been added to this list. Note that bilateral migration agreements with Po-
land, Bulgaria, and Romania are no long necessary since these countries are now part of the EU. As EU
citizens, individuals from these countries may enter and exit Spain without restriction.
5. The majority of these immigrants were men, who tended to dominate Moroccan migration to Spain
(Haas, 2009, p. 4).
6. See Ruhs and Anderson (2010) for an in-depth discussion of how labor shortages are dened and
tackled through immigration policies.
7. This information was provided by the Mayor of Cartaya, Juan Millán, and Piotr Plewa, a Polish schol-
ar who has studied this issue extensively.
8. There was also some indication that recruiters started targeting women from rural areas who had ex-
perience with agriculture. For example, the rst wave of Polish women who arrived in Spain as guest
workers tended to be from the industrialized western part of the country. Beginning in 2002, recruiters
moved to the eastern part of the country, which is more agricultural.
9. We do not have gures for the composition of the Moroccan guest work-force before this time. As
such, we cannot say what this guest work-force looked like previously in terms of gender, marital
status, and family composition. We can only say that after this point, only women with children were
targeted.

100 Susan E. Mannon et al.
10. In using the term ‘globalization’, we recognize that this is contested concept in the social science litera-
ture. Our purpose in using the term is merely to showcase the argument made by Sassen (1998) that
global labor mobility invokes contradictory responses. Since Sassen uses the term, we do so too.
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