Komposch, Nora Helen (2024). Bodies, Borders, Berry Fields: The Planetary-Intimate in Agricultural Labor Migration. (Thesis). Universität Bern, Bern
|
Text
24komposch_nh.pdf - Thesis Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0). Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Europe's largest berry-production sector, located in Huelva, Spain, relies on thousands of seasonal agricultural workers each year. A notable proportion of these come from Morocco via a bilateral labor migration agreement. The peculiarity of this program is that only women with children are recruited. While the mothers work in Spain, their families must remain in Morocco-a geopolitical strategy aimed at preventing workers from migrating permanently. This dissertation examines the links between this export-oriented berry production and the reproductive lives of female workers in agricultural labor migration between Morocco and Huelva-two areas increasingly affected by the climate crisis. It analyses how workers experience their reproductive lives within this labor migration, how they deal with challenges related to their reproductive health, transnational family life and environmental degradation, and how these experiences and strategies are entangled with transnational state policies. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Spain and Morocco between 2021 and 2023, this dissertation reveals how the separation of agricultural wage labor from reproductive lives in areas increasingly affected by the climate crisis leads to workers experiencing numerous everyday challenges, such as limited access to reproductive healthcare and the emotional strain of family separation. Furthermore, the research also highlights how workers navigate these difficulties through various forms of mutual support, solidarity, and political action. Conceptually, this thesis offers three main contributions to the literature on feminist geopolitics, agricultural labor, and migration. By highlighting the importance of an embodied, intersectional, and multi-scalar approach to liminality, it shows how the geopolitical prescriptions of the Spanish-Moroccan labor migration regime, combined with harsh working conditions in Huelva's berry industry, lead to experiences of "intimate liminality." Additionally, the dissertation develops the notion of "geoviolence" to understand the harm caused by anthropogenic adverse geophysical conditions at the nexus of reproductive and climate injustice. Finally, by stressing the entanglements between intimate experiences and environmental processes, it extends a multi-scalar analysis with a planetary perspective, and conceptualizes the notion of the "planetary-intimate." In order to make these findings accessible to a wider audience, this dissertation also presents creative methods of knowledge dissemination, including a research-art-exhibition and a documentary film. Through highlighting the potential of such transdisciplinary and multi-sensory approaches, these methodological contributions aim to facilitate access to knowledge and encourage its practical application.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Dissertation Type: | Cumulative |
| Date of Defense: | 10 December 2024 |
| Subjects: | 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology 900 History > 910 Geography & travel |
| Institute / Center: | 08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Geography |
| Depositing User: | Sarah Stalder |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2025 13:54 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2025 13:54 |
| URI: | https://boristheses.unibe.ch/id/eprint/6341 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |