Paper short abstract:

As global warming intensifies, heat stress threatens EU agriculture. This dissertation of migrant work in Austrian AgTech uses Naders´ "vertical slice" —studying up, down, and through—to explore heat’s material, embodied, and institutional lives.

Paper long abstract:

As global warming intensifies, heat stress emerges as a critical yet underexplored threat in labor sectors, reaching into European industrial and agricultural landscapes (ILO 2019). Its elusive, hard-to-measure nature and contingent impacts on human bodies make it challenging to study. This paper situates these issues within ethnographic research on migrant workers in a high-tech greenhouse cluster in Eastern Austria, where extreme hot and humid microclimates expose workers to discomfort, sweat, and thermal stress. These exposures are exacerbated by regimented labor regimes and intensifying heatwaves in East Austria.

My research documents heat-related work accidents, from dizziness and fainting to severe injuries. Using Laura Nader’s “vertical slice” concept, I employ heat as a heuristic device to examine actors’ embodied positions within hierarchical power structures. This involves a trifold ethnographic approach: (1) “studying up” heat stress as an object of institutional regulation, exploring its quantification and governance by state actors; (2) “studying down” heat as embodied experiences among greenhouse workers; and (3) “studying through” heat via autoethnographic immersion in greenhouse labor. Through this approach, I am interested in, and contributing to studying the complex social lives of heat as it unfolds along material, embodied, and institutional dimensions.