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Accepted Paper:
Paper Short Abstract:
As heatwaves drastically rise, migrant foodworkers are at the forefront of climate vulnerabilities. Drawing on ethnographic research with Roma-/Romanian greenhouse workers in Austrian greenhouses, I ask: How do such biophysical transformations interact with existing forms and systems of oppression?
Paper Abstract:
Heatwaves are fundamentally unsettling food production. Inasmuch as workers have been historically positioned in marginalized and racialized conditions, they are at the forefront of new, climate-induced vulnerabilities.
The following contribution examines these issues in the Austrian context. Therein, 40% of Austria's vegetables are produced in a greenhouse cluster on the eastern outskirts of Vienna. This horticultural powerhouse is sustained by the daily labor of approximately 2000 Roma/Romanian workers who face blatant underpayment, overwork, and institutional neglect. In recent years, heatwaves have doubled, rendering the greenhouse an "extreme environment" (Saxton 2015). In addition to frequent qualms during work, my research indicates that two fatal accidents in the 2010s went unnoticed by labor authorities.
Drawing on 20-month long ethnographic-/activist engagement with Roma-/Romanian workers, I ask: How do biophysical transformations interact with existing forms and systems of oppression? And in what ways are labor, race and ecology implicated in the uneven distribution of heat-related health hazards on farmworker bodies?
I analyze these questions through the lens of “cheapening” (Moore 2015), here understood as a strategy of control that puts humans and the rest of nature to work in the least expensive way possible. Rooted in this lens, I examine a) the greenhouse labor process as an intentional structure (Benson 1989) that assembles and disciplines plants and
labor-power in specific ways; to b) understand the adverse impacts of heatwaves as co-constituted by racialized workplace hierarchies and symbolic work ethics. Together, this foregrounds the interlocking of both economic and ecological moments within accumulation-driven food production.
The nature of labour: understanding socio-environmental crises through agri-food systems
Session 1 Thursday 25 July, 2024, -