Paper short abstract:

Ideas and practices of horticultural labour inform the experiences of different, often racially-marked, groups. Shifting complexes of belonging resist simple delineations of indigenous-non indigenous or migrant-non migrant, and include fragile forms of attachment that emerge in spite of precarity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the shifting ways in which belonging is sought, experienced, denied, and contested within the context of the horticultural industry in the Greater Shepparton Region in north-central Victoria. Specifically, it considers the ways in which ideas and practices of labour function to produce both belonging and not-belonging for different, often racially-marked, groups. Labour has long been a key motif in narratives of settler belonging, and takes on new purchase in the context of contemporary debates around seasonal labour, particularly fruit-picking. Temporary labour migrants increasingly form the bulk of seasonal labour workforces, in Shepparton as elsewhere across the country. Dedicated migration and labour schemes—including the Working Holiday Maker (backpacker) visa, and the Seasonal Worker Program targeted at Pacific Islanders—are designed to limit the belonging and rights claims of temporary migrants conducting seasonal labour, producing precarious workforces that are 'available when required, undemanding when not' (Anderson 2010). At the same time, the kinds of economic and social transformations associated with the rise of precarity also weigh upon the kinds of belonging and identity experienced by settler-descendants and more-settled migrants. Ethnographic research with farmers, and both migrant and 'local' seasonal workers, points to shifting complexes of belonging that resist simple delineations of indigenous-non indigenous or migrant-non migrant, and that include fragile forms of attachment to people and place that emerge even in spite of precarity.