Description
For decades, youth farm labour migrants from rural Ghana have wielded migration to rural Italy as a response to farming-related struggles that pose high-risk consequences for their livelihoods, families and society.
This migration phenomenon occurs within the context of an international farm labour migration governance architecture with fragmented and varied policies and programmes at the micro and meso levels and on the backdrop of macro level laws to protect the rights of migrant workers. These altogether converge to construct and control migrant labour movements across socio-spatial areas between continents.
Although micro- and meso-level policies and programmes targeting international migrant farm workers have formally precluded African migrant farm workers, they have nonetheless been unable to prevent their movements across to rural Italy.
To study this, I draw on the case of Ghanaian farm migrant mobility from rural middle-belt agricultural regions to traditional rural southern Italian farming regions, relying on primary quantitative and qualitative data collected over the course of several months in 2021-2022.
Analysis is done using the ‘agriculture-migration nexus’ framework. It explains the context in which this form of migration occurs at the intersection of production, financial and policy struggles in a globalised economy that generate high-stakes situations and corresponding creative responses among these farmers, as they fight for stable incomes, secure jobs and a future that does not leave them or their families behind. Additionally, the ‘sustainable food systems’ model is applied to unpack the consequences and implications.
Key words: •migration •agriculture •labor •governance •international system •food security/politics •sustainable development •Ghana •Italy
