Avalllone Coloniality of Labour and Agriculture in The Capitalist World-Ecology

Coloniality of Labour and Agriculture
in the Capitalist World-Ecology
Gennaro Avallone (gavallone@unisa.it)

Objectives of this communication
This communication is based on the processes of migrant’s insertion in world agriculture, with four
objectives:
1) to highlight the Internazionalization of agriculture over the last 40 years.

2) to show how migrant labour in agriculture is not naturally cheap but is produced through a set of social,
political, and economic relations influenced by the colonial heritage beyond colonialism and colonial
administrations. In this sense, we can speak about a Postcolonial migration in a postcolonial agriculture
3) to highlight that the reproduction of cheap agricultural labour is also based on the coloniality of labour,
i.e. on the construction of a hierarchy of jobs that subordinates the jobs (and workers) that are closest to the
activities of social reproduction. Coloniality of labour
4) to show how questioning the power relationships in which migrant agricultural workers are embedded
requires a process of decolonisation not only of migration but also of farm work, subordinated in a labour
hierarchy because it is very close to social reproduction activities. Questioning hierarchy of jobs
1) Internazionalization of agriculture
Agriculture has become increasingly internationalised over the last four decades, both on the side of markets
and on the side of agricultural workers.
In the first sense, we are talking about the organisation of global agricultural production and supply chains.
These are mainly articulated around the interests and influence of the multinational food companies.
In the second sense, we speak of the growing insertion of migrant labour in agricultural production at the
global level. Local agricultural enclaves inserted into global chains (Pedreño, 2014) have become increasingly
dependent on the labour of internal or international migrant women and men.
Migrants are usually inserted as a subaltern labour power not only from an economic point of view but also from a symbolic,
often legal and then political standpoint.
For example, according to the US department of agriculture, “immigrant farmworkers make up an estimated 73% of
agriculture workers in the United States today”. (USDA ERS - Farm Labor).
Accordiing to Kav LaOved, an organization that assists workers in exercising their rights, there are news about (Trafficking
of persons in the agricultural sector in Israel - Workers Hotline (kavlaoved.org.il)
In Mexico, the majority of farm workers are both internal migrants and are poor workers. CEDRSSA
USDA ERS - Farm Labor
Trafficking of persons in the

agricultural sector in Israel -
Workers Hotline (kavlaoved.org.il)
2) Postcolonial migration in a postcolonial agriculture
According to Sayad, migrant = worker, "worker for life" (Sayad, 2010: 233), according to an identification "that is imposed on
all" (Sayad, 2010: 240). This equation constitutes the experience of the world for a part of migrants, as if an equation between
the social indignity suffered by some migrants and the job that is destined for them were active.
Exploitation and migration are constitutive of global agriculture. This connection, already registered in other historical
periods, has become even stronger in recent decades, within the trend in many territorial areas towards cheaper labour, useful
for reducing prices and increasing the profits.
For example, according to USDA data, “despite some documented real increases in wages the past few years, the latest data
show the wages of farmworkers are extremely low by any measure, even when compared with similarly situated nonfarm
workers and workers with the lowest levels of education”
In many areas there is a post-colonial agriculture, based on the incorporation of manpower from former colonies or areas that
have historically been subaltern (such as those inhabited by indigenous population), or that have become subaltern through
specific policies such as structural adjustment policies in Eastern European countries, or power relations dominated by racism.
This labour power depends on political, social and symbolic processes that define it as a racialised labour power with inferior
legal and/or social status in comparison with the national population or other racial groups that do not work in agriculture.
Social reasons are mainly connected to the processes of classification and differentiation of migrants, based on national, racial,
and sexual elements.
The labour market is therefore not a flat, democratic, and apolitical space, but, on the contrary, a stratified space, defined by
power relations, based on racial, national and gender hierarchies, which tend to increase processes of marginalisation,
competition and separation among workers.
Inferiorised status help to define the bargaining power and thus the ability to defend the economic and political value of
migrant agricultural labour. The extraction of surplus value continues to be based on hierarchies that reproduce power
relations that mix different historical times.
The forms of work and production and the appropriation of surplus value do not follow a historical linearity, for example with
the progressive shift away from forms of absolute surplus value towards forms of relative surplus value.
Different forms can coexist, not only in the same historical moment, as slavery has lived and continues to live with the highest
technological levels in the world, but also in the same space, as is the case in agriculture in different enclaves, where hyper-
technology combines with, or simply lives alongside, the large presence of poor workers or long working hours.
In sum, different forms of extraction of surplus value from labour coexist or intertwine in world capitalist agriculture, as well
as in specific agricultural areas: this means that there is no definitive model, no single prevailing orientation.
3) Coloniality of labour
Global agriculture
numerically "remains the
most time-consuming sector
for people, especially
women, worldwide, but
seems to remain obscure in
analyses of the changing
forms of labour and capital
today" (Haiven, 2009: 28).
This condition of obscurity is not only that of migrants. Proverbs, symbolic references, ways of speaking tell us that in different
areas of the world agricultural work is recognised as undignified work, although this work remains fundamental to human life
in general terms and provides fundamental resources for social reproduction.
On a global scale, agricultural work allows "millions of people to live who otherwise would not have the means to buy food on
the market" (Federici, 2009: 28) and although it is a commodity producer, it contributes to commodities fundamental to social
reproduction, i.e. to the production of workers (Bhattacharya, 2017).
To understand migrant labour in agriculture, then, one must understand the value of agricultural labour itself.
Agricultural labour value is subordinated to the coloniality of
labour: the closer labour is to social reproduction, the less
socially recognised it will be. The closer labour is to the everyday
needs of reproduction, the less it will be valued from an economic
point of view. In other words, the more labour performs tasks of
social reproduction, or tasks similar to it, the more its economic
and symbolic value is reduced: it is without value, cheap.
Agricultural labour is placed in this hierarchy: labour that

produces exchange value but of goods that are very close to the
moment of social reproduction and life. This type of work has
increasingly become the activity of migrants because it is poor
work. The coloniality of labour constructs work in a hierarchical
way and in the case of agricultural work affects all workers,
combining in the case of migrants with other hierarchies, also
inherited from colonial relations. Agricultural work is placed at
the point of confluence of the coloniality of power and the
coloniality of labour, making it work with little value done by
people with little value.
4) Questioning hierarchy of jobs
This communication has highlighted a specific factor affecting

migrant labour in agriculture, which is what has been called
the coloniality of labour, i.e. a hierarchy of jobs that puts down
the jobs of social reproduction and those closest to this
function.
In conclusion, it is understood that questioning the current

power relations in global agriculture means not only
questioning the coloniality of power in the current world-
system pattern, but also questioning the coloniality of labour
and, consequently, the subordination of social reproduction to
production, i.e. the subordination of human and non-human
life to the logic of separation, that prioritizes the exchange
value against the social reproduction.

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Coloniality of Labour and Agriculture

in the Capitalist World-Ecology

Gennaro Avallone (gavallone@unisa.it)

1) to highlight the Internazionalization of agriculture over the last 40 years.

Trafficking of persons in the

Agricultural labour is placed in this hierarchy: labour that

This communication has highlighted a specific factor affecting

In conclusion, it is understood that questioning the current

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