Exceptional policies for exceptional situations? How COVID-19 revealed persisting precarity for seasonal migrant workers

Abstract

When COVID-19 hit Norway and national borders were closed on 12 March 2020, farmers were ready to start preparations for a new growing season. Within a few weeks of the lockdown, the government implemented innovative economic measures to persuade unemployed Norwegians to work in agriculture, but this failed to produce the expected results. At the same time, it also created a narrative in which labour shortages were understood as a question of Norwegian food security and self-sufficiency. Migrant labour in agriculture was defined as ‘crucial’, and borders closed because of COVID-19 were opened for seasonal workers. In this article, we use the COVID-19 pandemic as a case for a critical discussion of the social position of migrant labour in agriculture and the use of exceptional measures in the agrifood sector. We consider how migrant workers came to be depicted by the government as necessary to Norwegian food security, to justify their exclusion from basic protection during the pandemic, thus contributing to their precarity as workers. Based on an analysis of media outputs, political decisions, and policies, as well as statements and publications from stakeholder groups, we show how the Norwegian government mirrored the sector’s economic and production interests and used the prospect of food insecurity as an argument for allowing exemptions from the seasonal immigration ban for workers in the 2020-2022 period. The discussion is based on conceptualisations from the literature on agricultural exceptionalism, food security, and self-sufficiency, as well as precarity among migrant labourers.