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As the global demand for milk products continues to increase and dairy sectors become more concentrated, a pressing question arises: who will milk the cows and where will they come from? Mirroring global trends, the New Zealand dairy industry has experienced significant structural changes, with a shift from family-run dairy farms to larger commercially orientated operations. At the same time, domestic socio-economic and demographic changes have resulted in rural to urban migration. These factors have contributed to a shortage of skilled labour in some regions. To meet its labour demands, the New Zealand dairy sector has relied increasingly heavily on temporary migrant workers, who face significant challenges integrating into their new communities. This study uses data from in-depth interviews with 25 migrant dairy farm workers in Canterbury, New Zealand, and a modified conceptual framework for integration developed by Ager and Strang to enhance our understanding of how skilled migrants in the dairy sector adapt to unfamiliar host communities. Through thematic analysis we identify the factors that either facilitate or hinder the successful integration of this important but vulnerable group. Key themes include motivations for moving to New Zealand, pathways to obtaining their positions, and the primary challenges that they experience in attempting to integrate. Challenges include physical and social isolation, discrimination, and a lack of access to key services. As the agricultural sector continues to grow, it is essential to provide migrant farm workers with adequate support to ensure their successful social, cultural, and economic integration. • Firsthand account of migrants living, working & intagration in NZs dairy sector. • Themes: reasons, cost, employment, qualifications, language, social life & status. • Workers and employers play a significant role in integrating migrants. • Frameworks for other types of migrants don't fit temporary workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

California agricultural workers are predominately Latino/a, are medically underserved, and reside in larger households, placing them at elevated COVID-19 risk at work and at home. While some research has examined COVID-19 among agricultural workers in the interior of the United States, little research exists on experiences of COVID-19 along the US-Mexico border. Grounded in resilience thinking, this study aims to understand how agricultural workers navigated their heightened risk to COVID-19 at work and at home, and made use of available resources in the context of a bi-national community. Our study utilized qualitative interviews with 12 agricultural workers to understanding the COVID-19 experiences of resident and daily migrant agricultural workers in Imperial County, California, located along the US-Mexico border. Findings suggest that agricultural workers faced significant impacts and risks at work (work stoppages, stress about bringing COVID-19 home to family) and at home (contracting COVID-19, loss of friends and family, and mental health challenges). Agricultural workers and their employers often implemented COVID-19 precautions such as social distancing measures, personal protective equipment, hand washing and hand sanitizers, and isolation. Many agricultural workers did access testing resources on either side of the US-Mexico border and worked with US-based Spanish-speaking community-based organizations to register for vaccine appointments. To better support agricultural workers and their employers in the future, we recommend the following: 1. Prioritize agricultural workplace conditions to increase agricultural worker physical and mental health, 2. Extend public health services into agricultural work sites of transit and the workplace, and 3. Lastly, trusted Spanish-speaking community-based organizations can play a critical role in public health outreach. • COVID-19 has exacerbated stressors and burdens of agricultural workers. • Social distancing, PPE, and hand sanitizer were preventative measures used. • Agricultural workers accessed resources on both sides of US-Mexico border. • Community-based outreach efforts from CBOs were critical for vaccine access. • Policies need to improve agricultural work site conditions and health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic led to a global food crisis. Like previous food crises how the debate is framed by food policy actors can have a bearing on policy outcomes. This study researches how the policy responses to migrant horticultural labour shortages, due to the pandemic, were framed in the Italian print media and how this relates to longer-term food policy making. Data were gathered from the six highest-circulation Italian daily newspapers. The coverage was dominated by left-leaning outlets and peaked in relation to Covid-19 recovery policies and political processes. Farmer industry bodies were the most quoted group, and the legalisation of undocumented migrant workers was the most frequently discussed policy response. A frames analysis was conducted and identified three principal frames: food security, worker exploitation and immigration. The worker exploitation and immigration frames were most frequently used by left-leaning newspapers, while centre-right papers used the food security frame the most often. The results suggest that media framing could contribute to both policy change, helping to open policy windows, as well as policy lock-ins, side-lining certain debates, actors and policy solutions. The research aims to contribute to growing empirical work which seeks to understand the impact of Covid-19 on migrant agricultural workers and food policy. • First frames analysis of migrant agriculture labour policy debate in Italian print media during Covid-19. • Three frames were used in the media debate – food security, worker exploitation, immigration. • Explores media influence on food policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As urbanization and industrialization surge in China, the problem of land abandonment intensifies. However, the situation of terrace abandonment in China remains unclear. We conducted the first-ever remote sensing monitoring of terrace abandonment in China with full space coverage by combining high-precision terrace data with land use datasets to reveal the abandonment pattern. By fully considering natural and socio-economic factors, the XGBoost-SHAP framework was used to investigate the driving factors of terrace abandonment. The results show that approximately 2.42 % of terraces were abandoned from 2019 to 2021, mainly distributed in the Southwest and Loess Plateau regions. Agricultural regions with more terraces exhibited higher abandonment rates. The ratio of the population with pension insurance, cropland quality, slope, and land parcel size were prime drivers of terrace abandonment. There were significant spatial differences in the contribution of each factor. It is noteworthy that there was a significant deceleration in terrace abandonment trends in 2021, potentially ascribed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic leading to a substantial decrease in non-agricultural employment opportunities, thereby slowing down rural-to-urban emigration and even prompting a return migration of migrant workers. Grasping this critical post-pandemic period is crucial and should support returning migrant workers in engaging in agricultural activities by establishing diverse new agricultural entities and providing agricultural technical guidance. • China's terrace abandonment pattern was monitored with full space coverage. • About 2.42 % of terraces were abandoned from 2019 to 2021. • Driving forces vary significantly across various regions and types of cropland. • The post-pandemic is a critical period for promoting cropland reclamation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pressure from global retailers to reduce food costs has altered downstream agri-food work regimes, with many food producers having adopted more flexible modes of working and employed migrant labour from lower income countries. Since the expansion of the European Union (EU) in 2004, the farming and food sector in the UK has recruited large numbers of migrant workers from central and eastern EU countries. The decision by the UK electorate in 2016 to leave the EU - what has been termed Brexit - has created a 'crisis' in relation to the continued supply of migrant labour. In this paper we explore the role of migrant labour within the UK's agri-food system and the ways that migrant workers have been positioned by different actors within recent discussions of farming, food and Brexit. We do this through an analysis of national survey data on migrant agricultural workers and materials from interviews with more than 70 agri-food organisations in the UK. What emerges from this research is that rather than viewing Brexit as a key moment to critique the state of the UK's agri-food system, including the structural conditions of work, dominant actors have used it more narrowly to construct a 'crisis' of migrant labour supply, arguing for new policy mechanisms to guarantee the future provision of low-cost imported labour. Within these narratives of post-Brexit agri-food futures, the presence of migrant labour has been both normalised and institutionalised by conventional food organisations but the realities of migrant work and the voices of migrants themselves have been conspicuous largely by their absence. • The UK agri-food sector's dependency on migrant workers from central and eastern EU countries has been threatened by Brexit. • Brexit has been used by dominant agri-food actors to construct a 'crisis' of migrant labour supply. • The centrality of migrant labour to food production in the UK has been both normalised and institutionalised by dominant agri-food actors. • The realities of migrant work and migrants' voices have largely been ignored within post-Brexit agri-food discussions. • There is a need to revalue the role of labour (ers) within the UK's agri-food system as well as in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory article to the special issue on 'Agricultural Regimes and Migrant Labour', we first propose the analytical concept of the 'agriculture–migration nexus'. This is made up of a series of causal and co-constructive links between specialised agriculture, on the one hand, and seasonal and temporary regimes of migrant labour on the other. In the second part of the paper we identify a number of cross-cutting themes which resonate across the papers that make up the special issue. These include new geographical patterns of agricultural labour migration, especially in Europe; a focus on specialised agricultural districts involving the intensive production of crops such as tomatoes and strawberries; the disciplining function of time, inscribed into regimes of seasonal migrant labour and daily work rhythms; and moral questions surrounding the justification for agricultural labour exploitation and how it can be challenged. The final section of the article presents highlights from the eight substantive papers that follow, demonstrating how they are logically sequenced and integrated as a whole. • The agriculture–migration nexus is an effective analytical device for studying the links between farming and migrant labour. • The increased capitalisation and intensification of agriculture produces new geographies of labour migration. • Migrant agricultural workers' vulnerability is exacerbated by their invisibility, temporariness and often undocumented status. • Agriculture migrants enact agency; to understand their lives, we need to listen attentively to their own voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article situates, centre stage, the process by which temporary labour regimes utilize culturally specific masculine norms of undocumented migrant men to enforce labour docility and accumulate greater capital. It draws upon the example of undocumented Pakistani and Bangladeshi men working in orange orchards and strawberry fields in Greece, who pit their masculinity against one another through fruit-picking contests. South Asian male migrants, emasculated and marginalised by their illegality and precarity of work, attempt to rework their masculine status through such self-exploitative contests. These competitions, predicated on the neoliberal individualizing of workers and their success, displace exploitation by linking piece-rate earnings to muscular masculinity and individual capacity. Fruit-picking contests are an efficient and creative labour management practice wherein fluid masculine subjectivities are harnessed to weed out "inefficient" workers, subdue labour unrest, erode worker solidarity, and maximise labour extraction without adopting overt labour disciplinary mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour migrants seeking work and employment increasingly find themselves having to negotiate an ambiguous migrant status that leaves them neither fully included, nor fully excluded, from a political community. Of late, there has been a recognition that such ambiguity arises as much from temporal as spatial border management practices. Rather than consider time and temporality as integral to the distorted spatiality of contemporary political borders, however, the tendency has been to treat the former as a supplement to the latter. In this paper, we set out to show how time and space work through one another to place migrant workers partly on the 'inside', partly on the 'outside', by selectively combining their pre-and post-entry experiences. In order to make sense of this series of temporal and spatial entanglements, we advance a particular topological reading that aims to show how complex migrant positions are produced and maintained by bringing the times before and after the border into play as part of what enables governments to include and exclude labour migrants in a more differentiated manner. Such regulated time-spaces, of which we outline two, indefinite exclusion and suspended inclusion, in our view, offer a more accurate account of the ways in which migrant workers are simultaneously included and excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African populations have a favourable lipid profile compared to European populations. However, the extent to which they differ between rural and urban settings in Africa and upon migration to Europe is unknown. We assessed the lipid profiles of Ghanaians living in rural- and urban-Ghana and Ghanaian migrants living in three European countries. We used data from a multi-centre, cross-sectional study among Ghanaian adults residing in rural- and urban-Ghana and London, Amsterdam and Berlin (n = 5482). Dyslipidaemias were defined using the 2012 European Guidelines on Cardiovascular Prevention. Comparisons between groups were made using age-standardised prevalence and prevalence ratios (PRs) with adjustments for important covariates. In both sexes, the age-standardised prevalence of high total cholesterol (TC) and LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) was lower in rural- than in urban-Ghana and Ghanaian migrants in Europe. Adjusted PRs of high TC and LDL-C were higher in urban-Ghana (TC PR = 2.15, 95%confidence interval 1.69–2.73) and Ghanaian migrant men (TC PR = 2.03 (1.56–2.63)) compared to rural-Ghana, but there was no difference between rural- and Ghanaian migrant women (TC PR = 1.01 (0.84–1.22)). High triglycerides levels were as prevalent in rural-Ghana (11.6%) as in urban-Ghana (12.8%), but were less prevalent in Ghanaian migrant women (2.0%). In both sexes, low HDL-cholesterol was most prevalent in rural-Ghana (50.1%) and least prevalent in Europe (12.9%). The lipid profile varied among ethnically homogeneous African populations living in different geographical locations in Africa and Europe. Additional research is needed to identify factors driving these differential risks to assist prevention efforts. Image 1 • Total cholesterol and LDL-C rates were similar for men in urban Ghana and Europe. • High total cholesterol and LDL-C were most prevalent in urban Ghanaian women. • High triglycerides were more prevalent in Ghanaian women in Ghana than in Europe. • Low HDL-C was most prevalent in rural Ghana, followed by urban Ghana and Europe. • TC/HDL-C-ratio was the highest in urban Ghanaian men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • E-DETECT TB, a European collaboration, collects screening data on active and latent TB for better evidence in future screening guidelines. • E-DETECT TB aims to address the present lack of evidence concerning coverage, impact and cost-effectiveness in migrant TB screening. • Through collaborative efforts, country-level screening is collated by using agreed key variables in a joint database. • The project has successfully overcome considerable administrative, practical and legal challenges. Abstract Background and aim Screening for active and latent TB among migrants in low TB incidence countries may constitute an important contribution to TB elimination. E-DETECT TB, a European multi-county collaboration, aims to address the present lack of evidence on effectiveness of migrant TB screening by collating data in an international database and perform cross-country pooled and comparative analyses of screening coverage, results and linkage to care. Method A database was established using migrant TB screening data from participating countries' national screening programs, national screening pilots and local research projects. All partner countries contributed to a common agreed protocol with standardized variables, pooling available numerator and denominator screening data from participating countries and sites. Results All collaborating members drafted and agreed upon a data sharing accord as well as a protocol that clearly defined responsibilities and data governance principles. The database has been created and data transfer is ongoing. Conclusion By persistence and focus the project has overcome considerable administrative, practical and legal challenges. This international collaboration provides greater power of analysis of harmonized data and thereby a unique opportunity to contribute migrant TB screening evidence. E-DETECT TB has started to invite other countries to contribute data to the database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Contrary to the requirement to integrate local people in REDD+, private forest developers have displaced many farmers. • Plantation-style carbon forestry is increasingly prioritized at the expense of smallholder agriculture. • Integration of local livelihoods under the 'admitted farms' provision, favours native farmers to the neglect of migrants. • The resources of displaced farmers are further appropriated through back-door land deals and unfair labour relations. • Migrant farmers who seek refuge in the relatively fertile forest belt end up in new webs of poverty and food insecurity. Abstract Drawing on theoretical insights from agrarian political economy, and based on empirical research in the High Forest Zone of Ghana using in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper examined the context-specific but often less highlighted impacts of REDD+-based carbon forest development activities on local agrarian livelihoods. We find that although REDD+ intends to align local communities to benefit financially for contributions to carbon forestry, its uptake in the Ghanaian context has created entry points for the displacement of smallholder farmers through unregulated profit-driven and restrictive plantation-style carbon forest activities. This yields landless smallholder farmers whose labour is craftily integrated into a capitalist carbon forestry regime as tree planters, with many others striving to reproduce themselves through exploitative sharecropping arrangements and corrupt 'backdoor' land deals. We emphasize that, 'more than carbon' accumulation engendered by REDD+ is fast moving beyond land grabs to a more complex dimension in which the labour and financial resources of marginalized groups are further appropriated by forest investors, and their relatively powerful counterparts in what we term intimate exploitation. Given the ongoing plight of smallholder farmers, particularly the multitude of 'hungry' migrant farmers who seek 'salvation' in the High Forest Zone, it is obvious that REDD+ is pushed at the expense of ensuring food security. To sustainably address current land-related agricultural production bottlenecks and empower local communities to directly benefit from REDD+, we recommend that rather than centralizing both carbon rights and land rights in the hands of the state and a few private investors, community forestlands should be returned to local people under community-led forest management approaches. Local control of both land and carbon stocks will promote sustainable coexistence of smallholder agriculture and carbon forestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I review the evolutionary history of human populations in Europe with an emphasis on what has been learned in recent years through the study of ancient DNA. Human populations in Europe ∼430–39 kya (archaic Europeans) included Neandertals and their ancestors, who were genetically differentiated from other archaic Eurasians (such as the Denisovans of Siberia), as well as modern humans. Modern humans arrived to Europe by ∼45 kya, and are first genetically attested by ∼39 kya when they were still mixing with Neandertals. The first Europeans who were recognizably genetically related to modern ones appeared in the genetic record shortly thereafter at ∼37 kya. At ∼15 kya a largely homogeneous set of hunter-gatherers became dominant in most of Europe, but with some admixture from Siberian hunter-gatherers in the eastern part of the continent. These hunter-gatherers were joined by migrants from the Near East beginning at ∼8–9 kya: Anatolian farmers settled most of mainland Europe, and migrants from the Caucasus reached eastern Europe, forming steppe populations. After ∼5 kya there was migration from the steppe into mainland Europe and vice versa. Present-day Europeans (ignoring the long-distance migrations of the modern era) are largely the product of this Bronze Age collision of steppe pastoralists with Neolithic farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We probe how receiving societies are coping with new patterns of migration. • Strategies used by civil society organisations are often unable to identify structural remedies. • The role of kin-based or instrumental networks is crucial for work opportunities. • Defining characteristics of NIDs are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Migrant labour precarity is connected to migrant agency through their everyday acts. • Public discussion on migrant labour stresses their exploitation and precarity. • The case study reveals a rural-based migrant social movement 'in the making'. • Place-based mobilizations need better contextualisation and theorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract After the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements, large numbers of Eastern European labour migrants settled in rural destinations in Western Europe where they predominantly found low-skilled manual labour jobs in rural industries. These labour migrants differ from other types of rural migrants (e.g., domestic in- and out-migrants, lifestyle and amenity migrants, international refugees and asylum seekers) and represent distinct challenges and opportunities for the host rural communities—for example in terms of novel forms of social inequalities and cultural diversities. This paper discusses the dynamics of transnational labour mobilities and their consequences for rural Europe by investigating the case of the Hitra/Frøya community, until recently a traditionalist rural community in Mid-Norway. As a result of large-scale labour migration, over the last decade the region has developed into a genuine high-mobility, transnational rural community and is now characterised by its heterogeneous social fabric. From the local elites' perspective, which seems to have hegemonic status in the region, the transformation is a successful, triple-win situation: The community at large develops a more sustainable economy and sees population growth and reduced social problems, the locals enjoy the boosted economy and its many benefits, and the in-migrants escape economic austerity in their homelands and are successfully integrated into their host communities. However, stories told by labour migrants provide important nuances to the narrative of success and suggest processes of social fragmentation, polarisation, and contestation. The paper demonstrates how contemporary forms of rural mobilities may confront the traditional structures of rural societies, generate novel social divides and multi-local identities and everyday practices. Methodologically, the paper employs a mixed-methods approach and analyses a variety of materials: statistical materials, public documents, interviews with key informants in the local rural community, and in-depth individual interviews and focus group sessions with migrants. Highlights • Many Eastern European labour migrants have settled in rural Western Europe since 2004. • Labour migrants develop multilocal identities and practices. • Novel rural social divides emerge as a result of rural labour migration. • Local dominant discourses emphasise success stories, ignore problems. • Social fragmentation may follow from large-scale East-to-West European labour migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many rural communities experience new growth through in-migration. In Herøy, Northern Norway, this is a result of increased labour migration in the fishing industry and a comprehensive effort by the municipality to encourage migrant workers to settle there. This paper addresses the ambiguities of creating stability through mobility. Through a case study from Herøy, we explore the complex relations between migrants' mobile economic practices and social integration processes by analysing how migrants engage with Herøy's landscape in multiple manners. This landscape entails networks of people and relations, materialities, dreams and hopes. Studying engagement, in addition to contestations and intersecting trajectories, we analyse how the landscape of those on the move is interrelated with that of those “being moved through”. We argue that creating stability in rural communities by encouraging migrant settlement requires going beyond economic integration – emphasising the more versatile and vulnerable processes of relating to unfamiliar places and worlds. It also requires an understanding of stability that embraces uncertainty and opens up towards various forms of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the social construction of migrants’ personal problems of social inclusion in an Italian Migrant Support Centre. This Centre has the function of delivering information and assistance to migrants who need to confirm residence permits, to apply for family reunion permits, to find a job or to gather information about laws and procedures. In this Centre, social workers provide information/assistance to migrants, and intercultural mediators provide language and cultural support during interactions between social workers and migrants. The paper is based on the analysis of 18 interpreter-mediated interactions involving two social workers, a Nigerian mediator, and 18 English-speaking migrants from West Africa. The analysis of interpreter-mediated interactions shows the production and negotiation of migrant’s problems, the participants’ positioning, and the meaning of language mediation as intercultural mediation. In particular, the analysis shows the importance of the mediator’s positioning as active agent in coordinating interpreter-mediated interactions. The mediator provides expansions of social workers’ explanations, checks migrants’ understanding, supports migrants’ construction of problems, and challenges migrants’ conflictive utterances to avoid conflict escalation. Mediation can be considered intercultural in that it can define cultural conditions and produce support of migrants’ actions, narrowing the gap between migrants’ social problems and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how institutional dynamics among regulatory institutions affect the governance of the recruitment of Indonesian low-skilled migrant workers. Two institutional reforms have been made to create better governance for Indonesian migrant workers in the post-authoritarian era. One was the establishment of the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI) while the other was the granting of greater responsibility to sub-national governments to supervise migrant worker recruitment. In spite of these institutional reforms, little progress has been made in the protection of Indonesian migrant workers. The paper reveals that the restrictive regulatory framework for the recruitment of migrant workers, which curbs private recruitment agencies, does not create better migrant worker governance. This regulatory framework does not take into consideration the horizontal relationship between the old and new institutions, and the vertical relationship between the central and sub-national governments. Horizontally, the institutional design of the proposed new regulatory framework has created institutional rivalry between the newly established regulatory actor and the old one. Vertically, the reluctance of central government to decentralise authority to sub-national governments has curtailed the ability of sub-national governments to perform a supervisory role in the recruitment process. These two inter-related factors have hindered the efforts to create a better recruitment process for Indonesian migrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small-scale gold mining is Suriname’s main economic sector, producing about two thirds of the nation’s gold. Despite this, the sector is only very loosely regulated and most small-scale mining activities are informal. Surinamese miners are only a minority: the majority are Brazilian migrants, who have no right to the land and therefore have to pay a percentage of their production for land use. This study reports the findings of a field mission to small-scale mines in the region of Brokopondo reservoir. We document the technical aspects of small-scale gold mining in Suriname and contextualize this technology to social issues to identify links with cultural, political and sociological factors. Our findings show that informality and insecurity lead to a mine management culture that applies short-term solutions, such as cheap but polluting and inefficient technologies, and fails to produce stable, long-term mining conditions for clean, efficient technology and secure business planning. We conclude that the social context of the mining economy in Suriname strongly interacts with the technologies employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was aimed to measure the basic knowledge on food safety and food handling practices among migrant food handlers as these information is scarce in Malaysia. A cross-sectional study was conducted face-to-face amongst 383 migrant food handlers from three major cities in Peninsular Malaysia through questionnaire. Socio-demographic information of all respondents was collected. Questions on food safety knowledge (i.e. food cleanliness and hygiene, symptom of foodborne illnesses and foodborne pathogens) and food handling practices were assessed. The compiled data were analyzed by using the Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS) 16.0. Overall, migrant food handlers had poor level of knowledge on food safety with an average food handling practice. Significant effects were observed between respondents’ food safety knowledge and socio-demography (country of origin and educational level) and two factors namely; respondents’ nationality and attendance at food training programs showed significant associations with their food handling practices. Multiple logistic regression analyses revealed that attendance at food training programs was a significant and independent predictor of the respondent’s food handling practice. The study’s findings highlighted issues with regards to the extent of knowledge acquisition on food safety and hygiene by migrant food handlers. Therefore, this warrants improvements not only in the better delivery methods of training modules but also tight enforcement of attendance at the programs by the respective authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how the management of migrant bodies by national and EU authorities reflects particular understandings of contemporary borders and how the failure to address such bodies has implications far from the frontier. The study of the management both of the dead and of the data that can serve to identify missing migrants, can benefit our understanding of the contemporary border, and has to date received only limited scholarly attention. To address this gap we draw on field research carried out on the Greek island of Lesbos, one of the key migrant entry points to the EU, that has seen repeated incidents of deadly shipwrecks. Based on interviews with families of migrants and local stakeholders the paper explores how death at the border introduces novel – and often invisible – borders and categories of inclusion and exclusion. By shedding light on the experiences of the families of the dead we aspire to introduce a critical set of actors who have been marginalized from the study of the border. In exploring the remote effects of deaths on such families in migrant countries of origin, the paper shows that bordering practices have transnational impacts at the human level, thereby broadening our conceptualization of the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and variability continue to adversely impact the livelihoods of many agriculture-dependent households in dryland sub-Saharan Africa. Climate vulnerability is shaped by institutions and socioeconomic processes including land tenure arrangements and infrastructural development. This paper employs a participatory mixed-method approach including household questionnaire surveys, key informant interviews, oral narratives and focus group discussions to understand the dynamics of livelihood challenges in 6 dryland farming communities of different vulnerability status in Ghana. Acknowledging the importance of agronomic practices as well as economic and environmental processes in influencing climate vulnerability in dryland farming systems, this paper demonstrates how the complex land tenure system is implicitly involved in shaping the vulnerability of two groups of farmers (migrant farmers in the Ejura Sekyedumase district and female farmers in the Bongo district) by limiting the adaptation options available to these groups. Our results suggest that women's rights regarding land ownership should be formalized in land policy in order to reduce cultural discriminations against them. Opportunities for women to own and formalize land registration titles should be pursued by the Government of Ghana. This will help women to secure property rights over land and land use via mechanisms such as collateral to access credit, which could be used to implement climate adaptation practices. The rights of migrant workers should also be recognized in Ghana’s land policy to provide them with opportunities for adaptation in a similar manner to non-migrants. Climate change adaptation policies should also consider the broader socioeconomic and environmental factors that hinder smallholder farmers' ability to implement adaptation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heritagisation of food reveals the underlying processes by which various actors articulate a particular foodstuff as a heritage in an attempt at pursuing differing aims. Pinole, a Mexican traditional sweet, has recently been reconceptualised as ‘heritage’ by various actors across geographical levels: local Mexican farmers, transmigrant workers in Philadelphia, and the international food movement Slow Food. A multi-level analysis of the material fluxes and semiotic narratives emerging around the international diffusion of pinole reveal how these actors' interests can overlap as well as conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper draws a distinction between local return migrants, who move back to their home village, and regional return migrants, who return to other places within their home provinces in Thailand and Vietnam. Using multinomial regressions we firstly analyze determinants of internal return migration and find that while local return migrants are lower educated than continuing migrants, this negative human capital selection cannot be found for regional return migrants. Secondly, after returning local return migrants often engage in agriculture, while regional return migrants continue in nonfarm employment, thereby diversifying the household income and consequently bringing potential for future economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Guatemalan smallholder farmers lost an average of 71% of their crop to coffee leaf rust (CLR) during their self-defined worst year of crop loss. • Farmer migration rates more than doubled due to the CLR outbreak. • Households that suffered high crop losses due to CLR were more likely to migrate. • Households with more access to information and communication technology were less likely to migrate. • CLR created new migration patterns in previously non-migrant communities. Climate change is driving severe outbreaks of crop diseases, decimating agricultural production, and disrupting rural livelihoods globally. While the patterns of agricultural disease outbreaks are well documented, less is known about the extent to which climate change-driven diseases are affecting crop production, disrupting farmer livelihoods, and potentially altering farmer migration patterns. In this study, we investigated the impacts of an extended outbreak (2007–2016) of coffee leaf rust (CLR, Hemileia vastatrix) on the livelihoods and migration decisions of smallholder coffee farmers in ten communities in eastern Guatemala, comparing coffee farming households from communities that had a history of migration with those that did not. We used a mixed-methods approach to assess the impacts of CLR on coffee production and farmer livelihoods, documented the migration decisions of household members, and compared migration rates and destinations between migrant communities and previously non-migrant communities. We also assessed the effects of crop loss, household wealth, and information access on the use of migration as a coping strategy among affected households. We found that smallholder farmer households lost an average of 71% (SE = 2%) of their coffee production during their self-defined worst year of CLR impact. Household migration almost doubled in response to CLR, both in communities that had a history of migration and in historically non-migrant communities. Migration was more likely among households that experienced greater crop losses of due to CLR. In contrast, migration was lower among households that had greater access to information. Our study demonstrates the potential for climate-driven disease outbreaks to significantly impact farmers' livelihoods and increase farmer migration from rural regions, and highlights the need for urgent action to support farmers to adapt to these changing conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Migrant farmworkers are at risk for heat-related illness (HRI) at work. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine which risk factors could potentially reduce the prevalence of HRI symptoms among migrant farmworkers in Georgia. Methods: Trained interviewers conducted in-person interviews of adults who attended the South Georgia Farmworker Health Project clinics in June 2011. The analysis was conducted in 2011–2012. Population intervention models were used to assess where the greatest potential impact could be made to reduce the prevalence of HRI symptoms. Results: In total, 405 farmworkers participated. One third of participants had experienced three or more HRI symptoms in the preceding week. Migrant farmworkers faced barriers to preventing HRI at work, including lack of prevention training (77%) and no access to regular breaks (34%); shade (27%); or medical attention (26%). The models showed that the prevalence of three or more HRI symptoms (n=361, 34.3%) potentially could be reduced by increasing breaks in the shade (−9.2%); increasing access to medical attention (−7.3%); reducing soda intake (−6.7%); or increasing access to regular breaks (−6.0%). Conclusions: Migrant farmworkers experienced high levels of HRI symptoms and faced substantial barriers to preventing these symptoms. Although data are cross-sectional, results suggest that heat-related illness may be reduced through appropriate training of workers on HRI prevention, as well as regular breaks in shaded areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article addresses the contributions of local community-based nonprofit organizations to the construction of citizenship through three different examples of state–organization interaction in Minneapolis–St. Paul to integrate migrants into American society. These examples stand for broader questions about how shadow state relationships affect the shape and scale of citizenship relations to which organizations contribute. The article focuses empirically on how organizations enact state rules and resources in providing services to migrants. The conclusions are directed toward theorizing the kinds of shadow state relationships that contribute to nationally inclusive visions of citizenship as well as alternative, subnational visions of citizenship. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Substantial differences in the size of landholdings among cocoa farmers in the Western Region – the last cocoa “frontier” in Ghana – are primarily a result of inheritance practices and the purchase of vast tracts of land by migrants in the initial period of the cocoa boom. Individual accumulation of land over the last decade has mainly taken place via inheritance (among indigenous farmers) without takeovers of land and dispossession of small-scale farmers outside the extended family. Land accumulation among migrant farmers is rare beyond the initial acquisition. Large-scale farmers transfer surplus from their higher volume of cocoa production into investments in non-farm activities and construction of new residential houses—and not in land acquisition based on market transactions. State regulation of the cocoa sector has spurred increased efficiency among private cocoa purchasing companies and thereby reduced the marginalization of farmers with small landholdings by preserving their access to a vital source of income. The unique character of the Ghanaian purchasing system is a major factor behind the relatively stable proportion in the access and control of land for cocoa between extended families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the past decade, shihuahuaco timber – comprising several species of Dipteryx (Fabaceae) traded internationally as “cumarú” or “Brazilian teak” – has become one of the most highly demanded types of hardwood from Peruvian Amazonia, particularly in the Chinese market. Dipteryx is an ecologically important canopy-emergent genus with widespread distribution in neotropical forests. To assess the response of Dipteryx to logging, we conducted inventories in three logging areas in the Regions of Ucayali and Loreto, Peru. The size-class distributions of Dipteryx populations in recently logged sites showed that initial post-logging conditions enhance recruitment of residual seedlings. These conditions are created by a combination of logging gaps and the activities of farmers migrating into logged lands. Through protection and liberation of shihuahuaco seedlings in post-logged forest as well as within and around agricultural fields, local residents and timber companies could favor the recovery of this valued resource. However, as logged land is increasingly converted to agriculture and pastureland, the reestablishment of mature seed trees is not assured. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Since the 2004 EU enlargement established one European common labour market, a large number of Eastern Europeans have taken up seasonal employment as hired farm workers in Norwegian agriculture. Much attention in the public has been given to the potential for ‘social dumping’ of these migrating workers, as they are considered prone to exploitation by farmers looking for cheap and docile labour, and subject to low-wages and poor labour conditions. In response to these threats, Norway implemented labour regulations (‘transitional rules’) that established minimum standards for wage levels and labour conditions, combined with registration and supervision of the incoming labour force. Nevertheless, reports from the field indicate that many of the westward migrating labour force experience work conditions that are far poorer than prescribed by the labour regulations, as these are not implemented at the farm level. In this paper, we discuss the social processes that result in this mismatch between state regulations (e.g. transition rules) and the actual experiences of migrant workers building on dual labour market theory. Analysing qualitative in-depth interviews with 54 farm migrants, we argue that there are two sets of factors underlying the poorer working conditions observed on the farms: Firstly, the structural disempowerment of migrant workers, which gives them weak negotiating positions vis-à-vis their employers (farmers); and secondly, the migrant workers'' frame of reference for wage levels, in which poor payment levels by Norwegian standards are found acceptable or even good when judged by Eastern European wage levels. While a number of works have described the exploitation of farm migrant labour, we demonstrate in this paper how national immigration and agricultural histories, structures and present policies configure the labour–capital relations at farm level in the Norwegian case. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Objective: To examine the relationship between depression and disability in seasonal and migrant Hispanic agricultural workers. Methods: A total of 315 adult Hispanic agricultural workers living in northwest farmworker housing were interviewed to diagnose major and minor depression and assess disability. Statistical analysis determined demographic and clinical factors significantly related to a diagnosis of depression and examined the association between depression and disability. Results: The rate of major depression was 3.2% (n=10) and of minor depression, 6.3% (n=20). The sole demographic factor significantly associated with depression was female gender (P<.02). Controlling for gender, regression analysis demonstrated increased disability in those diagnosed with major and/or minor depression (P<.001). Those diagnosed with depression had a significantly higher mean total disability score [20.6 (95% CI 16.8–24.4) vs. 6.8 (95% CI 5.6–8.0)] than those without such diagnosis. Nondepressed subjects were significantly more likely (39% vs. 3%) to be completely free of functional impairment than those with depression (P<.001). Conclusions: This study confirms the known association between depression and disability and extends it to the seasonal and migrant Hispanic farmworker population. The severity of disability found in the depressed group was such that it could affect performance of agricultural work compared with that found in the nondepressed group. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A significant number of Syrian refugees under temporary protection in Turkey work in agriculture seasonally in various rural areas during several months a year. These migrant farm workers and their families are deprived of access to the regular health care system and preventive services due to their remote locations. The government supports the delivery of different types of mobile health care services, such as vaccination for children, reproductive health and screening services. While planning the mobile health care service delivery, it is critical to know where the refugees will work during what time frame; hence the demand for the services. By analyzing the call record data of a major mobile network operator in Turkey, we quantify the increase in the volume of calls made by Syrian refugees in various agricultural areas during the harvesting season of local crops. This information helps us to forecast spatial and temporal distribution of demand for mobile health care services at a fine granularity. Taking demand over multiple periods as input into a mathematical programming model, we optimize the routing of mobile clinics that visit locations close to where refugees are concentrated over the given planning horizon. We consider three hierarchical objectives. Given the availability of a number of mobile clinics at community health centers in the districts, the first objective aims to maximize the percentage of refugees that can benefit from each service type within pre-defined close distances. The second objective minimizes the number of clinics needed while covering the maximum percentage of refugees. The third objective minimizes the total travel distance of the clinics, while keeping the maximum coverage level using a minimum number of clinics to achieve this level. We quantify the benefits of centralized planning (by the province directorate) over decentralized planning (by each district separately). We also show the trade-off between the required number of clinics and coverage of potential patients. • Planning delivery of different health care service types to Syrian migrant farm workers by mobile clinics. • Locations and number of refugee beneficiaries are estimated by an analysis of telecommunications call record data. • Mixed integer programming models are formulated to find the visit schedule of the clinics over the harvesting season. • Objectives are maximizing the reach to beneficiaries and minimizing the number of clinics utilized and total travel distance. • Case study on two provinces of Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the meanings of tuberculosis among migrant Mexican farmworkers employed in western New York state. Interviews conducted with farmworkers; Utilization of the Glaser and Strauss' grounded theory model of analysis; Description of farmworkers explanations of tuberculosis etiology, severity, symptoms and social significance.