Carolin
Schurr

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Carolin Schurr is professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. She is the principal investigator of the SNSF project "Reproductive Geopolitics" project. MORE

Laura
Perler

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Laura Perler is a postdoctoral researcher in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. In her research she investigates inequalities in relation to reproductive technologies and the Swiss asylum system.  MORE

Yolinliztli
Pérez-Hernández

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Yolinliztli Pérez-Hernández is a PostDoc in Social and Cultural Geography. She researches the experiences of sterilization (tubal ligation and hysterectomy) of low-income, rural, peasant, and indigenous Mexican women as part of national family planning and global birth control policies in developing countries. MORE  

Mirko
Winkel

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Mirko Winkel is the coordinator of the mLAB. The artist and curator teaches at the University of Bern and other places with the aim of synthesizing art with scientific research and socio-political concerns.

Nora
Komposch

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Nora Komposch is a PhD student and assistant in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. She researches about migrant workers in Spain's strawberry industry. MORE

Milena
Wegelin

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Milena Wegelin is a social anthropologist and research associate at the Department of Perinatal and Maternal Health of the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Sie is collaborating with Laura Perler in her subproject “Governing and Contesting In/fertility within the Swiss Asylum Context”

Susanne
Schultz

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Susanne Schultz is lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the Goethe University Frankfurt a.M. She is a visiting researcher who collaborates with the team of the project „Reproductive Geopolitics“ with a SNSF Scientific Exchange Grant in 2023. MORE

Armando
Zacarías

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Armando Zacarías is a doctoral student in Arts and Sciences of Art under the supervision of Pascale Weber at the APESA Doctoral School of the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. His research focuses on the body and ritual in the process of artistic creation. He explores a pluriversal approach to art, linking Wixárika ritual practices -an autochthonous community in northwestern Mexico- with the theories of critical posthumanism. He was part of the research project Reproductive Geopolitics: Governing and Contesting In/Fertility in the Global Intimate, directed by Carolin Schurr at the University of Berne (Switzerland). He has also participated in several artistic and academic events in France, Mexico, Greece and Germany.

Lucy
Sabin

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Lucy Sabin is an artistic researcher with a background in media and geography. Her work explores air and breathing, chemical exposures, feminist science studies, and environmental justice. Sabin holds a postdoctoral position in the Department of Ethics, Law, and Humanities at Amsterdam UMC. Her portfolio is available at aerography.uk 

Veronika
Siegl

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Veronika Siegl, holding a PostDoctoral position in Social and Cultural Geography, is a social anthropologist and gender researcher. Her research focuses on ethics, inequality and self-determination in the context of reproductive medicine.   MORE

Sven
Rufer

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Sven Rufer is a Zurich-based documentary filmmaker. His focus is on the social injustices of this world - as shown in the film “The Invisibles”. MORE

Tamara
Sánchez

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Tamara Sánchez is a documentary photographer working on community-based and participatory visual storytelling. Her work focuses on reproductive politics and grassroots resilience in Spain and Latin America. MORE

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Carolin Schurr
Nora Komposch
Spain
Strawberry
2024
liminality

Intimate liminality in Spain's berry industry

Abstract

Spain’s berry industry relies on the agricultural labour of both local and seasonal migrant workers. A significant part of this migrant workforce comprises Moroccan mothers who leave their children with relatives in order to perform this wage labour. The bilateral recruitment regime favours the employment of Moroccan women with children for this labour to ensure that workers return home at the end of the harvesting season. Drawing on multi-site ethnographic research in Spain and Morocco, this study revealed the effects of this bilateral labour regime on the intimate lives of migrant workers. We argue that the geopolitical prescriptions of this labour migration regime, along with the working and living conditions of migrant workers in Huelva, result in experiences of intimate liminality. We examined these experiences by exploring: (1) how the role of female workers as mothers becomes liminal as transnational labour agreements marginalise and outsource care obligations, (2) how governmental neglect of migrant workers’ occupational health exposes them to reproductive health risks and (3) how this neglect places them in a liminal space in terms of access to healthcare, and (4) how, despite their liminality, migrant workers contest precarious conditions through everyday solidarity practices. We advance a feminist approach to liminality, emphasising the importance of an embodied, intersectional, and multiscalar perspective.

Full Text

Komposch, N., Schurr, C. & Escriva, A. (2024) Intimate liminality in Spain’s berry industry. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 00, 1–14. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12673