Farmers depend on migrant labour in Europe amid tightening immigration policy

A pressing paradox is emerging in the intricate landscape of European agriculture: while governments across the continent are tightening immigration policies, the agricultural sector remains heavily reliant on migrant labour. 

Looking out from a train window in Dutch farmland, you'll see a landscape dominated by glass: endless rows of greenhouses. At René Simons’s farm, located 60 kilometres southeast of Rotterdam, raspberry bushes sprawl across vast trellises, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media. 

Most of the workers picking these berries come from Eastern Europe—Poles and Bulgarians during peak season, or Ukrainians who often stay longer. “We have a few ladies from near Lviv now,” says Mr. Simons. “We tell them, if it gets tough there, you can always stay here.”

Farmers like Mr. Simons find themselves at the heart of a European conundrum. While governments pledge to curb immigration, the agricultural sector in Europe relies heavily on migrant labor. According to EU estimates, about 2 million Europeans cross borders annually for farm work, alongside another 400,000 from outside the union—making up nearly a third of the bloc's agricultural workforce of 7 to 9 million. European farmers wield significant influence and often support hard-right parties advocating for strict immigration controls. This has led such parties to soften their anti-immigration rhetoric.

Italy exemplifies this situation. In April 2023, just six months after Giorgia Meloni's hard-right government came to power, her agriculture minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, urged Italians to have more children or risk being “replaced” by foreigners. However, in practice, Lollobrigida has sought to increase visas for agricultural workers. Meanwhile, Meloni, while aiming to deport many asylum seekers for processing in Albania, is open to accepting more labor immigration, provided it is regulated.

The driving force behind this situation is sheer necessity. Italy's agriculture sector faces an annual shortfall of about 200,000 workers, according to Massimiliano Giansanti, president of Confagricoltura, a farmers’ association. The legal workforce in agriculture, which includes seasonal laborers, totals around one million, with a third of them being foreigners. Among those aged 18 to 35, nearly all are foreign workers, as Mr. Giansanti notes that young Italians view agriculture as “back-breaking work under the sun.” Additionally, approximately 230,000 people work in the sector's shadow economy, many of whom are undocumented migrants from Asia and Africa.

In contrast, countries like Germany, France, and the Netherlands primarily source their migrant farm workers from Eastern European nations that joined the EU in the 2000s, with Poland being the largest source country initially. As Polish laborers sought higher wages abroad, Polish farmers began hiring Ukrainians to fill the gaps left behind.

However, the pandemic-related border closures in 2020 disrupted this system, and two years later, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the country barred men of military age from leaving. Many Ukrainians already in Poland moved to Germany after the EU granted them work permits. Consequently, Polish farmers began recruiting Ukrainian women. “We tend to focus on middle-aged women. We don’t want young pretty girls with long fingernails,” says Tomas Ostergard, whose berry farm employs 600 harvest workers every October, 90 per cent of whom are Ukrainian.

By Naila Huseynova