https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2514-0654
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ABSTRACT
The so-called ‘sea of plastic’ in Almería, Spain, is a 450km2 area devoted to intensive greenhouse farming managed by 10,000 small farmers who employ a labour force of 50,000 workers, mostly immigrants from Africa and eastern Europe. Romanian immigrants arrived at the beginning of 2000s and have occupied various positions within this agro-industrial district. Some started their own businesses in greenhouse reparation and construction employing fellow Romanians. They seized the market, providing more stable jobs through their transnational networks, and extending their businesses nationally and internationally. This paper analyses the global processes ‘from below’ that explain the occupation of specific economic spaces by transnational migrant entrepreneurs. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and social network analysis, the paper shows how the seasonal mobilization of a workforce through a transnational social field connecting Romania and Spain provided a competitive advantage to these entrepreneurs to start investing in their ventures and acquiring new markets.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank our research participants for sharing their precious time and life stories. We are also grateful for the support of Renáta Hosnedlová, Luis Martínez-Cháfer, Jana Ohanesyan, Fernando García Gonzalez, Hugo Valenzuela, Laure Sandoz and Natasha Webster. We also wish to thank the special issue editors and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In the province of Almería, 50,211 workers were registered on average from 2013 to 2018 in the agriculture sector (Régimen especial agrario) and 18,039 as self-employed (Cajamar, Citation2019).
2 Focused on more than one place simultaneously.
3 ORBITS project: “The Role of Social Transnational Fields in the Emergence, Maintenance and Decay of Ethnic and Demographic Enclaves” (MINECO-FEDER-CSO2015-68687-P). http://pagines.uab.cat/orbits/en
4 Ethical approval for the project's data collection was obtained from the University's Ethics Committee on Animal and Human Experimentation (CEEAH) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (document ID 3733)..
5 In 1986, the Spanish government prohibited the construction of new greenhouses due to the over-exploitation of the aquifers. This expansion (see ) even occurred in nature conservation areas. In the mid-2000s. half of the exploitations were illegal (Delgado, Citation2006).
6 The main destinations – EU15 – are Germany (30.2%), France (15.5%), the UK (11.6%) and the Netherlands (10.5%). Only 3.1% is exported outside the EU (Cajamar, Citation2019).
7 There is no agreement about the number of farmers among authors, ranging between 9,000 and 14,000. According to surveys (Junta de Andalucía, Citation2015), around 80% of farmers are men, with an average age of 44, who own around 80% of small exploitations: 74% in Campo de Dalías and 45% in Níjar and Bajo Andarax have areas of between one and four hectares.
8 We consulted various business directories to determine how many Romanian companies are active and operating in this sector, but these censuses do not collect the owner's national origins, which is a limitation in studying migrant entrepreneurship in Spain. Moreover, many types of companies could legally perform activities related to greenhouse construction or maintenance, which complicates the research. Following our ethnographic and survey data, we have confirmed the operations of 21 Romanian registered companies in greenhouse construction and maintenance in Roquetas, and a sizeable number of Romanians work in this sector.
9 In Almería province, the number of Romanians increased from 158 in 2000 to 25,869 in 2017. In the same year, 8,939 Romanians were living in Roquetas de Mar, the main Romanian enclave in the province (INE, Citation2020).
10 This is a variation of the initial Parral or plano type, now defined as the ‘Almería model’, which was exported to other warm climates because of their good quality–price balance, light structure and versatility.
11 Materials are the main costs. The labour per square metre of greenhouse construction costs around €0.85- €0.90, or €1.80 with social security costs. Some entrepreneurs might offer €1.50.
12 When the Romanians arrived, a square metre of plastic cost 25 pesetas (€0.15, i.e., €1.500/hectare). They started to work at 21 pesetas (€0.12) and later at 19 (€0.11).
13 Foreigners registered in Spain have the right to receive public health services.
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Notes on contributors
Ignacio Fradejas-García
Ignacio Fradejas-García is a postdoctoral researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Oviedo. . With extensive fieldwork experience in Gambia, Chile, Morocco, Haiti, RD Congo, Turkey, Romania and Spain, he conducts research on migration, transnationalism, (im)mobilities, humanitarianism and informality. He has been postdoctoral researcher at the University of Iceland , and his work is published in various peer-reviewed journals such as Social Anthropology (2019), Mobilities (2019), Migration Letters (2021), Social Inclusion (2021), Mortality (2022) and Politics and Governance (2022).
José Luis Molina
José Luis Molina is full professor at the Departament of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the at Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is an economic anthropologist interested in livelihood practices in a globalized, digitalized, and unequal world. His approach is through mixed-methods with an emphasis on ethnography and personal network analysis. Southeast Europe and Romania, in particular, are his main areas of interest.
Miranda J. Lubbers
Miranda Lubbers is Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain. She is the Director of the research group GRAFO. Her current research projects address migration and transnationalism, poverty and livelihood strategies, social exclusion and social cohesion.