Fragmented Spatialities. Migrant Farmworkers and the Social Production of Space Under Neoliberal Agriculture in the EU

ABSTRACT The living spaces of migrant farmworkers remain a relatively underexamined dimension of contemporary agriculture in the European Union. This article examines the sociospatial organisation of agricultural areas under neoliberal agriculture—characterised by technification and entrepreneurial rationalisation of production, integration into global value chains and labour migrantisation—and its implications for migrant workers. Drawing on a systematic review of literature on migrant agricultural labour in the EU (2018–2024), it identifies recurring patterns in the spatial distribution of migrant workers’ inhabited spaces across contexts. Using the perspective of the social production of space, the article shows how processes linked to neoliberal agricultural development intersect with local power relations to produce sociospatial segregation and uneven living conditions, while contributing to workers’ structural disempowerment. To conceptualise this pattern, the article proposes the notion of fragmented spatialities , referring to territorial configurations in which migrant farmworkers are disproportionately concentrated in peripheral spaces with limited access to resources for social reproduction, social networks and institutional support. While such arrangements often reinforce workers’ structural disempowerment, they may also constitute arenas where migrant workers deploy spatial practices that renegotiate existing spatial arrangements. The article contributes to rural sociology debates by foregrounding space as a key dimension in the organisation of labour and inequality in contemporary European agriculture.