Migrants, farmers and farmworkers and the politics of land and labour: an introduction to the symposium

In this article, framing and introducing the Special Issue on ‘Migrants, Farmers and Farmworkers’, we argue that the interaction between structural, institutional and political dynamics shapes the character and trajectory of social relations among migrants, farmers and farmworkers, which in turn influence or could influence the character and trajectory of broader struggles within and against capitalism, and the building of systemic alternatives. This collection looks into the specific entanglement of migrants, farmers and farmworkers in the context of this broader political process. The current phase of global capitalism has resulted in the fragmentation of the working class and the peasantry. This has resulted in a complex chain of hollowed-out rural villages interspersed with layers of different categories of migrant labour that are telecoupled in rural–rural/rural–urban (cross-border) migration corridors. In this introduction, we tease out theoretical, methodological and political implications highlighted by the 14 papers in the collection, individually and collectively, and identify some future research and public action agendas.