Marginality in the berry fields: hierarchical ordering of food and agrarian systems in Norway

Abstract

Although being essential to sustaining food production, migrant workers continuously find themselves at the bottom of the social and power hierarchy in food and agrarian systems around the world. Effects and origins of hierarchical ordering in food and agrarian systems increasingly gather public, political, and academic attention, however, how it matters for these systems remains little understood. As such, this paper aims to understand how hierarchical ordering shapes migrant worker marginality and links it to the contemporary formations of food and agrarian systems. To do so, this paper explores engaged and embodied dimensions of disadvantaged migrant worker realities. This is done by drawing on research conducted in Norway, mainly consisting of interviews with migrant agri-food worker and farmers, as well as ethnographic data from Norwegian berry farms and supporting document analysis. The analysis reveals a complex picture of the power and reach of hierarchical ordering as it directly and indirectly impacts migrant workers in the Norwegian berry fields, as well as ideas around narrow divisions in food and agrarian systems and society more broadly that are implicated in naturalizing and internalizing such ordering. Following these insights, the paper proposes a theorization of food and agrarian systems as hierarchical projects– structures that find their foundations in patterned ordering that arranges and regularizes power hierarchies on the count of differences.