Date and Venue

June 27 (Thursday) | 15:00-16:30 JST

In-person at Waseda University

Room 711, Building 19, Waseda University

Event details:

Speaker:

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Marvin Joseph F. Montefrio, Associate Professor of Social Science, Yale-NUS College

Yasmin Y. Ortiga, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Singapore Management University

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Abstract:

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Increasing demand for food and agricultural labour has raised the urgent question: Who are the future farmers of the world and where will they come from? Wealthy nations have long relied on migrant farmers, establishing guest worker programmes and special visa regimes to bring in workers from countries in the Global South. In this presentation, we argue that contemporary farmers’ mobilities have become much more complex, as advancements in food production increasingly demand labourers with the ability to handle work in large-scale industrial farms. We present preliminary plans to investigate how both immigration policies and industrial agriculture alter the skills required of migrant farmers, reshaping not only how people migrate but where they end up moving. We also seek to determine how such mobilities may have variegated implications on Philippine agrarian life beyond the narratives of de-agrarianisation and de-peasantisation.