Seasonal and mission contracts in Southern French fruit farms: the tainted rights of foreign workers

Abstract

This article questions the compatibility of the principles proclaimed by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, namely the free movement of workers, the freedom to provide services and the fight against discrimination. The study focuses on the arboriculture sector established in the Crau region over the past fifty years through two biographical accounts collected in 2008 and 2014, which allow us to understand the adjustments made by local actors, who are grappling with the changes in the sector, particularly through the systematic use of foreign workers as a means of adjusting production costs. The article mobilises familiarism under various aspects — structural, functional and organizational — to analyse the socio-economic behaviors of small and large arboriculturists, integrated on a regional, national and European scale on competitive markets of agricultural products and jobs. In a double qualitative and quantitative approach, it is shown the update of the modalities of employment of foreigners in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône and in the tree farms of the Crau, characterised by the co-presence of foreign workers under season contracts introduced by the French Office of Immigration and Integration, and workers under mission contracts made available in France by temporary work companies registered in Europe. Finally, the article considers the exceptionality of these temporary contracts, by analysing the litigation procedures within a certified and labelled fruit industry, marked by unequal treatment and systemic discrimination against these indispensable workers.