Spectral labour in the Fens of Eastern England

Abstract

This article performs a site-specific and critical reading of agricultural labour in the Fen landscape in the East of England to explore lived experiences of class in this landscape. The analysis is based on fieldwork and archival research undertaken between 2017 and 2019. The article disrupts conventional division between migrant and domestic labour through employing the critical theoretical lens of the German Jewish cultural critic Walter Benjamin. The article traces previously obscured narratives of agricultural labour that glimmer in the dark light of the disruption of the distinction between migrant and domestic experiences. In doing so it follows lines of continuity and connectivity through the novel concept of the ‘spectral labourer’. This concept is used to draw out the significance of tenuous and evolving chains of citizenship and state exclusion within the agricultural working classes in the Fen region.