ON THE SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND THE EXPERIENCES OF FEMALE SEASONAL AGRICULTURAL WORKERS IN CONTEMPORARY SERBIA. ARE THERE ELEMENTS OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE?

Abstract

The paper examines the socioeconomic status and experiences of women employed as seasonal agricultural workers, indicating the elements of structural and other forms of violence to which they are exposed. As a form of employment, seasonal work has been legally defined in Serbia only since 2018, and it remains a partially regulated sector marked by different forms of social exclusion. Feminist (anthropological) literature dealing with the gender aspect of seasonal agricultural work in different parts of the world has pointed to the serious problem of inequality and social marginalisation. The analysis of social, economic, cultural, legal and other structures involved in the organisation and control of these job positions, as well as the work process itself, has helped identify the ways in which the unequal status of female seasonal workers continues to be (re)produced and sustained, which leads to the question of structural violence against this category of women.

In the first part of the paper I address the question of socioeconomic status of women in the sector of agriculture – seasonal workers primarily, relying on the general conclusions of the existing research on the status of women in the labour market in Serbia. There I point to the elements of (re)production of their systemic inequality and institutional exclusion. In the second part I address the lived experience of these women, pointing to the ways in which social and economic structures, their actors and cultural patterns shape the practices and (gender) relations within seasonal labour, based on the qualitative analysis of the material collected in semi– structured and informal interviews conducted with women employed as seasonal agricultural workers. The paper is based on the assumption that the analyses of institutional framework and economic perspectives – important as they are – fail to address the sociocultural disposition of women for seasonal work, as well as the conditions and organisation of the work process, thus leaving unobserved the gender division of labour and various forms of gender based violence.