ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on interventions made by Bryant and Pini and Panelli through analysing how ethnicity intersects with and mediates the lived experiences of gender, class and rural economic restructuring processes. The chapter employs Massey's concept of the 'spatial division of labour' as a framework for this analysis, and finds that the labour relations that have emerged through the changes in the banana and blueberry industries in Australia are enabled, arbitrated and inextricably linked to gender and ethnicity. Punjabi-Sikh settlers were also assisted by the New South Wales (NSW) State Government's policy at the time to lease State Forest land to facilitate its development for agricultural purposes. The gendered and racialized nature of these rural class relations also added a number of layers of complexity to the experiences of Punjabi-Sikh women employed at Blueberry Farms Australia (BFA).
