ABSTRACT
The forest berry industry in northern Sweden operates within a competitive global market for nutritious wild berries and is dependent on seasonal migrant workers. This chapter analyses actual wage levels of these workers after a series of new regulations surrounding migration and labour standards. Labour standards improved in Sweden in 2010 with the implementation of collective agreements and work contracts for non-European Economic Area berry pickers, the only country employing such standards within this type of industry. We discuss how, despite these improvements, Thai migrant berry pickers continue to be exploited in a process that we theorise as subordinated inclusion. The chapter is based on unique survey material with berry pickers and in-depth interviews with migrant workers during the berry season in Sweden and off-season in Thailand. We focus on actual wages, while also placing our analysis in the context of the industry’s peripherality and changing geographies of production and consumption. One third of the workers in the survey reported earnings below the income they are entitled to according to the work contracts. Despite deploying varying forms of resistance and the recent regulation of labour standards for migrant labour, we conclude that the fulfilment of their formal rights is still lacking.
