Why Social Distancing “Doesn’t Apply” to Germany’s Migrant Farmworkers
The German state emphasizes the need for social distancing — except for the Romanian migrants working in its farms. The EU’s neoliberal order has deepened the continent’s labor market inequalities, making a mockery of the rhetoric of European solidarity.
A group migrant laborers pick strawberries in a greenhouse during the harvest on May 7, 2020 in Lepe, Spain. (Niccolo Guasti / Getty Images)
A few days before the Orthodox Church celebrated Easter, thousands of Romanians found themselves packed together in a provincial airport in the city of Cluj, bound for Germany to work the asparagus harvest in the middle of a pandemic. Though the Romanian state strictly enforces social distancing and has issued record numbers of fines for people breaking quarantine, these workers were packed into buses from all over the country (including areas under military lockdown), dumped in front of the overcrowded airport, and left waiting for hours without protective equipment.
Though shocking, the scene was representative of a more general reality — that social distancing and shelter-in-place measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are only available to some. Despite the lockdown, millions of people across the globe must go to work not only to survive, but precisely because their labor is essential to maintaining the very possibility of lockdowns for everyone else. Food still needs to be picked, processed, and transported. Infrastructure still needs to be maintained, basic services kept running. All of this is impossible without people willing to perform the necessary labor, and employers will do whatever they can to find them.
Europe’s Coronavirus Conscripts
Such was the case for the Romanian asparagus pickers. Citing the risk of crops rotting in the fields, the German state came to the rescue of its agricultural sector by persuading Romania to allow chartered flights of temporary workers out of the country. The Romanian state duly obliged — yet not out of blind obedience to the European hegemon, but because supplying cheap and flexible labor to the wealthier countries of the EU has been Romania’s standard practice for the past three decades. More flights were subsequently authorized for workers traveling to the UK for similar purposes. Less than a month earlier, Romanian nurses had been permitted to travel to Austria to help fight the virus there, despite the fact that the Romanian health care system is already one of Europe’s weakest.
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