Drawing from the Ethiopia-Sudan borderlands — a major hub of capitalist production of lucrative agricultural commodities such as sesame and cotton — the paper shows how cross-border seasonal migrant labour is central to this commodity production but is often neglected in discussions.
Moreda argues that previous discussions on this topic have mainly focused on economic and geopolitical wranglings between different groups over the control of land and commodity production in these areas.
If there is any talk of migrant labour, it is reduced to how these agricultural commodity production sites are crucial in providing employment opportunities to migrant workers and how the flow of such labour should be governed.
However, to frame migrant labourers as mere beneficiaries of employment opportunities is to lose sight of their crucial role in shaping the political economy of commodity production in the borderlands and the varied domains of exploitation they face. In fact, the history and profitability of commodity production in these borderlands are connected to, and rooted in, the availability of vast, cheap, flexible and exploited migrant agricultural labour. In this regard, production and social reproduction are dynamically intertwined in a distinctive manner, precisely through the ‘rural rootedness’ of seasonal labour migrants which contributes to sustaining and subsidizing export-oriented agricultural commodity production in Sudan and Ethiopia.
This paper therefore shows why and how cross-border seasonal migrant labour should be taken as an inextricable element of capitalist commodity production.
Read the full article online
'Cross-border seasonal migrant labour and agricultural commodity production in the Ethiopia–Sudan borderlands' Agriculture and Human Values, February 2025.
- Assistant professor
- Related links
- Commodity & land rushes and regimes research project