How Immigration Policy, Labour Rules and Training Systems Shape Technology Adoption and Migration in Horticulture

Abstract

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the agricultural sectors of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, examining the relationship between technological change and precarious migrant labour across two distinct institutional contexts. While prevailing narratives of digital agriculture anticipate the progressive displacement of human labour through automation, the sector remains structurally dependent on cheap, temporary migrant workforces. Foregrounding the role of institutions and actors, migrants, employers, farmers, and unions, the research moves beyond impact-centred accounts of technological change to interrogate the drivers and determinants shaping divergent national trajectories of automation and migration management. Drawing on Comparative Employment Relations literature and migration studies, and employing qualitative methods including interviews, twelve months of fieldwork, industry event attendance, and grey literature review, the paper addresses how unions, migrants, and farmers collectively shape the adoption of technological change within a historically migrant-dependent sector. The findings contribute to policy debates on labour substitution, agricultural restructuring, and the governance of the ongoing digital transition.

Discussants

Camilla Macciani, Università di Trento
Maria Antonietta Maneschi, Università di Trento

Chair

Katia Pilati, Università di Trento