Blood and Oranges: Immigrant Labor and European Markets in Rural Greece (review)

A clear argument running through this book is that the recent influx of mostly undocumented immigrants arriving in southern Greece from Albania and other former socialist countries has provided a new exploitable labor force for agriculture, filling a gap created by radical changes in social, economic, and political conditions in Greece since it joined the European Union in 1981. Rural Greeks living by subsistence agriculture, the previously exploited labor force, have increasingly gained social and political rights, making them unwilling to work under poor conditions any longer. Moreover, Greece's European Union membership—which, according to Lawrence, was the conduit through which neoliberal globalization arrived in Greece—has meant that rural Greeks increasingly associated autonomy and status with the acquisition of consumer goods. This change led to a need for cash that could not be generated by agriculture alone, even when subsidized by the EU Common Agricultural Policy. The result, Lawrence maintains, has been the widespread use of poorly paid undocumented migrant workers. Meanwhile, Greek agricultural smallholders have diversified their activities to gain extra income. He further declares that both Greek and EU legislation has failed to protect the rights of migrant workers whose illegal status leaves them particularly vulnerable to high levels of mistreatment and exploitation.

According to Lawrence, in the citrus-growing Argolid region of southern Greece, this exploitative situation has been supported by a harsh form of anti-immigrant racism which has made it acceptable for migrants to be denied basic rights. Few are able to achieve the levels of consumption that Greeks have come to expect for themselves. This racism is underpinned by the increasing intensity of Greek nationalism that excludes immigrants from the benefits of citizenship. In contrast to media reports describing illegal immigration as a growing "problem," Lawrence argues that, in fact, it is part of the "solution." As he sees it, the problem is that with EU accession, the liberalization of markets, and increasing levels of equality in the population, particularly among women, Greece lost the exploitable domestic labor force necessary to support its economy. Illegal migrants filled this void: "In Greek agriculture, immigrants do not fill new positions but rather replace the now-scarce labor of women, children, land-poor peasants, and minorities such as Roma" (p. 164).

This book's main strength lies in its ethnographic account of the harsh relations between Greeks and illegal migrant workers—the everyday experiences of humiliation, exploitation, and mutual suspicion that seem to characterize their mutual engagement. This is shown most clearly in Chapter Three, which includes several accounts of the sexual exploitation of women as well as various forms of labor abuse. Lawrence notes that immigrants themselves rarely trust each other, let alone their Greek employers, which further contributes to their marginality. Nor do Greeks trust each other very much either. Indeed, the whole situation Lawrence describes has a whiff of alienation about it: people on both sides who do not trust each other and who are not at all at ease with themselves, each other, or the world.

Lawrence argues that large-scale economic and political forces are manipulating the people living both legally and illegally in this small part of southern Greece, a manipulation that is weakly resisted, if at all. This draws the author into lengthy discussions about the shifting relationship between nation and state, between the EU and Greece, between racism and cultural fundamentalism, between gender oppression and oppression of immigrants, and between neoliberalism/governmentality and civil society/collective resistance. This is effective in terms of the political economy approach that Lawrence explicitly adopts. One result, however, is that he does not provide much sense of how the situation in the orange groves of the Argolid compares with the circumstances of undocumented immigrants in other parts of Greece. Moreover, Lawrence occasionally makes generalizations and assertions without any supporting arguments. For instance, he suggests that the CIA was behind the 1967 colonels' coup in...