Permanent Precarities: The Experience of Temporality of Tunisian Migrants in Sicily’s Transformed Agricultural Strip

Abstract The subject of temporality has offered migration studies new keys for interpreting the everyday life of migrants, and the constraints they face and their unfolding trajectories. In this optic, rural places are particularly interesting since here migrants are often employed in agriculture, a sector characterised by both temporariness and continuous needs for a workforce. In south-eastern Sicily, part of the coastal area is devoted to greenhouse-based agriculture to such an extent that it is known as the transformed agricultural strip . The area is also characterised by large and stratified migrant labour. Many dynamics of exploitation force migrants into short and precarious temporalities, but greenhouses also allow for the de-seasonalisation of agricultural production which results in long-term stays. The paper analyses the temporalities of Tunisian migrants in the strip , exploring the intertwining of precariousness and permanence in their lives. In particular, the paper delves into the impact of local temporal regimes on migrants’ daily time and their ‘migratory careers’, also enlightening on how transnational bonds intersect with migrants’ temporalities and trajectories. The paper draws on 22 biographical interviews with Tunisian migrants (who arrived in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s), complemented by interviews with migrants’ descendants, local key informants, and ethnographic notes. The paper describes how uncertain temporalities influence the Tunisian long-term presence in the strip and what factors and strategies allow migrants to take root in this context, upholding the usefulness of studying rural contexts to understand migratory temporalities and migration as a whole.