Entanglements Between the Refiguration of EU’s Territorial Spaces and the Recruitment Management of Seasonal Labour Migration.

Against the background of the EU's eastward enlargement project, this article examines the role of Germany’s political and economic relations with Poland and Romania in the recruitment of seasonal labour in the German agricultural sector. The article shows how EU’s macro-territorial processes go hand in hand with transformations of the legal framework for labour recruitment, following a pattern that is repeated with each new accession of a candidate country. Drawing on theories of migration infrastructure for recruitment, the article analyses how the latter contributes to the formation and refiguration of spatial arrangements that prove fundamental to the stabilisation of the agrifood sector and its associated labour migration regimes. At the same time, it shows how macro-territorial processes accentuate power imbalances between the Western EU countries and the new member states.