Death and disposability: irregular migrant-farmworkers’ extraordinary exposure to traffic ‘accidents’ in Spain

Abstract The seasonal circulation of agricultural workers to dispersed and sprawling sites of agrifood production renders migrant-farmworkers some of the most flexible components of agricultural infrastructures. This flexibility is made possible by the integratedness of automobiles as well as their concomitant infrastructures and cultures into everyday life. At the same time, dangerous and sometimes fatal traffic accidents involving furgonetas (vans) carrying migrant-farmworkers to and from work are often attributed to individualised and problematic behaviours, and further invisibilised by the ordinariness of automobility and traffic ‘accidents’. Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork—including semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, and participant observation—in Murcia, Valencia, and Catalunya, this article examines the phenomenon of traffic accidents from the perspective of structural vulnerabilities. It argues that the migrant-to-farmworker pipeline for irregular migrants, combined with the cuadrilla system of labour organisation and the sprawling geographies of agrifood circuits, creates unsafe conditions for migrant-farmworkers even when they are off the clock and off the farm. Instead, migrant-farmworkers are made to assume extraordinary risks of death and injury travelling to and from work. Twenty-five years after the 2001 accident in Lorca, Murcia, in which a furgoneta carrying fourteen Ecuadorian farmworkers was struck by a train, killing twelve and leaving only two survivors, this article commemorates the lives lost and examines the ongoing legacy of this tragedy.