5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Sociologists have long documented the international migration of agrarian workers and the impact on the communities they leave behind. Most of this literature have focused on how rural peoples from the global South move to work as indentured laborers in the farms and plantations of the global North. Many of these migrants have stayed on permanently, spurring research on the development of diasporic communities within their host nations. However, these movements and trajectories have become increasingly complex in the context of contemporary migration regimes and a growing industrialization of food production. Today’s migrant farmers move to a wider range of destinations, often through migration pathways that are much more convoluted and multinational. To date, scholars are only beginning to make sense of how these complex migration patterns impact the vitality of agrarian life and rural and urban food systems in both communities of origin and destination. This oral session invites papers that explore the connections between international migration and agrarian and foodways transformations in migrant sending and receiving communities. Specifically, we seek to explore the implications of changing border policies, migration infrastructure, and aging societies within migrant receiving nations. Topics may include, among others, the migration trajectories of farmers and farm workers, agrarian change in migrant sending communities, agricultural and foodways transformations in destination communities, and the food (in)security of those left behind.