The project “Strawberry field workers: labour exploitation and gender discrimination on the two sides of the Atlantic” has been selected for a Devreporter grant, awarded by La Fede.cat and financed by the European project Frame, Voice, Report!
A team of journalists, led by Maria Altamira, Quique Badia, David Meseguer and Pablo Tosco, have been asked to carry out an investigation to document and denounce the violence suffered by women who work as labourers in the fields during the harvest season. This is an indestructible violation of the rights of women from a country in the global South such as Morocco. The abuses based on the conditions of impoverishment of these women make the companies in the sector richer in Spain.
Surviving the strawberry fields
Drissiya, a former Moroccan day worker, suffered a stroke while working in Huelva. When she was discharged from hospital, she was returned to Morocco.
Abuses in the strawberry fields
Some Moroccan migrant strawberry pickers suffer all sorts of deceits, sexual abuses and labour exploitation after they arrive in Huelva
‘Everyone knows what’s happening, but nobody wants to see it’
Belén Luján, lawyer and specialist in criminal law is defending – via the Association for Administration of Justice Users (AUSAJ) – free of charge, several legal cases for female Moroccan migrant strawberry pickers who reported two Huelva companies for non-payment, bad working conditions, sexual abuses and assaults in 2018 and 2019.
In pictures: Moroccans navigate abuse and coronavirus to pick Spain’s ‘red gold’
The Covid-19 pandemic has slashed the number of strawberry pickers flocking from Morocco to southern Spain to harvest the fruit, but some say the job may not be as sweet as it appears
Moroccan seasonal strawberry-pickers’ judicial agony
A year and a half after reporting the Huelva-based company Doñana 1998 S.L. for non-payment, poor working conditions, abuse and sexual assaults, twelve Moroccan day workers continue to demand justice.
The strawberries of inequality
The business for this red fruit on both sides of the Atlantic, in Morocco and southern Spain cannot be explained without mention of border inequalities.
“Temporary women who have reported abuse have been accused of lying and have suffered devastating repercussions”
20,000 seasonal workers arrive in Huelva every year to pick strawberries and other red fruits. Every year their labor and human rights are violated. Many are raped and forced into prostitution. We talk about it in a debate organized by the Surt Foundation, with the journalist Maria Altimira and the lawyer Belén Lujan, led by Sandra Vicente, as part of the presentation of the research work ‘Surviving in the strawberry fields’, sponsored by the Devreporter scholarship.
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