Financial inclusion, support in terms of strengthening employability and financial literacy, orientation, professional training… The Policy Center for The New South has formulated a series of recommendations with a view to promoting a better reintegration experience for Moroccan seasonal workers.
Developed by Aomar Ibourk, Karim El Aynaoui and Tayeb Ghazi, the policy paper entitled “Circular migration and intermediation: lessons learned from the experience of Moroccan seasonal workers in Spain”, focuses on the reintegration of Moroccan seasonal workers.
According to this document, almost all seasonal workers are able to complete their contract and do not report any problems related to this aspect. However, this does not mean that the results of migration are always beneficial, nor that reintegrations are easy. Full reintegration would thus be able to ensure the sustainability of the positive effects of this type of migration.
Seasonal workers returning to Morocco could contribute to social and economic development, particularly at the local level, because they would be able to combine the skills acquired and the savings made abroad to create their own activities. They could also employ members of their families and communities, it is reported.
For the Policy Center for The New South (PCNS), it is important to adequately support Moroccan seasonal workers, especially since we know that these women are only employed for less than six months a year in the agriculture, which remains unprofitable. It will therefore be necessary, first of all, to ensure financial inclusion and support in terms of strengthening their employability.
The PCNS also pleads for support in financial literacy, as well as in the creation, and post-creation, of income-generating activities for these women.
In addition, comprehensive reintegration measures should be put in place even before seasonal workers leave their country of origin, so that they are well prepared and have had time to consider their options after migration. . This prerequisite can help seasonal workers to do their best to mobilize the (necessary) human, financial and social means before, during and after the migration.
Guidance and vocational training for female seasonal workers before emigration would better prepare them for reintegration into the labor market or for setting up small businesses upon their return. These measures should therefore be integrated into the framework of work agreements, which would make it possible to lay the foundations for possible international cooperation in the support of Moroccan seasonal workers.
It should be noted that the evolution of the number of Moroccan seasonal workers in Spain has gone through different episodes. The first is part of the MEDA II program (European Institutional Support Project for the Movement of Persons) of 49 months, ending in January 2010. Rising to 5,000 when the program was launched, the number of women recruited reached 13,000 in 2008 and 17,000 in 2009.
The end of the program and the advent of the crisis, in particular that of the debt in Mediterranean Europe, explain the drastic drop in the number of beneficiaries to around 2,000. During 2017, we observed a return, which continued in 2018 and 2019 with figures of around 15,000 beneficiaries. Finally, the fall in 2020 to around 7,000 was natural in the context of the health crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For the next harvest campaign of strawberries and red fruits, 15,000 Moroccan seasonal workers are announced in Huelva at the beginning of January, according to the Spanish press.