Agriculture and the rural world express the contemporary contradictions of the neoliberal global world; as such, they represent relevant domains to tackle the challenges associated with the intense migratory processes reshaping our societies.

At the crossroads amongst different flows and trajectories, the Mediterranean provides an intriguing setting to analyse the migratory dynamics reconfiguring rural areas. On the European flank there is ample evidence that, on the one hand, agriculture and the rural world hold important potentials for fostering migrants’ economic and social integration, as attested by several initiatives. On the other hand, immigrants play a key role in ensuring rural areas remain alive and productive, although these contributions are hardly recognised and appreciated.

In several rural settings, immigrant communities and workers have come to replace a declining local population; immigrant shepherds, for instance, play a key role in ensuring the resilience and persistence of agro-pastoral practices that characterise marginal areas where agricultural intensification proves unfeasible.

The interfaces between agriculture, rural development, and migration are not only fertile in academic terms, but in socio-economic and political ones as well, as the sustainability of these processes requires a comprehensive, integrated policy framework that demands consistency amongst the agricultural, migration, and labour market spheres.

Intense migration is reshaping our societies, raising questions about both the sustainable integration of newcomers in the areas of destination and the impacts in the communities of emigration. Agriculture and the rural world represent relevant settings to tackle these themes as these are increasingly reconfigured by migratory phenomena. At a time when society perceives immigration as a threat to local culture and traditions, evidence from rural contexts conversely shows that immigrants play an important role in maintaining and reproducing local societies and their embedded heritage, including through economic contributions, key social functions, and ecological services.

This volume takes a regional perspective, looking at the Mediterranean. In the region ecological, economic, and socio-demographic asymmetries characterising its different flanks provide relevant push and pull factors for rural migrations. The Mediterranean basin therefore provides an interesting context to assess how migratory flows are reshaping socio-cultural and agro-ecological landscapes and to analyse the differentiated impacts on its different shores.

On the region’s eastern and southern rims, limitations in water sources, fertile soils, and reliable climate or peace conditions seriously affect the agricultural livelihoods of a growing rural population; for communities in these areas, emigration represents today an important strategy to expand and diversify the livelihood base.

Conversely on the Mediterranean’s northern, European rims, the polarisation of rural development provides important triggers for migratory dynamics. In areas with greater potential for agricultural production, the immigrant workforce proves to be a main pillar underpinning the intensification of most farming systems; the social costs associated with these processes are though high, with increasing concerns over immigrants’ living and working conditions.

In more marginal rural settings heavily impacted by the recent economic crisis and public spending cuts, immigrant communities have become a vital asset for local economies and societies. In Europe, mountainous communities, inland areas, and islands provide limited opportunities for income and employment, as well as fewer opportunities for accessing social, cultural, and institutional services. These areas face acute problems of population decline and abandonment, which in turn generate growing concerns related to local generational renewal. These terrains are not only incrementally marginal, but risk being deserted, territories without “societies,” with the consequential loss of the local ecological and socio-economic heritage. In such settings immigrant communities increasingly play a critical role in filling the socio-economic gaps left by the national population.

From a European perspective, experience indicates thus that while agriculture and the rural world, on the one hand, can provide important livelihood options to immigrant communities, they are, on the other, themselves a key factor of resilience for many agricultural farms and rural areas.

Agro-pastoralism, the extensive rearing of livestock that characterises most marginal Mediterranean rural settings, provides a useful lens for assessing these dynamics and understanding the contributions and the implications of immigrants on the European rural fabric. Agro-pastoralism embodies the contradictions of globalization since it is increasingly appreciated for the products and services it supplies (from quality animal proteins to biodiversity conservation and landscape maintenance), while also increasingly threatened by global competition and a growing agricultural squeeze that reduce its attractiveness to local populations. The rising shortage of a skilled and committed workforce in this sector is currently buffered by the consistent presence of immigrant shepherds who importantly contribute to keeping agro-pastoral areas alive and productive.

As is the case for most agricultural activities, these contributions are, however, poorly acknowledged, and immigrants operating in rural areas endure heavy exploitation, enjoy limited rights, and remain socially vulnerable. Options for their progress and upscaling are restricted as they face scant prospects for socio-economic improvement.

Contrary to what has historically taken place in the Mediterranean, where population movements have contributed to filling the gaps left by local inhabitants, today this capacity to translate geographical mobility into social is limited: several economic, social, and administrative factors constrain immigrants’ evolution from workers to entrepreneurs and farmers in their own right.

The inability to recognize the local relevance of immigrant communities and integrate them into rural development patterns hold relevant implications for the sustainability and the reproduction of the agrarian world in the broader EU setting.

These dynamics raise questions that are both relevant and controversial; the interface between agriculture and migration is fertile not only in academic terms, but in socio-economic and political ones as well. Societal efforts to disentangle and redress these dynamics are needed at different levels, including for researchers, development practitioners, local authorities, policymakers, and civil society alike.

In academic terms, migratory flows in rural areas result in diversified and dynamic socio-cultural fabrics, challenging the idea of a conservative and static agrarian world. Mobilities contribute to the reconfiguration of the rural world as a point of continuous transition, creating new circularity between cities and the countryside, but also transversal networks between regions of different countries.

Most research efforts focus on investigating the drivers and the patterns of migratory flows to and from rural areas, and the diverse implications in the different settings. However, this type of research must be more complex, avoiding functionalism and the over-consideration of economic factors in order to better enhance the understanding of the social, political, and cultural aspects underpinning but also resulting from migratory flows. By better accounting for migrants’ subjectivity, recent approaches that look into trans-local mobility and focus on the agency aspects of migrants provide intriguing insights into rural development perspectives.

In policy terms, the reconfiguration of agricultural and rural development patterns is heavily impacting natural and human landscapes throughout the Mediterranean. In Europe concerns are raised on the sustainability of current paradigms informing policymaking, as the longstanding commitment the EU displays through its Common Agricultural Policy does not seem effective in reversing several negative trends.

As a structural factor of agricultural production and rural development in contemporary Europe, the immigrant labour force should attract the attention it deserves from policymakers at various levels. Efforts aimed at redressing development in rural areas should begin by recognizing and capitalising on the important contributions provided by immigrant communities and workers. It remains otherwise difficult to justify EU concern for and support to animal welfare, wildlife status, landscape functioning and consumer safety while policies remain silent and opaque when it comes to the rights and conditions of many agricultural workers and rural dwellers.

Enhancing the integration of immigrant workers in less precarious, longer-term positions and roles in the agrarian world provides a unique opportunity to revitalise depopulating rural areas and support agricultural activities lacking young, skilled, and motivated operators. In such a framework, sustainable agriculture and rural development cannot be merely the result of subsidies, schemes, and incentives, but must be the outcome of a comprehensive integrated policy framework that demands consistency and coherence amongst agricultural, migration, and labour market polices. Adequate decision-making and strategic investments are needed to ensure that rural migrations bring mutual benefits to all stakeholders to reflect the Europe 2020 vision for a “smart, sustainable and inclusive development”.

This is obviously not to state that the future of agricultural lands and rural communities stays in their capacities to attract and absorb immigrants, nor that the future of migratory flows resides necessarily in rural areas. Likewise, there are no easy recipes or good practices that apply automatically in supporting local integration of foreign newcomers in rural settings; experiences reported in this volume indicate that these processes are complex and often conflicting, requiring continuous adjustment and mutual adaptation amongst all concerned actors involved.

The risks related to a “ghettoization” effect are obvious, as much as those related to the perception of the rural space as an “empty” and “to be filled,” thus ignoring the presence of local communities and helping compound the sense of local marginality. This can produce a double process of “subalternization” in which both migrants and territories are “represented” without the freedom to act and to be. The optimistic idea of countering abandonment and decline and of revitalizing the local economy by “forcibly placing” newcomers in rural areas trivializes both the complexity of the “welcoming” territory and that of those who should “be accepted.” It is yet another example of the objectification and abstraction with which these themes are often addressed in public debate.

In fact, the opposition between “migrants” and “natives” is misleading and reductive. Perhaps we need to SIMPLY speak about people living or moving on a rural EDGE where it could be possible to remain provided that concrete opportunities for a dignified livelihood exist and THAT social mobility paths are effective.

Agriculture and the rural realm embody and express the contemporary contradictions of the neoliberal global world. On the one hand, rural areas are the sites of exodus, population decline, economic crisis, and land abandonment or social exploitation. On the other, these represent the space for autonomy, peasant agriculture, multifunctionality, diversity, and resilience, as much as opportunities for integration and cooperation. The new agrarian question needs to develop patterns of inclusive and fair development that account for the needs and the capacities of all actors, including immigrant communities.