Picking blueberries and Indian women go hand in hand' : the role of gender and ethnicity in the division of agricultural labour in Woolgoolga, New South Wales, Australia

Rae Dufty, Edgar Liu

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    4 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Travelling north along the Pacific Highway, approximately 25 kilometres from Coffs Harbour a coastal community in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), a large white temple appears on the right as you enter the township of Woolgoolga. The temple is a gurdwara, one of two in a town that has a population with fewer than 4,000 people. People of the Sikh faith, the majority of whom come from the Punjab region in northern India, use this Gurdwara for religious and community events. Members of the Woolgoolga Punjabi-Sikh community are also major participants in the local agricultural industries of bananas and blueberries. In the case of bananas there is a long history of family farming in the industry. The community's role in blueberries, however, has been a relatively more recent phenomenon, with participation predominantly taking the form of paid employment for the horticultural company, Blueberry Farms Australia (BFA). In the last 20 years major changes to these agricultural industries in the region have impacted on family farms of the Punjabi-Sikh community and have produced new gendered and racialized labour relations. Using data collected through a series of interviews with various industry participants (for example, workers at BFA, union representatives, and members of the local community), this chapter builds on interventions made by Bryant and Pini (2009) and Panelli et al. (2009) through analysing how ethnicity intersects with and mediates the lived experiences of gender, class and rural economic restructuring processes. The chapter employs Massey's (1994) concept of the 'spatial division of labour' as a framework for this analysis, and finds that the labour relations that have emerged through the changes in the banana and blueberry industries in Australia are enabled, arbitrated and, therefore, inextricably linked to gender and ethnicity.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationReshaping Gender and Class in Rural Spaces
    EditorsBarbara Pini, Belinda Leach
    Place of PublicationU.K.
    PublisherAshgate
    Pages73-90
    Number of pages18
    ISBN (Electronic)9781409402923
    ISBN (Print)9781409402916
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

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