Qualified seasonal work in agriculture? Employment and work requirements in high quality viticulture

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Jürgen Kädtler; Professor Dr. Marcel Tyrell
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Operations Management and Computer Science for Business Administration
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 533541634

The subject of the proposed project are product strategies and labor and employment systems in German high quality viticulture, which are based to a large extent on the use of migrant seasonal labor force in vineyard work. It will be investigated how product strategies of these enterprises, which rely on esteemed quality of grape production in viticulture as a basis for specific product qualities, translate into demands on the employed labor force and how these demands are (or can be) fulfilled by predominantly migrant seasonal workers. The research approach is based on a combination of qualitative case study empirical work and organizational economics, game-theoretical analysis. With recourse to the concept of production worlds following Salais/Storper (1992, 1993) as well as to the analysis of complementarities in production and organizational structures (Milgrom/Roberts 1990, 1992, 1995; Roberts 2004), the underlying conditional relationship between social construction and material production of wine quality(s) will be analyzed in the sense of an exemplary analysis of constellations situated between the poles of (pure) commodity markets and markets for aesthetic-symbolic qualities. Thus, a differentiating advancement of the state of research on forms and conditions of migrant seasonal work in agriculture, a contribution to the empirically based extension and differentiation of theories of segmented labor markets and operational employment systems as well as a progression of the institutionally shaped theories of production and distribution structures by applying them to high quality viticulture will be provided.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants