“You are too expensive, you need to work faster!”: Ukrainian agricultural workers navigating precarities in Denmark

Abstract

AbstractUkrainian migration to Denmark has been structured by national fast‐track programmes, predominantly funnelling Ukrainians towards low‐skilled and precarious jobs in Danish livestock production. However, since the recent Russian invasion, the introduction of Law L145 has entitled Ukrainians in Denmark to similar employment rights as the European Union citizens through an SL1 visa. While this opens up previously inaccessible areas of the Danish labour market, it also makes Ukrainians subject to the same restrictive legislation as other refugees and puts a hard end date to their visas, making their future status uncertain. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with nine Ukrainian agricultural workers living in Denmark at the time of the invasion, this article explores their attempts to navigate precarities of work, gender and legal status in Denmark. Precarities of work sprang from differences between agricultural sectors, as year‐round work with livestock involved a dependence on farmers, where workers accepted exploitative conditions in order to maintain their residence and work permits. Precarities of gender were reflected in the way women were made dependent on their partner through an “accompanying family members” visa, which shaped family lives and became problematic in the case of separations. Precarities of legal status were created by frequent legislative changes that made legal status uncertain and destabilized the long‐term investments of Ukrainians planning to stay in Denmark. While the SL1 offered a way out of some of the precarities experienced by agricultural workers, it did so at the cost of added complications and continuing uncertainty, pushing people from one kind of precarity to another.