Ongoing research at LUCSUS is studying how climate change, both extreme events such as droughts, floods and frosts, and slow-onset effects such as shifting seasonality of production, are impacting the livelihoods of migrant farm workers, with a focus on Turkey and Colombia. Typically, migrant farm workers are among the poorest in the labour market. They are conflict- and displaced people, minorities, children and women, who are marginalised and vulnerable to human rights violations. Often they work in export-oriented agriculture.
"Even though we are dependent on migrant farm workers for our morning coffee, for our glass of wine, for fresh vegetables, and for fruit that we can access all year round, very little research has focused on how they experience climate change beyond climate change extremes," says Sinem Kavak, researcher at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, LUCSUS.
She and her colleagues are exploring climate change as a systemic disruptor to migration routes connected to labour-intensive seasons, in particular hazelnuts in Turkey and coffee in Colombia. The research takes a systemic approach, combining remote sensing with rigorous field-level data collection and value chain analysis. By combining a commodity focus with a political economy approach, they study global trade, governance and responsible consumption through a climate change lens in their analyses of the daily experiences of migrant workers.
Harvest seasons have changed since research began
Since they started the research in 2022, Sinem Kavak and her colleagues have identified a number of salient findings. One is that many migrant farm workers, especially in Turkey, highlight how the harvest season has significantly changed for key commodities across different regions, including hazelnuts. For example, crops either ripen earlier or later, get destroyed by frost or rain, wilt in the heat, or are attacked by pests such as the brown marmorated stink bug, which destroys the hazelnut from within. In 2025, agricultural frost destroyed almost 40% of the hazelnut harvest, seriously declining what an average farm worker family would earn from hazelnut picking.
"What we observe in Turkey is a deepening of poverty and deprivation," says Kavak.
After more than a decade studying migrant farm labour in Turkey, she notes that this year’s crisis revealed something she has not witnessed before: families struggling to meet even their most basic needs, like access to clean drinking water and sanitation.
Consequences are felt on many levels
In Turkey and many other countries, migrant farm workers would typically follow the harvest season for different crops, moving with their families from place to place before returning home, if they can, when the harvest is over.
Farm workers feel the consequences of climate change on many levels: one is the physical impacts of extreme weather, such as heatwaves or floods, where many farm workers experience heatstroke, or whereby their tents get destroyed, leaving them exposed to harsh weather, poor living conditions and sanitation. The other is the impact on livelihoods; with crop failures and changes in harvest seasons, they are less able to plan their movement between areas to harvest crops. The climate also impacts the amount of produce they can collect per day. If the harvest is bad and, for example, coffee beans are smaller and lighter than usual, they must devote more hours to picking one kilogram.
"Our obsession with commodities obscures labour relations and socio-economic consequences for the migrant farmworkers, the light infantry of global food systems," states Kavak.
She emphasises that mapping how climate change impacts farm workers on different levels is key to producing solutions for how to support them. This is a group that is extremely vulnerable worldwide, but yet the whole agricultural system is dependent on.
"Up to now, this group has been sidelined in climate justice and just transition debates. It is imperative that we not only highlight how they are impacted, but also create knowledge on how to help build climate and social justice for these groups, a major objective of the ongoing research project," says Kavak.
Read more about Sinem Kavak’s research in Lund University Research Portal
