The Covid-19 pandemic altered not only the ways in which we lived but also the ways in which states defined the very notion of “security.” In Finland, as across Europe, closed borders became the emblem of national safety. Yet paradoxically, amid these closures, doors were forced open for one particular group: migrant farm workers. When Ukrainian seasonal labourers boarded charter flights to Finland in April 2020, it was not a gesture of solidarity but a stark admission of dependency. Suddenly, the migrant workers who were often seen as outsiders became rebranded as “critical workers,” essential to the functioning of national life.
This inversion highlights a long-standing contradiction in European labour markets. Migrant labour is typically treated as expendable—always available in moments of crisis but quickly disposable when demand declines. However, the Finnish case reveals that seasonal agricultural workers resemble less a “reserve army of labour” and more a “regular army of labour,” indispensable for the very continuity of food production. In the face of closed borders, the hidden scaffolding of Finland’s agricultural economy became glaringly visible.
The Economics of Exploitation
The work of Ukrainian migrants on Finnish farms offers a case study in how exploitation is normalized under the guise of national security. Officially, seasonal workers are promised 8.57 euros an hour, yet many receive only 5.57 to 6.50 euros, often without proper overtime compensation despite working 10 to 14 hours a day. At the height of summer, reports suggest that some laboured 20-hour days to meet harvest quotas. Employers manipulate accounting by dividing total wages by the official hourly rate, thereby falsifying working hours on paper while concealing underpayment.
In addition to long hours and low wages, migrants bear the financial burden of their employment. Many must cover travel expenses, accommodation, and recruitment fees charged by intermediaries in Ukraine—sometimes as high as 1,500 euros for a three-month farm contract. To afford these costs, workers frequently take loans, entering cycles of debt even before setting foot in Finland. What appears in Finnish supermarkets as a box of locally harvested berries often rests on the shoulders of indebted workers whose labour remains invisible in national narratives of self-sufficiency.
Labour Rights and Structural Vulnerability
What is most striking in these accounts is not only the scale of exploitation but also the fragility of workers’ capacity to resist. Seasonal migrants often depend on the goodwill of individual farmers, as contracts and visas tie their legal status directly to their employers. This dependency discourages workers from voicing grievances. Even when they are aware of rights violations, the remoteness of farms, the absence of effective reporting channels, and the fear of losing future employment all conspire to silence dissent.
The pandemic underscored this vulnerability by transforming labour into a matter of “national security.” Workers who sustained Finland’s food system during lockdown were simultaneously denied robust protections. As Marx once wrote, under capitalism the worker becomes “personified labour-time”—and nowhere is this more apparent than in the fields where bathroom breaks are resented as wasted minutes of productivity.
Migration, Class, and Health
The plight of Ukrainian farm workers also reflects broader dynamics of class and race in Finland’s labour market. During the pandemic, non-white and migrant populations were disproportionately exposed to the virus, not due to biological vulnerability but because their labour anchored the infrastructure of daily life: public transport, cleaning, caregiving, and food production. In this sense, the risks of Covid-19 were stratified along class lines, with migrant labourers shouldering a disproportionate share of exposure to sustain the collective whole.
The Ukrainian case also illuminates how sending states, such as Ukraine, seek to manage their labour force. In 2020, Kyiv briefly banned its citizens from leaving for seasonal work, hoping to retain workers for the domestic economy. Yet remittances—constituting around 11% of Ukraine’s GDP—demonstrate how deeply entwined migrant labour is with national survival. Workers are not only exporting labour but also financing their homeland, becoming what some refer to as “investors” in Ukraine’s economic stability.
The Political Moment of Recognition
The coronavirus crisis revealed something long known but rarely admitted: Finland’s agricultural sector is structurally dependent on migrant workers, and this dependency is not temporary but permanent. Calls to replace Ukrainians with Finnish labourers were quickly undermined by the reality that domestic workers were neither willing nor trained to take on such physically demanding jobs for such low pay. The narrative of unskilled labour collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.
This moment presents a political opening. If Finland can frame migrant labour as essential to national security, then it cannot simultaneously deny these workers fundamental labour rights. The demand is not radical but straightforward: respect existing laws on wages, overtime, and rest breaks, and ensure direct communication channels between workers and employers without predatory intermediaries. To continue reaping the benefits of migrant labour while denying protections is to treat these workers as simultaneously indispensable and disposable.
Toward a Just Future of Work
The question now is whether this recognition will fade as borders reopen and the urgency of crisis subsides. If the pandemic taught us anything, it is that the stability of food systems rests not on abstract notions of national self-sufficiency but on the hands of migrant workers who cross borders under precarious conditions. The challenge is to transform this fleeting visibility into lasting reform.
Will Finland and other European states treat migrant workers as equal participants in society, deserving of rights and protections, or will they continue to mask exploitation under the rhetoric of “security of supply”? The future of European agriculture—and indeed, of democratic credibility in labour rights—depends on the answer.
