Labor and Territory in the New Agriculture in Chile. A Study of Commuters in Three Regions of Central Valley

Abstract

The new agricultural model in Chile involves the separation of agricultural work and rural life. Agriculture workers that urbanize along with non-agrarian workers that live in rural areas configure a new scheme in which daily mobility between work/productive spaces and those of habitat/reproduction conform one of the mechanisms that give form to agrarian territories. Its origin is linked to the new modes of rural-urban relations that have led to the modernization of Chilean agriculture in the last four decades. The commuting variable was of interest for two reasons: on the one hand, regarding the mass, volume and rates of intra-regional mobility; on the other hand, regarding the forms they configure, whether it involves commutes between two rural localities, between rural and urban (both principal and secondary), between urban and rural or between urban and urban. The analysis also considers the categories of agrarian workers, secondary and tertiary activity workers.