Working with flowers in Colombia: The ‘lucky chance’?

SynopsisThis article is based on research on the cut-flower industry in Colombia. A number of workers, supervisors and owners who had entered the sector at different points in time reported on the circumstances that had brought them to this work. Although the move was forced by family crises and other catastrophes, there was little evidence among the women workers of any regret for the rural past. The work with flowers brought an individual wage, albeit small, and some degree of independence.The supervisors measured their work against earlier hopes and expectations. They saw their situation as narrowly circumscribed, with no prospect of advance and little to separate them from the workers.What was perceived as ‘chances’ were actually created through broader structural transformations, and the ability to ‘profit’ by them depended on holdings of, in Pierre Bourdieu's terms, cultural, social and economic capital, structured along the lines of class, gender and generation.