On the Social Sustainability of Industrial Agriculture Dependent on Migrant Workers. Romanian Workers in Spain’s Seasonal Agriculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I really appreciate your article.

According to me, the article fully meets the aims of the journal. It deals with the unsustainable patterns of the industrial agri-food production and consumption model at a global scale, based on precariousness and exploitation of migrant work. It especially deals with social sustainability aspects related to employment conditions and migration dynamics. Thus, the article theoretically contributes to the definition of social sustainability by an important insight in relation to the topic of migration and work.
A rich discussion of the literature is followed by the analysis of data derived from an extensive fieldwork carried out in the provinces of Huelva and Lleida in Spain and in the counties of Teleorman and Buzău in Romania.

The article is well written, logically coherent, the English style and language are fine.

Kind regards.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for your comments.

We are very flattered by your interest in our article. It seems that you found it so relevant to the extent that, according to your criteria, it does not require any improvement. Your positive comments encourage us to continue working on the subject and motivate us to go deeper into the issues we worked on in this publication.

Not having found any point that needs to be answered, we have proceeded not to apply any changes.

Thank you again for your time and kindness.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is interesting, it concerns current issues in the area of ​​various disciplines - social sciences, migration research, etc. It is carefully prepared, based on the extensive literature on the subject. The structure is correct. Some detailed comments below:
1. The methodology section needs to be discussed in more detail - the authors emphasize the importance of "qualitative fieldworks". They mention "in-depth interviews" - do they mean IDIs? How these interviews were conducted (e.g. what language and when exactly)? Were they (semi-) structured? What are the additional characteristics of the respondents? How was the qualitative material analyzed (coding, what software)?
2. Content from 118-120 - the authors decided to omit quotes from the interviews; in my opinion, this is the weakness of the article and its impoverishment; The authors also do not enter codes for individual interviews and do not refer to them in the further part of the work (where aggregated research results are referred to). The qualitative material from the interviews is insufficiently used in the main part of the work (or it is not clearly mentioned).
3. Section 3.1.4 is too brief and general in comparison to the preceding sections; it requires development.
4. Content from 197-288 - almost no references.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf