The COVID-19 pandemic publicly exposed the urgent need for seasonal workers in
agriculture. In Germany, an entry ban and entry quotas for seasonal workers at the
beginning of the pandemic caused major attention. Taking this moment as magnifying glass,
the article asks how the German seasonal labour migration regime is constructed (legally)
and legitimated (discursively), and in how far the pandemic has caused shifts within this
regime. Based on an analysis of the legal framework and the political discourse around
seasonal work from 2018 to 2020 in Germany, the seasonal labour migration regime is
characterised as just-in-time migration tailored to the needs of agricultural business,
where migrants’ work force is not absorbed homogenously by precarious labour sectors, but
rather specific groups of migrant workers are integrated differently through mechanisms of
differential inclusion. Within this regime, seasonal workers function as outsourced
labour, whose reproduction costs remain abroad. On the discursive level, the article shows
how seasonal workers are produced as ‘wanted migrants’ by linking seasonal migration to
the interests of the ‘homeland’. While the pandemic momentarily caused some shifts on the
discoursively level, the article shows that the seasonal labour regime as a whole remains
rather stable in time.