The Knowledge Centre for Migration and Demography (KCMD) is a European Commission initiative on better knowledge management for sound EU policy making. The KCMD aims to be the point of reference to support the work of Commission services and Member States on migration and related issues.

The KCMD has recently published a report on migrants living in rural areas and working in agriculture. Despite representing a relatively small group if compared to migrants in cities, they can have a fundamental role in sustaining certain types of agricultural production in constant demand of temporary work.

At the same time, they tend to fare worse on most indicators of integration not only in respect of natives but also in respect of migrants living in cities and towns.

Given these characteristics, migrants in rural areas, both EU mobile citizens and from Third Countries, would deserve special attention when designing integration policies.

However, three main factors pose particular challenges in this respect:

• the temporary nature and often irregular nature of the work of migrants in agriculture makes it more difficult to quantify needs and target intervention;
• the territorial specificity would require local and regional rather than nation-wide intervention;
• local authorities may be less equipped to respond to a rapid onset of a large number of immigrants with dedicated integration services.