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Bediz Yilmaz, IMIS / Université de Onasbruck &#38; Ulas Bayraktar, Association MAYA&#38; Kültürhane MersinThispaper, as the title reveals, is an attempt to decipher the complex relationsthat are taking place and constantly being shaped in the agricultural zones ofa mid-sized city of southern Turkey at the Mediterranean coast, Mersin, and therole that forced migration plays in this landscape.Thiscity is in the Çukurova Plain which hosts 30% of agricultural employment alongtwo main lines: citrus production and greenhouse vegetable and fruitcultivation (mainly under plastic cover). The locality, namely Adanalıoğlu, whichthis paper is about, is situated at the centre of the greenhouse productionzone. The paper is based on more than two years of observant participation tohumanitarian activities for Syrian refugees in the locality, the registers wetook during our education support activity and the interviews conducted withnearly 40 persons from different groups.Thecomplexity of the locality is multilayered: first, the zone is the homeland ofthe Arab Alevite population, an ethnico-confessional minority settled in theregion 150 years ago for agricultural purposes; second, the production in thezone is done either by the small scale farmers themselves or by the seasonallabourers when it concerns the bigger lands; third, the seasonal migrants havetraditionally been Kurds and Arabs (both Sunnite) of Turkish nationality, temporarilyresiding in tent settlements; fourth, these groups are gradually and partly replacedsince 5 years by the Syrian workforce (Sunnite) who massively settled in thecity of Mersin; fifth, the Syrians either live in the tent settlements whenthey work for larger lands on a daily payment or in the garden-houses to takecare of the plot of one family and receive a monthly salary; sixth, there isboth a tangible tension between the local Arab Alevite population and theSyrian workers which had already broken into clashes to the extent that sometent settlements are evacuated; seventh, the Syrians in the garden housesremain quasi-untouched because their employers acted as guarantors; eighth, theintermediaries (i.e. the caporali)hold the control of the migrant workers’ lives so as not to leave them thetiniest subjectivity; ninth, the relation of the big landowner and the familyfarmer to the migrant workforce is completely different, for the first it isthe exploitable cheap and docile labour needed for global competition andprofit-making whereas the second is in a relation of mutual dependence forsurvival; and tenth, these relations take place in a total informality, stateofficers only intervene when there is a serious clash, otherwise totally ignorethe ongoing forced labour practices and violations of human rights aboutminorities, decent labour, decent livelihood, refugees, education and&#160; health.In thispaper, hence, I will try to understand the dynamics of this complexity aroundthe basic arguments that the role of the migrant worker is not one and same forall relations of production, and, even in an environment of a given hostilitybetween the local and migrant groups, the market forces can oblige the partiesto a mutual dependence and constrained cohabitation.https://soundcloud.com/lest_umr7317/dependencies-and-tensions-migrant-workforce-in-a-southern-turkish-city?in=lest_umr7317/sets/migration-agriculture-en