Agricultural Day Laborers in Southern Italy: Forms of Mobility and Resistance

Abstract

This article analyzes migrant agricultural labor in southern Italy, focusing on migrants from Burkina Faso and Romania laboring in the regions of Puglia and Basilicata. The argument underlines the connections between mobility, willingness to work for low wages, and conflict in the workplace. The essay investigates, firstly, why migrants are willing to work for lower wages than established in collective agreements. Migrants’ deportability explains the situation to some extent, but it does not answer the question completely; EU citizens (such as Romanians) who are not deportable also settle for lower salaries. Other factors include competition within the job market between day laborers from different countries and with different legal statuses, the segregation of seasonal workers from the local population, and the impact of the caporalato (gang-master) system, an illegal form of mediation and labor organization. The essay analyzes, secondly, the conflicts instigated by the day laborers, from clashes in the workplace to larger-scale mobilizations, including the biggest strike ever organized by foreign day laborers in Italy, which took place in Nardò in 2011; in this instance, breaking the migrants’ segregation was a key factor. Paradoxically, Romanians, who enjoy greater freedom of movement, seem less willing to engage in clashes in the workplace than Burkinabés (natives of Burkina Faso), despite the latter’s more precarious legal position. The research for this article was conducted between 2010 and 2013, both through interviews with day laborers, labor contractors, agricultural business owners, and expert witnesses and through an ethnographic study of migrant accommodations.

International Labour Migration and Food Production in Rural Europe: A Review of the Evidence

“…Examples from the literature of temporary and/or seasonal food industry labourers taking collective action include: The ‘Codetras’ network in Farnce: the Collectif de Défense des Travailleurs Etrangers Saisonniers dans l’ Agriculture (Collective for the Defence of Foreign Agricultural Workers) (Sippel and Gertel , pp. 45–7). The El Ejido protest in Spain: this is the Spanish town from where Moroccan workers went on strike in response to anti‐immigrant riots and sentiment in 2000 (Veiga ) The SOC union in Spain: the establishment of the Sindicato de Obreros del Campo union made up of day labourers based in Andalusia, Spain (Caruso , p. 288). The unofficial Nardò strike in Italy: this is a small agricultural town in the Apulia region of South‐east Italy where, in 2011, there was a strike in response to exploitative conditions and the caporale (gangmaster) system (Perrotta ). The Swedish berry picker marches, and associated union action, of 2010 (Woolfson et al . , pp.…”

“…What we do know is that there is often a reluctance to see migrant workers integrate into rural areas, in some cases resulting in social exclusion and poor living and working conditions. Migrants in Southern Italy, for instance ‘inhabit abandoned houses or large “ghettos” and slums in rural areas’ (Perrotta , p. 59; see also Perrotta , pp. 198–9).…”

Recruitment infrastructure within the agricultural and agrifood sector: Post-Soviet and neocolonial entanglements between “Eastern” and “Western” Europe

“…So, the temporary recruitment programs that exist in the European agricultural sector today represent an infrastructure that stems back to the Second World War. Current labor relations in the European agricultural sector are further based on informal recruitment such as the caporale system in Southern Italy that has also existed for decades (Perrotta and Sacchetto 2014;Perrotta 2015). Most of the workers in these regions in the last years Social Change Review ▪ Winter 2020 ▪ Vol.…”

Producing Cheap Food and Labour: Migrations and Agriculture in the Capitalistic World-Ecology

“…Agriculture has traditionally been one of the most deregulated sectors in the economies of the global north in which black work and irregularity have tended to have a more significant effect than in other sectors of the economy and in which a certain logic of exploitation has survived over time (Avallone 2013;Izcara Palacios and Rubio 2004;Izcara Palacios 2009). This logic is due to many factors, among which some elements stand out: on the one hand the persistence of entrenched informal intermediation systems such as the caporalato system in southern Italy (Brovia 2008;Perrotta 2015); on the other hand, the difficulties involved in the inspection of scattered and isolated fields. These difficulties generate a sense of impunity for businessmen in places in which worker mobility is Of course, the self-regulating margin that each global enclave occupies is variable, even within the same state, because the formation of each local market depends upon both geopolitical and legal factors and on the type of production or the weight of certain entrenched structures present in each territory.…”