Toscana. Mathias Liebing/Flickr. Creative Commons.
Discussing domestic labour in Italy is like writing our country’s history following the Second World War. So I thought it was important to not only relate the conditions of domestic workers in Italy today, but to also pick up the thread of a history that stretches further back in time. I asked Pina to write these lines together with me. Who is Pina? Let’s go back to 1956, when a barely 13-year-old Pina left Arsiè – a mountain village in Belluno province – to go and work in Bologna, the big city. I asked Pina why she went to work in Bologna when she was so young, and she told me:
