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According to a recent Eurostat report, Italy is Europe’s third largest agricultural producer, just after Germany and France, with an income of around €43 billion and almost a million agricultural workers. At first glance, this sounds like a success story. But is it really?
Contemporary Italian agriculture also involves physical violence, illegal labour recruitment through the gang-master system of caporalato, ‘slavery-like’ working conditions for some workers, passport confiscation, social and physical isolation, disease and even death. It is populated by migrants from sub-Saharan and Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, and Indian Punjab. Yet these aren’t just ‘irregular’ or ‘clandestine’ migrants in search of a job. Since 2008, when the global economic crisis started, refugees, asylum seekers, documented migrants and in some cases Italian citizens have all become involved. They work in poor conditions, without regular contracts, and for poor wages, to produce cheap food to be sold at the lowest price in the supermarket. And although some call these workers ‘invisible’ because of their informality, in reality it is hard for 400,000 people to be hidden from view.
