Luigi Galiazzo/flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Over the last few years, issues of labour subcontracting and forced labour in the Italian agricultural sector have gained significant traction, especially after the shocking deaths of agrarian workers were brought to light in 2015. Discussions around these events have been dominated by the view that labour subcontracting and extreme labour exploitation somehow deviate from standard labour relations and are instead related to illegal activities perpetrated either by networks of organised crime – the (in-)famous Italian Mafia – or by a few 'bad apple' employers, infecting the otherwise smooth functioning of the economic system. This perspective has had major policy repercussions, successfully obscuring one inescapable reality: labour subcontracting and forced labour, far from being exceptional, are part and parcel of contemporary agricultural production in Italy.
Discourses and policy implications
In 2010, the so-called ‘facts of Rosarno’ marked an important turning point in Italy as the moment when appalling labour conditions for farmworkers began receiving attention in media and policy circles. This was after a violent riot erupted in a little town in southern Italy between migrants – that were mostly employed in the surrounding fields – and the local population, following a racist attack perpetrated against two men from Togo. Crucially, this outbreak prompted the media and policymakers to increasingly invoke ‘slavery’ or ‘coercion’ in their narrative of the caporalato system. The contemporary significance of caporalato refers to the practice of 'illegally' recruiting and coercing workers, especially immigrants, by caporale (gangmasters).
