Destruction by fire of the Gran Ghetto in Puglia. Liminal geographies. Some rights reserved.…we cannot tell from contemplation of any object in the supermarket what conditions lay behind its production … We can take our daily breakfast without a thought for the myriad people who engaged in its production. All traces of exploitation are obliterated in the object (there are no finger marks of exploitation in the daily bread)’. (D Harvey, 1989)
March 3, 2017. Early in the morning in the working camp known as the ‘Great Ghetto’, a shanty town in the lowlands of the Italian Apulia region, two young Malian agricultural labourers, Mamadou Konate and Nouhou Doumbia lost their lives in the fire that had raged through the night in huts made of plastic, wooden and cardboard.
The Gran Ghetto has for more than two decades ‘housed’ hundreds of migrant workers under modern slave-like conditions as daily farm labourers in nearby fields. A number that in the tomato harvesting season reaches thousands, adds to the hundreds thousands of migrants exploited in the countryside. Cheap and underpaid labour contributes to making Italy’s agricultural sector (but not only that sector) internationally competitive on the global markets.
