There are about 500,000 migrant workers in Italy’s agricultural sector, around half of its total workforce. According to the research institute Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto, which investigates workers’ conditions in the agricultural sector, 80% of those without contracts are migrant workers. More than 130,000 of these labourers work in extremely vulnerable conditions, and they are at further risk when illegally employed by mafia-like organisations. This phenomenon is called “caporalato,” a form of illegal hiring and exploitation of manpower through an intermediary. It is widespread across Italy and particularly frequent in the agricultural and farm sector. During non-harvest periods, migrant workers’ salaries are around two to four Euros per hour, compared to Italy’s standard agricultural minimum wage of just over seven Euros per hour. 

Most migrant workers’ salaries are paid on a piecework basis or per task, which is illegal in Italy when it constitutes a worker’s only pay. Their working hours tend to be between eight and fourteen hours per day, seven days a week, but many workers are paid for less time than actually worked. According to a report issued in 2018 by the Italian trade union for farmers, Flai Cgil, and the above mentioned research institute Placido Rizzotto, some workers were paid less than two Euros per hour and had to pay for water, transportation to the fields, and lunch every day. Urmila Bhoola, the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, reported that the “caporalato” system consists both of labour brokers who supply irregular and regular migrants to farms and a network of criminal syndicates and mafia groups who benefit from the exploitation of the slavery-like conditions of migrant workers.

INHUMANE WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS

According to Bhoola’s report, most of the workers are from Sub-Saharan Africa. In the province of Latina, though, about 30,000 Sikh workers from India are subjected to extreme forms of coercion, including being forced to take performance-enhancing drugs, which are prohibited by their religion. Workers are often victims of physical assault and sexual violence, withholding of wages and documents, and threats to their families if they refuse to work. 

Labourers are required to pay rent in abandoned facilities or in remote and less-frequented hotels. Many of them live in “tendopoli” (towns of tents and shacks) in unsafe conditions and lacking basic facilities like water and electricity. An Oxfam case study in 2018 reveals endemic economic exploitation of farm workers who supply fruit and vegetables in supermarkets across the country and Europe, a reality highlighted by COVID-19, which caused a migrant workers’ shortage in the agricultural fields across the European Union. In fact, this is not only an Italian problem. Spain is one of the largest producers of fruits and vegetables in the world, and its southern region of Almeria is known for what is called the “sea of plastic”—thousands of hectares covered with plastic tents and greenhouses where migrant workers live. The BBC spent months investigating allegations of exploitation here, which are very similar to those in Italy. 

THE MURDER OF SOUMAYLA SACKO 

In June 2018, an agricultural worker, Soumayla Sacko, was murdered in Italy’s southern Calabria region while gathering materials from an abandoned factory to help build tents and shacks where he and his co-workers lived. The assailant, charged of homicide, has been put in custody a few days later with a pre-trial detention order but the trial has not started yet. A migrant from Mali who had a temporary permit to stay in Italy, which was tied to his work, Sacko was also an active trade unionist who fought for workers’ rights in the fields. He lived in the “tendopoli” of San Ferdinando, where all those living in the tents and shacks are migrant labourers living separately from the rest of the population. The exploitation on the farms and the inhuman living conditions have segregated migrant workers from society, creating ghettos where workers don’t have healthcare or institutional labour protection. Sacko’s murder shed light on a wider normalisation of racism, openly expressed even through physical violence, and on the deaths of migrant labourers in Italy due to unbearable working and living conditions. 

Giulia holds an Italian Law MA and has gained experience in promoting Human Rights through volunteering with The European Law Student Association (ELSA). She has been involved in counselling related to residency permits, educational activities for marginalised young people, and in anti-discrimination issues. Her passion is Migration Law, International Law and Human Rights Law, with particular attention to Children and Women's Rights. She currently works as a Lead in a FinTech company in Estonia and holds a conditional offer for the GDL, starting in September 2020.

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