The restructuring of Italian agriculture and its impact upon capital–labour relations: Labour contracting and exploitation in the fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain of the Lazio Region, Central Italy (original) (raw)
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DISSE Working Papers_ La Sapienza University, 2019
As in many other countries in the world, the Italian agricultural sector has witnessed a process of deep restructuring with the expansion of export-oriented production and the rise of global value chains in the agrifood sector. This paper argues that the new way of producing and delivering food, coupled with country-specific conditions, such as the structure of Italian agrarian capital, have created the room for new forms of exploitation, such as those based on seasonal migrant labour through practices of labour contracting and that sometimes amount to forms of 'modern slavery'. These new forms of exploitation are far from being exceptional. Although often associated with the territory control of Mafia organizations, this article argues that migrant labour exploitation through the labour contracting system is an integral feature of the contemporary agricultural production in Italy. This is shown through the case study of the fruit and vegetable production in the south area of Lazio region where firms can rely, through the role of labour contractors, on cheap and disposable migrant labour, especially Indian workers.
Italy is the largest producer of industrial tomatoes in Europe and third in the world. In the two main areas of production, in the North and South of the country, the cultivation is developed in very different ways. In northern Italy, the harvest has been completely mechanized since the early 1990s; in the South, a large percentage of tomatoes continues to be manually harvested by foreign labourers from sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe, whose living and working conditions are among the worst in Europe. The chapter analyses the historical, geographical, and sociological reasons of these differences, as well as their consequences. It is argued that the production chains of both North and South have become retailer-driven; nonetheless, the two areas have responded to retailer power in very different ways. In northern Italy, a process of “districtualization” has coordinated the interests of farmers and canneries; in southern Italy the processing plants unload the retailers’ pressures onto the farms, which, in turn, offload them onto migrant labourers. As a consequence, while in the North a corporate concentration process within both the canning sector and producing farms has risen, in the South the use of migrant workers in exploitative conditions has contributed to delaying the disappearance of small tomato growers and processors. Keywords: Retailer-driven agri-food chain; retailer-driven supply chain; manual harvesters; industrial district; cannery; Emilia-Romagna; Puglia; Basilicata; Campania.
The network contract: an instrument to contrast labour exploitation in agriculture. The Italian case
Italian Labour Law E-Journal, 2021
The Italian context. 2. The instruments to prevent and combat gangmastering and labor exploitation. In search of a "fair price" for the sale of agro-food products. 2.1. Unfair trade practices in the supply chain and illegal gangmaster trade. 3. The crime of illegal intermediation and labor exploitation. 4. The Quality Agriculture Work Network. 5. Network contracts in agriculture. 6. The advantages of using the network contract as a way of regulating competition over working conditions in the supply chain: joint-recruitment and co-employment 1. Introduction. The Italian context. + In Italy can be found widespread forms of labour exploitation and illegally recruiting labour for a long time, just think that the first law that introduce tools to fight abuses perpetrated by gangmaster dates to the early last century. What changed over the years were, above all, the victims of this silent drama that rages in the countryside: in the past they are Vincenzo Cangemi and Roberto Pettinelli were both, at the time of writing, research fellows at the Law Faculty of Trento. This article has been submitted to a double-blind peer review process. + The essay is the result of a common discussion; however, the author of § 1, 3, 4 and 5 is Vincenzo Cangemi, the author of § 2 and 2.1 is Roberto Pettinelli. The § 6 has been the object of joint writing. It is part of the project "FARM-Responsible Agriculture Chainst Farm" (CUP B38D19004710007) and was presented in the XXIII ISLSSL World Congress (Challenges to labour law and social security systems) held in Lima between 7 and 10
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Immigrants play a crucial role in the development of capital-intensive, industrialized ag-riculture and often find themselves living in derelict, stigmatized neighborhoods where they become not only objects of fear and exclusion but also objects of racketeering, exploitation, and profit-making dynamics. Global trends and migration flows trigger new concerns among policymakers who realize that food production is not only a rural issue. Discussing the Italian case of the Saluzzo Fruit District and the Prima Accoglienza Stagionali (PAS, First Reception of Seasonal Workers) project, this contribution focuses on the role that cities as institutional complexes can have in preventing illegal recruit-ment and exploitation of labor in agriculture as well as improving the living conditions of migrant field hands through the activation of urban–rural synergies for multifactor and multilevel cooperation. Results offer an overview of the potentiality of the abandonment of an emergency approach limited to the sole provision of shelters to migrant workers for adopting a more structured and holistic approach to territorial planning.KEYWORDSillegal labor intermediation, labor exploitation, migrant labor, urban–rural linksThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.© 2023 The Authors. City & Society published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association.
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The paper analyses the role of " reproductive labour ", and particularly of sexual labour, in relation to global agro-industrial commodity chains, with specific reference to the district of Foggia, in southeastern Italy. Drawing on a critical appraisal of world-system theory through the lens of gender, the article looks at different arrangements in the sexual division of labour and in (transnational) household management. In particular, it contrasts the organisation of West-African shantytowns to eastern-European settlements. The paper also points to the potential for non-commodified forms of care labour to foster solidarity among workers and support their struggles for better working and living conditions, which however are usually blind to the gendered dimensions of exploitation. Given this ambivalence of care labour, as both a form of exploitation and as a potentially subversive practice, and the importance of acknowledging the interrelation between global care chains and the production of agricultural commodities, the article suggests it is more appropriate to speak of " care-commodity chains. " The article also argues that such relationships and ambivalences question any straightforward distinction between " productive " and " reproductive " spheres.