0

University Of Kent

Brussels School Of International Studies

PO809: Politics Of Globalisation

Francesca Masoero

Student No: 12909047

MA Candidate in International Political Economy

Word counting (references and foot notes excluded): 5122

Foot notes: 275

The Contemporary, Coloured, “Questione

Meridionale”: A Critical Analysis of the

Oppressive Political Economy in Rural Southern

Italy

2012-2013

1

Introduction

This paper critically analyses the contemporary political economy of

labour migration with a particular focus on the agricultural sector of

Southern Italy (i.e. Campania, Calabria, Puglia and Sicily).

Adopting as an “entry-point for critique”1 the emergence of grievances

among immigrants — the revolt in Rosarno in January 2011 and

subsequent resistant movements2 —, the work primarily investigates which

are the structural sources of domination at their roots and explores how they

triggered the social conflict. Secondly, it attempts to evaluate the potential

role migrants have as agents of social change, asking whether they have

been successful in addressing and reducing the sources of their

oppression.3

I argue firstly that the structural sources of domination enrooting the

revolts are to be found in the contradictory systemic logics and dynamics of

contemporary neoliberal capitalism, systematically institutionalised by the

Italian governments’ political economic arrangements in the last thirty

years.45

1Azmanova. 2012a. Social Justice and Varieties of Capitalism: An Immanent Critique. New Political Economy. 17:4, 445-

463, 450

Azmanova. 2012b. The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgement. Columbia University Press. New York 2Rovelli. 2009. Servi: il Paese Sommerso dei Clandestini al Lavoro. Feltrinelli. Milano

Amnesty International 2012. Exploited Labour: Migrant Workers in Italy’s Agricultural System. Amnesty International.

Angrisano. Il Tempo delle Arance. http://vimeo.com/8812128

Cillo Perocco. 2007. Italy Country Report. Undocumented Worker Transitions. University Of Venice Ca’ Foscari.

Laboratorio di Formazione e Ricerca sull’Immigrazione

Corrado Perrotta. 2012. Migranti che Contano. Percorsi di Mobilità e Confinamenti nell’Agricoltura del Sud Italia. Mondi

Migranti 3/2012

Longhi. 2013. The Immigrant War: A Global Movement against Discrimination and Exploitation. The Policy Press. Bristol

Mangano. 2012. Gli Africani Salveranno Rosarno. www.terrelibere.org/tag/rosarno

NarcoMafie January 2010. Rosarno, xenophobia montata ad arte

NarcoMafie February 2010. Dossier Rosarno

NarcoMafie November 2010. Dossier Caporalato

Pugliese. 2012. Il Lavoro Agricolo Immigrato nel Mezzogiorno e il Caso di Rosarno. Mondi Migranti. 3/2012

Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto. Agromafie e Caporalato: Primo Rapporto. CGIL/FLAI. Edizioni Lariser

Cortese Spanò. 2012. Pluralità e Mutamento dell’Immigrazione nel Mezzogiorno. Mondi Migranti 3/2012 3Azmanova 2012a, 2012b;

Leysens. 2008. The Critical Theory of Robert W. Cox: Fugitive or Guru? Palgrave Macmillan. London 4 My position does not imply the sources of the protests be reduced to structural factors only. Opportunity structures

and triggering factors may well be considered to understand the contingent causes leading to the uprisings. Nonetheless

this is not the focus of this paper, as stated in the research question.

2

Italian migration policies and deregulatory measures best synthesise

the state realignment with capitalist interests and its retreat6 from socio-

economic responsibilities, particularly in the South.7 Grounding the

“structuralisation” of the informal economy and systematically

criminalising specific migrants’ groups, these policies meet agribusiness

systemic imperative of competition as they generate a matrix of unequal

distribution of opportunities to access the labour market and freely move

which socially produces a category of “invisible” and profoundly

commodified non-European, migrant worker characterised by extreme

flexibility and exploitability.8 Moreover, they opened up business

opportunities for criminal actors and Mafias to illicitly and violently profit

from the very commodification of migrants mobility, as best expressed by

the “caporalato” system.9 As visibly conflicting with the neoliberal promises

of a decommodified life and freedom of movement, these oppressive

outcomes also became the precondition for subjects’ insurgence.10

5 Hartmann Honneth. 2006. Paradoxes of Capitalism. Constellations, 13:1;

Azmanova 2010. Capitalism Reorganized: Social Justice after Neo-liberalism. Constellations 17:3; 2012a, 2012b

Offe 1985. Disorganised Capitalism. Polity Press.

Dal Lago. 1999. Non-Persons: the Exclusion of Migrants in a Global Society. IPOC. Milano

Ryner in Bommes Gelles. 2000. Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State. Routledge

Berggren et al. 2007. Irregular Migration, Informal Labour and Community: A Challenge for Europe. Shaker Publishing.

Maastricht

Schierup et al. 2006. Migration, Citizenship and the European Welfare State: A European Dilemma. Oxford University Press.

Oxford 6 Strange. 1996. The Retreat of the State: the Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge University Press.

Cambridge

Strange. 1988. States and Markets. Pinter Publishers. London 7 “South” will refer to the Italian South. In case of alternative use, the term will be connoted differently

Cillo Perocco 2007; Longhi 2013; Mondi Migranti 3/2012; Amnesty International 2012

Ginsborg. 2001. Italy and its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State 1980-2001. Allen Lane The Penguin Press. London

Newell. 2010. The Politics of Italy. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge

Ferrera 2005. Welfare State Reform in Southern Europe. Routledge/EUI Studies. Florence 8 Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000; Cillo Perocco 2007; Dal Lago 1999; Longhi 2013; Pugliese 2012 9 Cillo Perocco 2007; Dal Lago, 1999; Pugliese 2012; NarcoMafie 2010;

Palidda 2010. Il “Discorso” Ambiguo sulle Migrazioni. Mesogea. Messina

Zincone Giovanna. 2006. The Making of Policies: Immigration and Immigrants in Italy. Journal of Ethnic and Migration

Studies, 32:3, 347-375;

Brovia 2008. Sous la Férule des Caporali: les saissonier de la tomate dans la Pouilles. Etudes rurales, 2008/2 n° 182, p. 153-

168. http://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-rurales-2008-2-page-153.htm; Leogrande in Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto. 2013. Agromafie e Caporalato: Primo Rapporto. CGIL/FLAI. Roma. Edizioni

Lariser;

Limoccia et al. 1997. Vite bruciate di terra. Edizioni Gruppo Abele. Torino 10 Azmanova 2012a;

3

Secondly, I argue that migrants’ counter-wars in Southern Italy

should be conceived as exceptional “class” struggles against the direct and

indirect sources of the perceived domination.11 Calling the state back to its

responsibility, the movements complemented demands for socio-economic

justice with political recognition and overall emancipation for the whole

working class and have successfully, even if still partially, reshaped

governance through the institutionalisation of the penal crime of

caporalato.12

The work is divided into two main parts, the first dedicated to the

theoretical analysis, the second focused on the Italian case.

In the theory part a first section presents the theoretical approach

adopted which draws primarily on the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt

School combined with the critical approach developed by Cox.13 The

second section applies the framework with an analysis of major socio-

economic transformations in neoliberal capitalism dynamics and of the

contradictions between its ideological legitimating power and the effective,

uneven stratification of opportunities derived by globalisation and

willingly brought about by capitalist democracies.14

Bauman. 1998. Dentro la Globalizzazione: le Conseguenze sulle Persone [Globalization. The Human Consequences]. Edizioni

LaTerza. Bari 11 Longhi 2013 12 Longhi 2013; Mangano 2012; Leogrande. Agromafie e Caporalato; Saviano 2010; Mondi Migranti 3/2012 13 Azmanova 2012a; 2012b; Leysens 2008;

Cox Sinclair. 1996. Approaches to World Order. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge 14 Azmanova 2010; 2012a; Bauman 1998; Strange 1988; Cox Sinclair 1995; Offe 1985; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000;

Bauman. 2004. Liquid Modernity. Lecture on the ANSE-conference 2004 " Value dilemmas as a challenge in the practice

and concepts of supervision and coaching" in Leiden/The Netherlands

Amoore in Davies Ryner. 2006. Poverty and the Production of World Politics: Unprotected Workers in the Global Political

Economy. Palgrave Macmillan. London (14-36)

Boltanski L. Chiapello E. 2005. The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso

Castles Miller. 2009. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. the Guilford Press. New

York

Schierup et al. 2006. Migration, Citizenship and the European Welfare State: A European Dilemma. Oxford University Press.

Oxford

Crouch Streech 1997. Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: Mapping Convergence and Diversity. Sage Publications. Paris

Davies Ryner. 2006. Poverty and the Production of World Politics: Unprotected Workers in the Global Political Economy.

Palgrave Macmillan. London

Fraser 2012. Marketisation, Social Protection and Emancipation. Frankfurt Lectures.

http://www.normativeorders.net/en/news/headlines/397-frankfurt-lectures-ii-the-crisis-of-capitalism

4

The analysis then moves to the Italian case providing an introductory

overview of the political economy of Southern Italy, defining the main

features of its underdeveloped rural economy, the impact of globalisation

on the sector’s labour demand and the historical and contemporary agency

of the central state in socially producing and reproducing these outcomes.15

A major section is dedicated to show what mobility and labour mean for

migrants in Italy, arguing that migration legislation has become a central

systematic pro-active instrument to shape local social relations, unevenly

integrating worker migrants in the informal rural economy and generating

profoundly contradictory, but systemically needed, outcomes.16 Finally,

emphasis is put on the economic exploitation, socio-political alienation and

violent domination generated by the complementary commodification of

foreign workers life, work and mobility.17

Fraser 2012. Ambivalences of Emancipation. Frankfurt Lectures.

http://www.normativeorders.net/en/news/headlines/397-frankfurt-lectures-ii-the-crisis-of-capitalism

Habermas. 1999. The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalisation. Originally appeared in Blätter für

deutsche und internationale Politik, 425-436

Kienle E. 2010. Global Competitiveness, Erosion of Checks and Balances, and the Demise of Liberal Democracies. Open

Democracy. http://www.opendemocracy.net

Marks et al. 1996. Governance in the European Union. Sage Publications. Paris

Lipschutz R. Rowe JK. 2005. Globalization, Governmentality and Global Politics: Regulation for the Rest of Us?. Routledge.

London

Polanyi K. 1964 [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Time. Beacon Press. Boston

Streech. 2010. Taking Capitalism Seriously: Toward an Institutional Approach to Contemporary Political Economy.

MPIfG Discussion Paper 10 /15. Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne

Streech et al. 2011. Commonalities of Capitalism. Socio-Economic Review 9:1. Oxford Journals 15 Ginsborg 2001; Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto 2013; Pugliese 2012; Cillo Perocco 2007; Longhi 2013; Rovelli 2011;

Palidda 2010; Dal Lago 1999; Zincone 2006; Amnesty International 2012;

Dal Lago 2001. Giovani, Stranieri & Criminali. Manifesto libri. Roma

Pugliese n.a. Indagine sul Lavoro Nero. www.cnel.it

Reyneri 2007. La Vulnerabilità degli Immigrati. In C. Saraceno e A. Brandolini, Disuguaglianze economiche e vulnerabilità in

Italia. Il Mulino. Bologna

King et al. 1995. Labour, Employment and Migration in Southern Europe. Research Paper 19. University of Sussex 16 Pugliese 2012; Cillo Perocco 2007; Longhi 2013;

Allasino et al. n.a. Labour market discrimination against migrant workers in Italy. International Migration Papers 67. ILO.

Geneva

Carchedi et al. n.a. Right Job: Lavoro senza Diritti. Sviluppo Locale Edizioni. Roma

Caritas and Migrantes. Statistical Dossier on Immigration 2012: They are not numbers. 22nd Report. Edizioni Idos, Rome Chaloff 2005. Italy in Jan Niessen, Yongmi Schibel and Cressida Thompson (eds.)

Current Immigration Debates in Europe: A Publication of the European Migration Dialogue. Migration Policy Group

Colombo & Sciortino 2004. Italian immigration: the origins, nature and evolution of

Italy’s migratory systems. Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 9:1, 49-70

Colombo & Sciortino 2001. Stranieri in Italia: Assimilati ed Esclusi. Il Mulino. Bologna 17 DWF [Doctors Without Frontiers/Medici Senza Frontiere]. 2005. I Frutti dell’Ipocrisia: Storie di Chi l’Agricoltura la Fa. Di

Nascosto. Medici Senza Frontiere-Sezione Italia.

5

The last section concludes evaluating the scope of both demands and

results achieved by the civic and ethical reactions of migrants against the

neoliberal oppression perpetrated by the regulatory practices of the Italian

state.

Capitalism as domination: theoretical premises

Frankfurt Critical Theory and Coxian Critical IPE The critical approach developed by the founders of the Frankfurt

School and recently re-proposed by Azmanova, moves from the ontological

observation of a condition of socially-produced injustice, an oppressive,

hence perceived as illegitimate, form of domination which represents the

“entry-point” for a critique with both analytical and emancipative

objectives.18 Similarly, Robert Cox’s historic-dialectic IPE combines the

analysis of global political economic transformations with the normative

aim to evaluate the condition for, and the possibility of social change to be

brought about by the conflict of labour forces.19

Analytically, both assume a structural approach “is not so much an

alternative to the actor-interaction approach as a logical priority to it.”20

That is, to understand the relational power — as Strange would argue21 —

certain actors exercise over others, one needs to identify the systemic

conditions that permit domination. These structural sources are identified

in the logics of capitalism as a system of not just economic, but also social

power which shape both political institutions and social relations.22 Cox

identifies changes in the organisation of capitalist production, hence in the

18 Azmanova 2012a, 449-51; Azmanova 2012b, 45-52; Leysens 2008, 71-88 19 Cox Sinclair 1995, 67, 77-78, 87-91; Leysens 2008, 2, 7 20 Leysens 2008, 9 21 Strange 1988, 24-29 22 Hartmann Honneth 2006, 45; Azmanova 2012a, 449-50; Cox Sinclair 1995, 97-101; Harrod 2006, 44

Fraser. 2012a. Marketisation, Social Protection, Emancipation : Towards a Neo-Polanyian Conception of Capitalist Crisis.

MPE Rod Rev. 1-2

6

configuration of social forces and in the patterns of power relations among

production factors, as a precondition for understanding transformations in

state’s forms and practices, as well as possibilities for the subjects of power

to transform society.23 The analysis of the contemporary dynamics of

neoliberal capitalism represents, therefore, the premise to identify the key

mechanisms and agents that institutionalise oppressive social relations

allowing the continuous reproduction of capitalism systemic needs as well

as domination.24

A further, related aspect central in both Critical Theory (hereafter CT)

and the Coxian approach is to identify the intrinsic

“contradictions”/”paradoxes”25 of contemporary capitalism which both

enable domination and, as particularly developed by CT, the emergence of

a sense of injustice from the subject, which constitutes the premise for

possible emancipative outcomes.26 Contradictions are generated by the

divergence between “ideas”, or in Gramscian terms the hegemonic “world

view”27 that sustains capitalism, and the “reality” of capitalistic-produced

uneven subjugation.28 As a form of modern power, in fact, capitalism has

always developed a symbolic dimension, a “spirit”29 that represents its

legitimate and justificatory ground, allowing it to perpetuate itself without

relying exclusively on the use of force.30 Once and if the discrepancy

between promises and outcomes becomes visible, repressive — still

legitimated — power starts being perceived as oppressive, as a source of

injustice, opening up the potential for a counter-hegemonic reaction.31

23 Cox Sinclair 1995, 85-123; Harrod 2006, 41-42; Amoore 2006, 14-21 24 Azmanova 2012a, 450; Azmanova 2012b, 46-47; Leysens 2008, 79-80 25 Hartmann Honneth 2006; Cox Sinclair 1995, 87; Leysens 2008, 21-22 26 Azmanova 2012a; 2012b; Harrod 2006, 42 27 Cox Sinclair 1995 28 Azmanova 2012b, 49-51; Leysens 2008, 85-87; Cox Sinclair 1995; Amoore in Davis Reyner 2006, 23; Harrod in Davis

Reyner 2006 29 Boltaski Chiapello 2005, 7-8 30 Ibidem; Azmanova 2012b, 22-25, 49-51; Hartmann Honneth 2006; Cox Sinclair 1995, 11, 98-99, 124-141;

Leysens 2008, 22; Masoero 2013, 12 31 Azmanova 2012b, 49-51; Cox Sinclair 1995, 10-11; Leysens 2008, 85-87; Harrod 2006, 47-50

7

Methodologically, this clash is identified by CT adopting an

“immanent critique”, that is by focusing on the subject’s very perception of

the justice or injustice of his material condition.32 Researching “domination

wherever it roots”33 allows a critique of the whole society particularly

useful to overcome the risk, sometimes found in left critique, of reducing

the source of injustice to the sole disembedded market forces.34 Rather it

permits to identify those politico-institutional oppressive forms of social

protection that, while shielding certain segments of society from capitalism

expansion, directly and indirectly generate the oppression of others.35

Recounting this latter aspect is important to fully apply the critical

framework. As mentioned, in fact, a major concern shared by both

approaches is that analysis should be coupled with a practical aim

envisaging liberating outcomes.36 Hence, theory should neither only focus

on understanding causes, nor on evaluating intentions, but rather in

assessing “whether properly contextualised actions are potentially

transformative or supportive of a historical structure.”37 This means to

evaluate whether conflictive, counter-hegemonic movements are successful

in reducing the conditions of domination, looking at the demands they

bring about, their addressees, and assessing whether the conflict unifies or

divides other oppressed social classes and how it impacts society.38

Neoliberal transformations: post-Fordism, deregulating state and the

flexible and mobile spirit of contemporary capitalism Since the Seventies, qualitative and geographical transformations in

the productive structure of western democracies signed the emergence of a

32 Azmanova 2012a, 449; Leysens 2008, 81 33 Fraser 2012a, 10. See also Fraser 2012. Marketisation, Social Protection and Emancipation. Frankfurt Lectures.

http://www.normativeorders.net/en/news/headlines/397-frankfurt-lectures-ii-the-crisis-of-capitalism

Fraser 2012. Ambivalences of Emancipation. Frankfurt Lectures.

http://www.normativeorders.net/en/news/headlines/397-frankfurt-lectures-ii-the-crisis-of-capitalism 34 Ibidem; Fraser 2012b, 5 35 Ibidem, 7-8, 21-22 36 Azmanova 2012b, 47-48; Cox Sinclair, 95, 204-206;Leysens 2008, 26; Fraser 2012b 37 Leysens 2008, 29 38 Ibidem; Fraser 2012a, 11; Cox Sinclair 1995, 105-106; Azmanova 2012a, 450; Boltanski Chiapello 2005

8

new historical variety of capitalism accompanied by a profoundly

renovated spirit.39 The technological revolution set the base for the

abandonment of a Fordist, nationally and manufacture-based organisation

of production, replaced by a post-Fordist, transnational and highly

diversified one.40

In the West, the diffusion of high tech and knowledge based

economies, unleashing potentially infinite quantitatively and qualitatively

flexible employment opportunities, constituted the ground for the

justificatory spirit of neoliberal capitalism centred on the promise of

emancipation from the hierarchical and repressive organisation of life and

work, exasperated by the bureaucratic control of the welfare state, while

prospecting freedom for autonomous, decommodified, self-realisation.41

Geographically, these opportunities appeared global in their reach. The

internationalisation of production and the technologically fostered

compression of space prospected the freedom of movement for people to be

more diffused, rapid and affordable.42 In the global South, neoliberal

capitalism pledged the emancipative opportunity to find better life and

work conditions in the developed North, accelerating the scope of

migratory flows.

Nonetheless, the reality of “flexible” capitalism soon appeared

different as both access to decommodified jobs and free mobility represent

extremely “scarce”43 goods, whose redistribution is the crucial dynamics of

a process of uneven social stratification, defined by structural socio-

economic factors and politically strengthened by the practices of

contemporary capitalist democracies, institutionalising social relations in a

39 Hartmann Honneth 2006, 42-46; Boltanski Chiapello 2005; Azmanova 2010, 390-91; Bauman 2001, 15 40 Cox Sinclair 1995, 196-97, 276-80; Amoore 2007, 17; Strange 1988; Strange 1996, 1-10; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000,

51-53, 59-60; Crouch Streech 1996; Offe 1985; Masoero 2013 41 Azmanova 2010, 390-91; Fraser 2012a, 19-20, Hartmann Honneth 2005, 46; Amoore 2007, 24-5; Ryner in Bommes

Geddes 2000, 62; Kienle 2010, 3 42 Bauman 2001, 4-22; Bommes Geddes 2000, 8; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000, 51-52; Schierup et al. 2006, 1-19 43 Bauman 2001, 4

9

way instrumental for perpetuating the paradoxical functioning of neoliberal

capitalism.44

The internationalisation of production, in fact, primarily meant that

the competition intrinsic to capitalism logics had now to be faced globally,

accelerating the perceived need to find new ways of reducing costs to

maximise profits.45 How this globalised imperative has been pursued was

further shaped by the economic and socio-political consequences generated

by the transformed structure of, and organisation of social forces in post-

Fordist production.46

In fact, under the latter, technology and (particularly financial) capital

have become the essential production factors, while labour has greatly lost

centrality and employment is increasingly delinked from growth.47 This has

been reflected socially in the redistribution of power within the productive

process: while actors controlling or easily accessing the former have been

empowered, labour has been weakened.48 Politically, global changes led to

a great transformation49 of state-market-society relations, altering the

quantity and quality of state intervention in the economy.50

Fordist, labour-centred capitalist democracies were driven by the

need to protect societies, embedding markets externally and internally

securing jobs and redistributing opportunities toward the labour class.51 On

the contrary, globalised capitalism generated an “internationalisation of the

state”,52 as the fundamental systemic requirements of the former - openness

44 Azmanova 2010; Bauman 2001, 4; Palidda 2010, 7-8; Kienle 2010; Cillo Perocco 2007, 5; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000,

52-53; Schierup et al. 1-19 45 Cox Sinclair 1995, 197-98, 276-79; Kienle 2010,2; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000, 61 46 Cox Sinclair 1995, 97-101;

Ryner in Bommes Geddes. 2000. Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State. Routledge 47 Strange 1996, 7-12; Cox Sinclair 1995, 197-98; Azmanova 2012a, 452-54; 48 Cox Sinclair 1995, 109-10, 113; Gallino 2007, 45-56; Strange 1988, 77-78, 107-17; Strange 1996, Azmanova 2012a, 453 49 Polanyi K. 1964 [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Time. Beacon Press. Boston 50 Offe 1985, 6; Strange 1996, 4-7, 12-14; Kienle 2010, 3-4; Azmanova 2010, 392-93; Cox Sinclair 1995; Lipschutz Rowe 2005 51 Cox Sinclair 1995, 192-93; Azmanova 2012a, 454; Banting in Bommes Geddes 2000, 17-18; Ryner in Bommes Geddes

2000, 53-59 52 Cox Sinclair 1995, 107

10

and particularly competitiveness – have also become the primary objectives

to be promoted by the political class.53

The shifted ratio of national economic policies internationally led to

fostering liberalisations and deregulations, actively promoting the dis-

embedment of economic actors and financial markets from socio-economic

priorities.54 As made visible by the last thirty years’ debt crises, the

empowerment of finance has profoundly affected states choices in public

budget allocations, leading to a crisis of the welfare state.55

Increasing constraints on the scope of social redistributive

mechanisms, the emergence of an economic system fostering growth

without necessarily augmenting employment, together with new pro-

business state’s realignment led capitalist democracies to turn away from

their pro-labour redistributive role embracing a workfare one, qualitatively

shaped in the name of enhancing workers flexibility.56 Endorsing flexibility,

abandoning the “boredom”57 of permanent, rigid jobs, as EC hegemonic

discourses constantly argue, is assumed to ensure competitiveness - hence

growth - and employability - hence both workers security and individuals

empowerment in the world economy.58

Nonetheless, while work becomes the sole, but rare, source of

sustenance, hence at the core of the social question, labour flexibilisation

has meant on the one hand that the structural capitalistic needs to gain

competitiveness and profits by downsizing costs has been politically turned

against labour through the crystallisation of economic-shaped power

53 Cox 108-09, 199-200; Kienle 2010, 3-4; Azmanova 2012a, 454; Strange 1988, 81, 110-18; Streeck 1984; Schierup et al. 2006,

48-50; Gallino 2007, 27ff 54 Strange 1996; Cox Sincliar 1995 55 Strange 1988; Cox Sinclair 1995, 194-95; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000, 59-64; Schierup et al. 2006, 1- 18 56 Azmanova 2010, 391; Cox Sinclair 1995, 196-97; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000, 62-64; Crouch Streeck 1996; Schierup et

al. 2006, 48-50 57 Monti Mario, Italian Prime Minister, February 2012. http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2012/02/01/lavoro-monti-posto-

fisso-monotono-sullo-spread-scendera-ancora/188328/ 58 Amoore in Davies Ryner 2007, 24-5; Bauman 2001 ; Berggen et al. ; Schierup et al. 2006; Bommes Geddes 2000;

Gallino 2007. Il Lavoro non è una Merce: Contro la Flessibilità. LaTerza. Roma, 3-9

11

relations institutionalised in labour-related reforms.59 On the other,

flexibility has generated greater insecurity, smaller wages and an overall

downgrading of job conditions, which, hitting particularly weaker

components of the labour force - unskilled workers and migrants – and

separating it along socio-cultural lines, has also produced its fragmentation

and hence subjugation.60

As for “flexibility”, also “mobility” assumes profound different

meanings and consequences when considered from the perspective of well-

educated Westerners or that of African migrants, mirroring the unequal

global stratification of opportunities and costs shaped by transnational and

national redistributions of power.61

Global migration from the South to the North is integrally

consequential to, and instrumental for, economic globalisation, not only in

terms of push factors — generated by the uneven division of international

labour, part and parcel of global economic “integration” —, but also pull

ones.62 In fact, particularly in European welfare states, the uncomfortable

difficulties of conciliating the maintenance of decent quality of jobs and

social provisions, while facing the globally-led and socially constructed

“need” for low-skilled and cheap labour — particularly in less capital

intensive sectors such as agriculture, construction and care — have found

in the employment of temporary worker migrants a fundamental safety

valve.63 European states have therefore played both the role of internal

social protectors and mediated sources of the domination structurally

derived from capitalism logics.64

59 Cox Sinclair 1995; Azmanova 2010, ; Gallino 2007, 57-73 60 Cox Sinclair 1995,196-97; Gallino 2007, 75-85; Ryner in Bommes Geddes. 2000, 59-61; Fraser 2012a; Schierup et al. 2006,

1-3; Castles Miller 2009, 234-35; Palidda 2010; Berggen et al. 2007; Cillo Perocco 2007 61 Bauman 2001; Castles Miller 2009 62 Cox Sinclair 1995, 193- 197; Schierup et al. 2006, 5-6 ; Palidda 2010, 7-10; Castles Miller 2009, 181-205, 222-25, 233-35;

Duffiled 2001; Longhi 2013, 1600 (Kindle version) 63 Castles Miller 2009, 222-25; Schierup et al. 2006, 1-4, 29-30, 48-50; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000 64 Fraser 2012a, 22; Schierup et al. 2006, 1-19; Bommes Gelles 2000, 2

12

The triggering question here is not whether or not migrant workers

access the labour market, but how. While discursively acknowledging the

limits of “zero tolerance” migration policies, European democracies now

prospect “solutions” to the migration “problem” such as that of the “social

citizenship” recently proposed by the EC.65 Nonetheless, while this latter

conceives migrants’ integration as nothing more than a means for

European competitiveness, in practice, and as the case presented will further

show, western countries responded to capitalism demands by creating

limited recruitment and management systems for foreign labour such as

temporary — hence flexible — work schemes, allowing the growth of the

informal economy — an intrinsic consequence of economic deregulation66

— and increasingly contracting-out central public services.67 These

practices have been conducive in structuring highly exploitative working

environments, vital for certain sectors of developed economies, but

strikingly contradicting the cosmopolitan, social protective and responsible

mantle Europe associates with its identity, as well as the freedom of

affordable movement its citizens experience.68 Migrants’ access to jobs,

particularly under which (uneven and costly) conditions they are forced to

do so, is now a central matter of social justice.

65 Schierup et al. 2006, 16-17, 48-50; Bommes Geddes 2000, 10; Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000, 66-68 66 Castles Miller 2009, 238-39; Ginsborg 2001 67 See particularly Schierup et al. 2006, 48-80; Castles Miller 2009, 184-88, 233-44; Banting in Bommes Geddes 2000, 21-22;

Ryner in Bommes Geddes 2000, 66-70 68 Schierup et al. 2006, 5- 17; Bommes Geddes 2000, 8; Banting in Bommes Geddes 2000, 15 ; Ryner in Bommes Geddes

2000, 66-68; Castles Miller 2009, 196-99; Palidda 2010, 7-10, 15-20, 184-88

13

The contradictory outcomes of Italian political economic practices: The lucrative commodification of migrants mobility in Southern Italy

“There is nothing sadder in Italy than telling the history of those working land. Slaves for most of the time under the

Roman Empire, then villains, eventually freed, but subjugated to all kinds of abuses and tyrannies by local masters up

until these very days”69

Stefano Jacini, Results of an Agrarian Inquiry - 1884

The political economy of the south: state’s responsibility in the old

“Southern Question” and in the new ethnicised one The Italian economic structure has historically developed along three

diversified regionally-rooted paths. While the North-West — the

“Industrial Triangle” — developed a strong hard industry since the early

XX century, and in the North-East and Centre — the “Third Italy”70 — a

dynamic, quality-oriented manufacturing pole emerged since the Seventies,

the South has always represented the most backward region of the country,

constantly failing to develop an economic structure able to bring it at the

levels of the other two.71 Rather, its productive structure is characterised on

the one hand by a diffused underground economy, which, as a reflection of

the Italian dualistic model, is here more than double (22.8%) with respect to

the North (8.3%) and the Centre (12.3%).72 On the other, the Southern

economy has remained strongly linked to an unproductive agricultural

sector with low levels of technological modernisation, territorially

fragmented in small-size, often family-run farms specialised in vegetables

or fruits production.73

69 Author’s translation 70 Bagnasco 1977 71 Ginsborg 2001, 13-25; Schierup et al. 2006, 165-66, 176-77; Newell 2010, 253-82; Regini in Crouch Streeck 1996 72 ISTAT 2005 in Cillo Perocco 2007, 24; Pugliese n.a., 8; Ginsborg 2001; Schierup et la. 2006, 165, 177-178; NarcoMafie

2009, 14-34; Cortese Spanò 2012, 37-38; Brovia 2008 73 On the reduced efficacy of state regulation on these latter see Regini in Crouch Streeck 1996, 102-16.

Ginsborg 2001, 20-22, Pugliese 2012, 7-8, 17-18; DWB/MSF 2005, 18-20; Cortese Spanò 2012, 33-34; NarcoMafie 2010, 24-

25; Brovia 2008, 154; Limoccia et al. 1997 21ff

14

The impact of globalisation on the “sleepy and backward” rural

South dramatically reinforced the “need” to employ unskilled and cheap

labour — particularly for the fruit picking stage of production —, as the

integration with global food markets has exposed producers to the

competitive products coming from Northern Africa, to the volatility of food

prices altered by financial speculation and to the pressures on costs’

reduction exercised by multinational corporations specialised in food

processing.74 Labour demand, moreover, is shaped by “technical” features

characterising the productive process. In fact, fruits picking in the region is

structurally dependent from a “just-in-time” labour force, whose flexibility

has to be articulated both in temporal and spatial terms.75 The activity, in

fact, is concentrated within the few days of fruit maturation and is

geographically distributed in different areas according to the local

specialisation in particular cultures.76

Nonetheless, both the past and even more the present political

economies of the central state in the region have greatly affected and

concurred to socially construct and reproduce both Southern Italy economic

patterns and current trends of rural labour demand.77

The historical economic backwardness of the South — the “Southern

Question”78 —, rather than enrooted in structural weaknesses, has been

essentially caused politically by continuous unsatisfactory national

economic plans and by an early retreat of the state, if not even a failure to

ever alter, since the Italian unification, the socio-political and economic

relations in the Southern regions.79 State’s “absence” allowed a vast

proliferation of corruption and clientelism and the increasing collusion, if

74 Ginsborg 2001, 20-25; Pugliese 2012, 7-9; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 104-05; Palidda 2010, 8-9; Cillo Perocco; Mangano 2012,

99-103; Rovelli 2009 75 Pugliese 2012, 9-10; Brovia 2008 76 Rosarno’s area in Calabria, for instance, is a monocultural producer of oranges whose picking time is limited between

December and March. Pugliese 2012, 17; Brovia 2008, 153-154 77 Ginsborg 2001, 21; Castles Miller 2009, 222 78 The term refers to the apparently paradoxical underdevelopment of the South, a core issue of economic justice in Italian

history. 79 Ginsborg 2001, 21-22, 24-26; Limoccia et al. 1997, 22-28

15

not dependency, of local politicians from the economic and political power

of the Mafias.80 While not altering the regional uneven development path,

Mafias could rather extend their domination and greatly profit from their

substitution to the state in the provision of major public services and as being

the primary beneficiaries of the wealth produced in the black market.81

More recently, Italian political economy in the agricultural sector of

the South, has reflected state realignment with capitalist interests and its

retreat from social responsibilities as the historical lack of developmental

intervention has been reinforced by negative deregulatory policies and

complemented with “supply-sided” interventions, in terms of financial

support and, as shown in greater detail below, restructuration of

productive factors power relations through labour market reforms,

particularly through migration laws.82 In fact, while increasingly reducing

the establishment and enforcement of public regulatory mechanisms and

socio-economic standards necessary to contrast the underground economy,

both left and right Italian governments have significantly subsidized —

together with the EU — unproductive small and large agribusinesses,

subsidization which, while redistributing the costs of globalisation on

competing developing countries, hasn’t provided stimulus for

technological improvements that could have reduced production costs.83

This cost reduction has rather been dumped on the new migrant labour

class made available by globalisation.84

The Italian migratory and deregulatory legislation: the institutionalisation of

commodificatory needs

Migration became a salient structural feature of Italian economy and

society since the late Eighties, representing nowadays 10% of the regular

80 Ginsborg 2001, 23-24, 180, 195-205; Schierup et al. 2006, 176ff.; Limoccia et al. 1997, 10 81 Ibidem; NarcoMafie 2010, 26-27

The Italian underground economy is estimated producing wealth equal to 17.7 % of GDP. Cillo Perocco 2007, 24;

Pugliese n.d. 82 Overview provided in Ginsborg 2001, 215-324; Cortese Spanò 2012, 34; Zincone 2006, 348ff 83 Ginsborg 2001, 20-21, 222-24; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 104-05; NarcoMafie 2010, 28-31 84 See Allasino et al. n.a.; Schierup et al. 2006, 163-194; Amnesty International 2012; Caritas and Migrantes 2012; Chercadi

et al. n.a. ; Cillo Perocco 2007 ; Chaloff 2005 ; Colombo Sciortino 2004 ; Dal Lago 1999; King et al. 1995; Limoccia et al.

1997; Reyneri 2007; Rovelli 2011; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 104-05

16

labour force, from which the country will be increasingly dependent noting

its demographic trends.85 Nonetheless, migration has been constantly

treated as either a security matter to be bio-politically governed —an

“immigrant war”86 — or, at best, as an economic necessity.87 Both images

reflect the apparently schizophrenic trends of Italian policies on migration

where repressive attitudes have been coupled to amnesties regularising

“illegal” migrants already present in the country, measures that, together

with temporary labour-related schemes, represent the sole systematised

instruments on the subject.88

Rather than contradictory, these tendencies highlight that migration

laws have been political economic instruments best synthesising the state’s

irresponsible neoliberal turn as they establish a work-related migration

system constantly favouring workers causalisation, dependency and

exploitation through the systematic and institutionalised production of

certain migrant groups as “illegal”/clandestine, hence criminals,89 and the

indirect further “structuralisation” of the informal economy.90

The primary mechanism structuring these outcomes has been the

introduction, since 1990 with the Martelli Law, of a system of quota — the

“flows decree” —, refined by the left government’s 1998 Consolidated Act

on Immigration and further embittered in 2002 by the Berlusconi

government’s Bossi-Fini Law.91 The mechanism establishes each year a

85 For a detailed historical analysis see Sciortino Colombo 2004;

Longhi 2013, 1632; Schierup et al. 2006, 163-64, 174-; Cillo Perocco 2007, 3-4; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 103-106 86 Longhi 2013 87 Cillo Perocco 2007, 4; Longhi 2013, 1597 (Kindle version)

Bommes Gelles 2000, 3 88 Italy has neither an effective asylum policy nor any long or medium term strategy for migrants socio-cultural and

political integration. Cillo Perocco 2007, 7ff; Longhi 2013, 1608ff. (Kindle version); Colombo Sciortino 2004, 54-55;

Amnesty International 2012, 12ff; Zincone 2006, 348ff; Schierup et al. 2006, 164; Reyneri 2007, 1 89 Cillo Perocco 2007, 7 90 Ibidem; Amnesty International 2012, 13ff; Mangano 2012, 54-58; Pugliese n.a., 10-11; Limoccia et al. 1997, 12ff; Cortese

Spanò 2012, 34-35; NarcoMafie 2010, 24-32; Schierup et al. 2006, 176ff; Ginsborg 2001 91 Amnesty International 2012, 12; Zincone 2006, 348ff; Brovia 2008, 155; Cillo Perocco 2007, 7; Longhi 2013, 1608

17

maximum quota for different categories of temporary workers stratified

according to nationality and typology of contract.92

The need for flexible, easily dismissible and cheapened workers, is

firstly achieved legally, through the systematic reservation of higher

percentages of quotas for seasonal — temporary — workers.93 This

responds not only to employers’ demands, but also to state’s budget

“constraints” as this status allows it to avoid the “costs” of integration and

social sustenance.94 Moreover, the system has fragmented the migrant

labour force, as quotas privilege foreign workers whose states signed

specific, and sometimes legally contestable95, arrangements with Italian

governments.96 Furthermore, the overall system indirectly favours migrants

benefiting from EU citizenship and its attached freedom of movement.

Secondly, the flows decree, providing the power to start the

bureaucratic procedures for migrants legal entrance in the country to the

sole employer, has institutionalised the former’s dependency from the

latter and consequently also their vulnerability and potential subjection to

blackmails and exploitation.97

Thirdly, the indirect and systematic push of migrants toward the

informal — hence unprotected as “invisible” — economy results from,

firstly, the constant set of quotas far below the real demand for labour, as

demonstrated by the fact that in 2011 applications for regular employment

were four times higher the level of quotas established that year.98 Secondly,

the 2002 amendment further structuralised this outcome as, establishing

employers should cover the costs of both temporary workers

accommodation and repatriation, it has provided an institutional incentive

92 These are “contractual”, “seasonal” and “self-employed”. Amnesty International 2012, 12; Brovia 2008, 155; Cortese

Spanò 2012, 40-43; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 104-106 93 Cillo Perocco 2007, 10; Longhi 2013, 1691 (Kindle version) 94 Ibidem 95 See the agreements between Berlusconi and Qaddafi, condemned by the European Court of Justice in 2012. See Longhi

2013, 1510-37, 1679ff. (Kindle version) 96 Longhi 2013, 1510-37 (Kindle version) 97 Amnesty International 2012, 13, 17-20; Cillo Perocco 2007, 7; Brovia 2008, 156: Longhi 2013, 1617ff. (Kindle version); 98 Amnesty International 2012, 15; Longhi 2013, 1625 (Kindle version)

18

to circumnavigate legal obligations and to informally hire unregulated

migrants in the black market.99 This resulted, furthermore, from the fact

that the official procedure is extremely slow – up to nine months –, hence it

unrealistically meets the structural demands of the sector.100

The 2002 reform and the “security pack” of 2008 led the process of

criminalisation, exclusion and exploitation to its peak with the introduction

of the penal status of “illegal re-entry” first and the “offence of being

illegal” afterwards, which hit with particular harshness non-European

undocumented migrants.101 While the ratio of these xenophobic measures

was to protect the Italian society from a supposedly massive “invasion” of

“extra-comunitari”, 102 in reality, while not altering the scope of the flows, it

has dramatically strengthened specific categories of migrants’ exposure to

physical, psychological and systemic violence. For instance, if an “illegal”

worker decides to report abuses, he would still be the “loser” as, given his

status, he would become visible as a criminal and pushed back to his

country.

It is worth recounting that the neoliberal turn in Italy, even if

reaching extremes when coming to migration, has been reflected more

generally in the reforms restructuring the labour market as a whole. The

Biagi Law in particular introduced a significant number of “flexible”

solutions — as best expressed by the “rental work” category —, eliminated

the national collective bargaining and fully privatised the national public

agencies for job allocation.103 Overall, while significantly weakening trade

unions power, national (Italian and foreign) labour has been deeply

commodified and transformed in an internally competitive, stratified,

99 Amnesty International 2012, 17-20; Cillo Perocco 2007, 9-10 100 Ibidem; Brovia 2008, 157 101 Longhi 2013, 1664-73 (Kindle version); Cillo Perocco 2007, 9 102 For a more realistic analysis see Pastore et al. 2006. Schengen’s Soft Underbelly? Irregular Migration and Human

Smuggling across Land and Sea Borders to Italy. International Migration, 44 :4 103 Cillo Perocco 2007, 12-13; Gallino 2007, 42-43, 62-73; Limoccia et al. 1997, 12-14, 28-30

19

individualised workforce with one of the highest levels of

flexibility/casualization in Europe.104

The caporalato: a multidimentional commodification of migrants work, life

and mobility The overall contradictory outcomes of Italian neoliberal political

economy in the South have firstly been that, while (particularly) the young

native population could either find protection through the family-based,

patriarchal Italian welfare system105 or migrate to the northern regions to

look for more decent working conditions, foreign workers have been

increasingly subjected to a process of commodifying “ruralisation”.106 The

agricultural labour market in Italy, in fact, overwhelmingly shows patterns

of ethnicisation as irregular and regular migrants represent the major or

sole force employed in the lowest positions — i.e. fruit picking — of a sector

presenting huge levels of informality.107

Secondly, while the new “coloured” peasant class has met the

demand for a subjugated, cheap and flexible workforce “required” by

global competition, the positive and negative intervention of the state has

opened new illicit opportunities to exploit the very international and

internal mobility of migrants, paradoxically causing for the latter a dramatic

increase of the costs to physically move to the “modern” North and to

access its flexible and open labour market.108

Apart from well known phenomena such as human trafficking, a

whole industry has emerged making profit from migrants mobility

towards and within Italy.109 For instance, many cases have been reported

where false “employers” apply for seasonal workers not to effectively hire

104 Limoccia et al. 1997, 13 105 Schierup et al. 2006, 174ff; Ferrera 2005; Ginsborg 2001; Newell 2010, 283-317 106 Pugliese 2012; Cortese Spanò 2012, 31-34; Limoccia et al. 1997, 30ff. 107 Reyneri 2007, 4-5, 1019; Longhi 2013, 1632-57 (Kindle Version); Pugliese n.a.; Allasino et al. n.a. 15; Brovia 2008, 153-

155; Cortese Spanò 2012, 37-40; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 103-05; Ginsborg 2001, 58-65; Schierup et al. 2006, 180-82;

DWB/MSF 2005, 14 108 Palidda 2010, 184 109 NarcoMafie 2009

20

them, but rather to resell the obtained documents to the migrants

themselves.110

Nonetheless, the most striking commodificatory consequence of the

combination of migration and state’s retreat has been the spread, under a

globalised, super-lucrative and violent shape, of an old informal

mechanism of rural workforce recruitment and management, the

caporalato.111 This represents an illegal system of total control over the

lowest strata of the working class provoking an extreme economic

exploitation of migrants’ mobility within the labour market, their socio-

political alienation and violent discrimination.112

The caporalato is a form of gang mastering, an illicit intermediation

perpetrated by the caporale between [complicit] farmers or food

corporations and the workforce, increasingly infiltrated from the Nineties

by Italian and foreign mafias as a consequence of the enormous profits113

the business started generating and the diffused control Italian Mafias have

on agricultural production and redistribution activities in Southern and

Central Italy.114

In the absence of public employment agencies and transportation facilities at

the workplace, the caporale has come to exercise an absolute power over all

aspects of rural migrants life.115 He picks workers from the street at 4am,

stipulates salaries with employers and provides accommodation.116 Wages

are attested at 20-25 euro/day from which the caporale subtracts his

percentage for the service provided, 5 euro for transportation, 3 for food.117

110 Amnesty International 2012, 14; Cortese Spanò 2012, 45-47; Ginsborg 2001, Castles Miller 2009, 201-05; NarcoMafie ; 111 Limoccia et al 1997, 10, 25, 28-31; Brovia 2008, 158-159; Pugliese 2012, 12-14, 17-21; NarcoMafie 2010; Amnesty

International 2012, 14 112 Reyneri 2007, 24-36; Pugliese 2012; NarcoMafie 2009; NarcoMafie 2010; Brovia 2008, 158-59; Longhi 2013; Limoccia et

al 1997; DWB 2005 113 Only in Puglia caporalato is estimated generating 25 billion of euro/year profits. Brovia 2008, 159 114NarcoMafie 2009, 15-36; NarcoMafie 2010, 22-41; Rovelli 2009, 15-16; Mangano 2012, 101-06; Limoccia et al 1997, 9-10,

13; Agromafie e Caporalato; Pugliese 2012; Cortese Spanò 2012; Brovia 2008, 158-59; Longhi 2013, 1562ff (Kindle Version) 115 Ibidem; Limoccia et al. 1997, 32ff., Longhi 2013, 1562ff (Kindle version) 116 Longhi 2013; Brovia 2008; Pugliese 2012, 10-11; Limoccia et al. 1997, 17, 24, 34-38 117 DWB/MSF 2005, 15-18; Brovia 2008; Pugliese 2012, 10-11

21

Migrants total dependency from the caporale’s illicit control is

imposed both through the diffused practice of passport and documents

seizure perpetrated by the latter, by the legal “invisibility” and

“criminality” of migrants which exposes them to continuous blackmails

and finally by the physical violence exercised by the semi-monopolistic

power of the mafias.118

Moreover, managing the workforce along ethnic lines, the system of

caporalato has exasperated the divisions of the new rural class. In fact, its

hierarchisation is not only marked by the distinction between illegal or

irregularly employed, highly exploited migrants and better paid, more

secured and free to move natives. Profound divisions and great

competitiveness have also been observed among different ethnical groups,

particularly between Eastern European (often preferred by employers both

because they accept even smaller salaries and because of their European

citizenship) and African workers.119

Furthermore, migrants legal “invisibility” excludes them from trade

unions protection, from almost any contact with the often complicit local

population, and physically segregates them in “just-in-time” arranged,

ghettoised slums where DWB/MSF reported living conditions worse than

in Sub-Saharan Africa refugee camps.120

Finally, dramatically deteriorated economic conditions caused by the

current crisis, the pervasive oppressive power of Mafias, and the drop in

certain cultivations’ prices, rather than provoking natives’ reaction against

either local and national politicians or the direct agents of domination, the

118 Ibidem; Mangano 2012, 74-78; Limoccia et al. 1997, 17, 34-38 119 Cortese Spanò 2012, 41-42; Pugliese 2012, 10-11; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 107-123; DWB 2005 120 Doctors Without Borders 2005, 11-12; Rovelli 2009, 15; Mangano 2012, 63-68; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 123; Pugliese 2012,

10-11, 21-24; NarcoMafie 2009; Brovia 2008, 161-66

For a visualisation: Angrisano. Il Tempo delle Arance. http://vimeo.com/8812128

22

Mafias, have generated increasing levels of xenophobic, violent behaviour

redirected particularly against African temporary migrant workers.121

Migrants’ ethics against the spirit of capitalism: the double emancipative reaction to capitalism movement

The violent “black hunting”122 breaking out in recent years, causing

serious injuries and even deaths of migrants in certain cases, has

exasperated and made visible for both the direct victims and a significant

minority of the national and international community the contradictions of

neoliberal oppressive domination.123

While Italian workers, though recently subjected to similar, even if

still not comparable, processes of causalisation, flexibilisation and

competition,124 have not so far powerfully reacted, migrants have

responded to their domination demanding justice,125 and bringing about a

civil, counter-hegemonic movement, attempting to address the effective

agents, as well as the juridical, political economic arrangements at the root

of their oppression.126 As stated by Saviano: “The Rosarno riots were not

about attacking the law, but about gaining access to the law.”127

Exploiting their (even if limited) power in the local and national

organisation of production, strikes and campaigns were organised calling

for more decent job conditions and the recognition from Italians of the role

121 Ibidem; Cortese Spanà 2012, 31-32; Mangano 2012, 38-42; NarcoMafie 2010, 42-44; NarcoMafie 2009, 15; Longhi 2013,

1572 (Kindle version) 122 Rovelli 2009, 28-38; NarcoMafie 2010, 22; Mangano 2012, 73-74, Longhi 2013, 1572 123 The perceived contradiction between neoliberal promises and exploitative reality from migrants’ perspective is best

synthesised in the DWB poll where some 5% of sub-Saharan migrants interviewed stated the conditions in Italy were

equal or worse the one faced in the country of origin. DWB 2005, 21

Migrants’ condition is widely perceived as a matter of socio-economic injustice as it is diffusedly equated to a form of

modern slavery. NarcoMafie 2009; 2010; Amnesty International 2012, 28; Mangano 2012, 50; Rovelli 2009; Longhi 2013,

1584 (Kindle version); Carchedi et al. n.a. 124 For a detailed account see Cillo Perocco 2007, 11-13; Gallino 2007 125 Claim reported in Longhi 2013, 1569 (Kindle version) 126 Cillo Perocco 2007, 14-15; Longhi 2013; Cortese Spanò 2012; Corrado Perrotta 2012, 124; Mangano 2012, 45, 69-72;

NarcoMafie 2010,2011 127 Saviano. 2010. “Italy’s African Heroes”. The New York Times

23

migration plays in the national economy. For instance, in Nardò (Puglia)

migrants went on strike with slogans stating: “Today I’m Not Working for

Less than 50 Euros”, while a national movement whose manifesto was “A

Day Without Us” started in 2010.128 Moreover, mobilisations have not been

limited to issues of economic justice, but have been increasingly politicised,

attempting to bring the state back to its responsibilities and raising

demands for civic and political recognition as attested by the campaign

“I’m Italian Too” asking for a change in citizenship criteria away from jus

sanguinis to jus soli.129

The movement has expanded not only qualitatively, but also

quantitatively. While some critics manifested concern for a possible

ethnicitisation of the social conflicts, initiatives were started

complementing migrants’ specific grievances with more general labour-

related demands for greater social protection and reduced precariousness,

hence attempting to recompose the fragmented working class and not

limiting demands to mere access to jobs.130

Attempting to evaluate the overall effects of the uprisings is

complicated by the fact that the process is still underway. It must be

recognised that in various cases (i.e. Rosarno) living and working

conditions have shown little improvements so far.131 Nonetheless, as a

consequence of the political and civic conflict over the existing rules of

socio-economic cooperation, a major result in terms of governance was

obtained in September 2011 and later in August 2012, when the

coordinated efforts of migrants associations, major trade unions

(CGIL/FLAI) and Italian civil organisations brought to the introduction of

128 NarcoMafie 2010b, 22-24; Longhi 2013, 1685 (Kindle version); Leogrande in Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto. 2013.

Agromafie e Caporalato: Primo Rapporto. CGIL/FLAI. Roma. Edizioni Lariser 129 Longhi 2013, 1729-43 (Kindle version) 130 Crogi in Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto. 2013. Agromafie e Caporalato: Primo Rapporto. CGIL/FLAI. Edizioni Lariser,

15; Cillo Perocco 2007, 15; Longhi 2013, 1693, 1750-80, 1836-1901(Kindle version) 131 Corrado Perrotta 2012, 122

24

the crime of caporalato in the Italian penal code (art. 603bis)132 and the

concession of legal residence permit for migrants denouncing their

exploiters.133

Conclusions

This paper, moving from the ontological observation of emerged

grievances among migrant workers in rural Southern Italy, firstly

researched the structural sources at the origin of their domination and

rebellion and tried to understand how they specifically worked. Secondly,

it attempted an evaluation of the potential transformative and liberating

scope of subjects’ reaction.

Adopting a critical political economic perspective and following the

framework provided by the Frankfurt School, it has argued firstly that

these are to be found in the transformed and transformative structural

socio-economic dynamics of neoliberal capitalism and politically best

reflected particularly in Italian migration policies. Secondly it has shown

migrants counter-hegemonic movement has been able to address and, to a

certain extent to alter, the socio-economic and institutionalised sources of

their uneven condition.

The work has firstly dealt in detail with global structural

transformations, sketching them from a general perspective. It argued that,

as a consequence of the redistribution of power towards economic actors,

endorsed by neoliberal states’ practices and derived from structural

changes in the organisation of production, flexible labour and mobility -

two legitimising grounds of neoliberal symbolic power – have paradoxically

become the oppressive means to pursue competitiveness at the expenses of

a re-commodification of (migrant) labour.

Then it has looked more closely at the Italian South, firstly showing

the responsibility of the Italian central state in causing its historical

132 The juridical category is particularly important as it fills the gap in the Italian legislation between the penal offence of

enslavement and the mere irregular employment or tax evasion. Leogrande 2013, 23-24; NarcoMafie 2009 133 Leogrande 2013, 22

25

underdevelopment, and then focusing on the contemporary role

governments’ legislation has played in systematically structuring a new,

coloured “Southern Question”, a socio-economic environment conducive to

migrants’ exploitation, fragmentation and subjugation, generated by their

juridical invisibility and by the enhanced neoliberal state’s retreat.

As a result, not only migrants work, but even their very mobility in

the local labour market has been subjected to a process of deep and violent

recommodification.

Capitalism oppressive movement has always found some form of

resistance from society.

While the latest Italian anti-system electoral results may eventually

indicate the emergence of national refusal towards the existing political

economic order, migrants counter-war has been the almost sole diffused

and organised movement calling the state back to its social responsibility.

Even if not producing radical structural transformations, as Gramsci

suggested: “the history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmented

and episodic.”134

Indeed, as stated by a commentator: “Africans will save

Rosarno...and probably also Italy.”135

134 Gramsci 1971, 54–55 135 Mangano 2012 (author’s translation)

26

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