Governing agricultural migrant workers as an “emergency”: converging approaches in Northern and Southern Italian rural towns
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Author | Michela Semprebon,Roberta Marzorati,Anna Mary Garrapa |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12390 |
Governing agricultural migrant workers as an
“emergency”: converging approaches in
Northern and Southern Italian rural towns
Michela Semprebon*, Roberta Marzorati** and Anna Mary Garrapa***
ABSTRACT
Rosarno and Sermide are two small towns in Southern and Northern Italy, which are both part
of a manual-labour circuit of agricultural work. The article presents an analysis of governance
structures in these towns and, by bringing together the literature on migrants’agricultural
labour and local policy-making, explores how public actors address migrant seasonal agricul-
tural workers’needs to investigate outcomes of inclusion and exclusion. The article builds on
qualitative research, conducted between 2012 and 2015, to propose a North-South intra-
country comparison of local policy-making. The findings show the emergency nature of local
administrations’approaches and the critical role of civil society. They highlight the extent to
which responses diverge or converge in means and scale, while stressing their convergence in
scope to limit migrants’visibility.
INTRODUCTION
Agricultural work is feeding various migrants’manual-labour circuits across Italy (and Europe) to
include areas that call for a large workforce for fruit-vegetable harvesting. No reliable quantitative
estimates are available to describe them, nor on the one including Rosarno and Sermide, the two
small towns on which this article focuses.
1
We refer to their circuit based on evidence by academic, media and activists’investigations pub-
lished in Italy and Europe, as will be explained. Additionally, we draw from interviewees reporting
on a Moroccan circuit (comprising mainly young documented and undocumented single men)
intersecting the Southern region of Calabria, in winter, and the Northern region of Lombardy, in
summer.
Moroccans gain entry into this Northern-Southern circuit after arriving in Italy, either through
support by their community networks or through the Italian quota system. The latter provides a
channel for farmers in each province to recruit foreign workers. Agriculture offers job opportunities
for many migrants, especially when they first arrive and search for a job and a residence permit.
Some migrants work in Calabria for the winter, harvesting, then move elsewhere to find other sea-
sonal agricultural jobs, for example in Lombardy; some return to their country of origin for part of
the year; others have gradually settled in Italy on a more permanent basis.
* University IUAV, Venice
** University Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago de Chile
*** Universidad Aut
onoma de M
exico
doi: 10.1111/imig.12390
©2017 The Authors
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (6) 2017
ISS N 00 20- 7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Against this background, the article will investigate the extent to which local administrations
have enacted any response to deal with seasonal migrant workers. By doing so, it will provide a
contribution to the academic literature, which has offered little evidence on the topic. By means of
a comparative analysis between the Southern Italian town of Rosarno and the Northern Italian town
of Sermide, the article will discuss the extent to which their administrative approaches diverge or
converge in scale and means. while clearly converging in scope. In particular, our research will
show how divergence emerges in association with the mobilization of different actors, at different
scales and with different policy instruments, depending on the number of immigrant workers
involved, the spread and severity of related issues and the intensity of (potential and actual) con-
flicts with the local population. At the same time, the research will point to convergence, in face of
a wider Italian context, characterized by a poorly coordinated and scarcely effective multi-level
governance of migration, as well as a crucial role of local policy networks (Campomori and Capo-
nio, 2013) and civil society actors (Zincone, 2011). Convergence will be also stressed in their
scope for action. In fact, both administrations have largely acted to limit the visibility of seasonal
migrant agricultural workers (and their precarious living and working conditions), in an effort to
address natives’perception of migrants as a threat to public order, while (unintentionally) contribut-
ing to “hiding”the perverse effects of an exploitative economic system.
The article is structured as follows. First, we set the theoretical framework of seasonal agricul-
tural work and migration governance; second, the circuit including Sermide and Rosarno and its
fruit-vegetable productions will be introduced; third, we give some insights on migrant workers’
living conditions; fourth, we elaborate a comparative analysis of governance structures and civil
society interventions; finally, we draw some conclusions.
MIGRANT AGRICULTURAL LABOUR, LOCAL POLICIES AND GOVERNANCE
In the last decade, considerable empirical research has been published on migrant agricultural
labour in Northern and Latin America (Holmes, 2013; Velasco et al., 2014), and in Europe, partic-
ularly in Italy, Spain, France and Greece (Colloca and Corrado, 2012; Kasimis, 2008; Morice and
Potot, 2010). Contributions have focused on the forms of recruitment and intermediation of the
agricultural immigrant workforce (Krissman, 2005); migration policies focused on it (D
ecosse,
2011); ethnic stratification and conflicts in the industry (Berlan, 2002); agricultural production and
the organization of seasonal work (Du Bry, 2015; C
anovas Pedre~
no, 2014). A number of works
have looked at workforce reproduction and workers housing conditions (Gadea et al., 2014; Torres
P
erez, 2011), to illustrate how the complexity and variability of migration models and trajectories
can be associated with different housing strategies and settlement forms. With reference to the most
segregated and ghettoized forms of settlement (Wacquant, 2007), some authors (Perrotta and Sac-
chetto, 2013) have shown how they constitute the “natural”physical continuum of the agricultural
field, whereby work and reproduction activities overlap to concentrate in one place. In such spaces,
migrant workers are spatially isolated from native resident areas, hence physically invisible. They
are invisible from a temporal perspective too, as they move across Italy, from one rural area to
another, for different seasonal harvests. These settlements are functional to the flexible organization
of labour and are more easily tolerated by natives, who perceive them as temporary arrangements
although they often become cyclical or even permanent (Hellio, 2013; Lara et al., 2014).
A strand of the literature on migrant agricultural labour has also dealt with policy and gover-
nance (Palerm, 2014; Pugliese, 2012). However, it has mainly discussed national and transnational
policies, with less attention to local governance. Hence, this article will contribute to studies on
local policy-making and horizontal/vertical governance processes, to highlight outcomes of
migrants’inclusion and exclusion (Caponio and Borkert, 2010; Campomori, 2008). It will include
Governing agricultural migrant workers as an “emergency”201
©2017 The Authors. International Migration ©2017 IOM
To continue reading
Request your trial