Immigrazione e territorializzazione dello sfruttamento del lavoro agricolo. Esempi dall’Italia

Immigration and territorialization of agricultural labour exploitation. Examples from Italy. Agricultural labour exploitation and caporalato are widespread phenomena in Italy, particularly in the south. Due to migratory flows, where seasonal agricultural harvesting requires an increasing number of workers, informal settlements such as tent cities and shantytowns grow and proliferate. These are configured as authentic ghettos, “cities outside the city” completely devoid of functions and in the throes of decay and abandonment. This paper highlights the link between immigration and labour exploitation, and how the territories involved become “anti-territories”, without social, economic, and cultural ties to the surrounding rural and urban areas. This condition of marginality seems to be an inevitable consequence of the power of “agromafias” and the dynamics of the current primary sector, which is increasingly focused on a profitmaximizing supply chain and unable to dispense with migrant labour for seasonal harvests of agricultural products.