The Rosarno Revolt 221 Immigration Control, the Increase in Workplace Inspections Has Not Resulted in Significant Penalties for Non-Compliant Employers

9 THE ROSA R NO REVOL T : TOWA R D POLITICAL MOBILIZATION FO R Imm IG R AN T S ? Camilla Devitt “Rosarno: Immigrant revolt, hundreds of cars damaged” was the alarming headline in La Repubblica on 7 January 2010. An immigrant protest and ensuing episodes of violence in the small town of Rosarno in Calabria in southern Italy were followed with intense interest by the national and international media and prompted a heated public debate in Italy. Upcoming regional elections and shared political responsibility for immigration resulted in politicians blaming their opponents for the disorder. Minister of the Interior Roberto Maroni’s immediate response was to maintain that the events were the result of too much tolerance toward undocumented immigrants. Following the discovery that the majority of migrants involved were legally resident in Italy, the government subsequently emphasized the role of inadequate labor market controls and organized crime. Declarations regarding the necessity to better implement the existing immigration control legislation and the signing of further agree- ments with sub-Saharan African migrant-sending states in February 2010 suggest continuity in the Italian approach to immigration control, which has focused on border control and international cooperation for the past decade. Furthermore, while highly publicized initiatives that were aimed at calling attention to illegal work (particularly seasonal farm labor) initially appeared to constitute a new approach to Notes for this chapter begin on page 236. The Rosarno Revolt 221 immigration control, the increase in workplace inspections has not resulted in significant penalties for non-compliant employers. The disorders in Rosarno and those in Milan a month later appear to have convinced the government of the need to generate more public interest in the issues of immigrant reception and integration. However, the role of the state in providing for and supporting migrant workers in their search for decent accommodations remains unclear. Lastly, it is notable that the structural and economic origins of the Rosarno conflict—the two-fold crisis in the agricultural sector—was barely touched upon in media reports or the political debate. This chapter focuses on the political responses to the Rosarno crisis. In the first section, I analyze the political parties’ interpretations of the events and the impact of Rosarno on immigration and labor market policy. The second section is concerned with the societal debate and initiatives stimulated by the crisis, in particular, the response of the trade unions and the Church and the immigrant strike of 1 March 2010. In the third section, I draw attention to the structural and economic root causes of the Rosarno crisis, while the next section inves- tigates the extent to which Rosarno epitomizes the working and living conditions of seasonal labor migrants in Italy. The conclusion suggests that Rosarno can be read as a sign that Italy is entering a new phase in its immigration history, one in which an increasingly significant and legally resident immigrant population represents a new political voice. It also discusses how governments might go about preventing future social tensions along the lines of Rosarno. Rosarno and the Political Responses Between 7 and 12 January 2010, the national and international media recounted the Rosarno events in minute detail. On 7 January, hundreds of mainly sub-Saharan African migrants, who were working in the Calabrian Piana di Gioia Tauro area during the annual fruit har- vest, protested violently in response to a drive-by shooting in which two migrants had been injured by locals. Using steel bars and stones, the migrants damaged rubbish bins and cars and clashed with police in and around the town of Rosarno. The next morning, about 700 migrants took part in a peaceful demonstration in front of the town hall, protesting against harassment. Violent episodes ensued, espe- cially attacks perpetrated by locals on isolated migrants. At the end of the disturbances, 21 migrants and 14 locals had received medical attention in the local hospital. This crisis was the explosive culmina- tion of 20 years of sporadic violence directed toward migrant workers. 222 Camilla Devitt Prior to this incident, in December 2008, a peaceful migrant demonstration, which followed a similar attack on two migrants, attracted comparatively little media interest. The first step of Maroni, a member of the Northern League (LN) party, the main anti-immigration force in Italian politics, was the cre- ation of a task force on 8 January in the prefecture of Reggio Calabria— the region’s capital—charged with identifying solutions to overcoming tensions and violence in Rosarno. The task force, led by the director of immigration policy at the Ministry of the Interior, the director-general of inspection services at the Ministry of Labor, and the director-general of health services of the province of Reggio Calabria, immediately decided to evacuate a first group of migrants from the approximately 1,200 who were living in the area, transferring them to the reception center of Crotone. The next morning, the task force moved to the town of Rosarno, where it met with humanitarian and health organizations, as well as cultural mediators, in order to facilitate the fastest possible evacuation of the migrants. During that day, 748 people were relocated to centers in Crotone and Bari. Another 330 migrants with residence permits left by their own means. Significantly, of the 748 migrants evacuated, 465 turned out to have regular residence permits and were released. The following morning, the demolition of La Rognetta, one of the abandoned buildings that had housed hundreds of seasonal migrants in unsanitary conditions in the Piana di Gioia Tauro area, commenced. The violent nature of the migrant protest, the media’s rather sen- sationalist presentation of “inter-racial” conflict, and, above all, the political context of the Rosarno crisis ensured that it would not be easily swept under the carpet as its predecessor had been in 2008. Regional elections were to take place in late March, and while a center-right coali- tion was in office in Rome and the town of Rosarno was under the direct control of the Ministry of the Interior,1 the region of Calabria and the province of Reggio Calabria were governed by left-wing presidents. The central government is responsible for managing labor migrant entries and contrasting undocumented immigration, whereas the regions and local governments are charged with the reception and social integration of migrants, financed annually by the national fund for social policies. Shared political responsibility for immigration resulted in a debate that consisted in laying the blame for the crisis on one’s political opponent. Maroni’s first interpretation of the unrest in Rosarno was that it was the result of too much tolerance toward undocumented migrants in Italy, implicitly assigning responsibility for the disorder at the feet of the political left: “In Rosarno, there is a difficult situation like in other parts of the country, because undocumented immigration has been The Rosarno Revolt 223 tolerated over the years without an effective response and has fed into criminal activity and generated social degradation.”2 On the basis of this rationale, members of the Berlusconi government emphasized the need to enforce the existing immigration control legislation. It was argued that there was no necessity for new laws or amendments as the existing legislation—most recently amended by the center-right— already required regular employment contracts and adequate housing for foreign workers. In the Senate on 12 January and in the Chamber of Deputies on the next day, Maroni defended himself and his government from charges of mismanagement. He maintained that the most tangible intervention in response to the migrant protest of December 2008 had come from the Ministry of the Interior: an initial contribution of 200,000 euros had been issued to the Rosarno town council in order to rent sanitary structures in April 2009. Indeed, the regional government in Calabria was blamed by members of the Berlusconi government for having ignored the situation of social degradation in Rosarno for years. In response to the assertion of the president of Calabria, Agazio Loiero, that the state had not been present in Rosarno, Maroni responded that the regions had exclusive competency for health and could have closed down Rosarno’s “bidonville.” Along similar lines, Jole Santelli of the Liberal Democrats (LD) party maintained: “It’s not possible … [that] a governor of Calabria goes on television saying that the government is absent, that the state is not there, crying for help from elsewhere! … The region has to guarantee migrants refuge and reception and equal opportunities in accessing housing and work.”3 An LN senator, Federico Bricolo, also laid the blame for the crisis on the local trade unions and magistracy. To the applause of other LN senators, Bricolo maintained that “in the North, in Padania, our trade unions and our local public officials would never have tolerated situations like this!”4 The political opposition, including the center-left Democratic Party (PD), the Union of the Center (UdC), and Italy of Values (IdV), were united in criticizing the Berlusconi government’s management of labor immigration and the Rosarno crisis. It was emphasized that the town had been governed by a prefect of the Ministry of the Interior

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