From Citizens to Subjects: Immigrants in the Country of Southern Italy (1991-2015)

Conferenza ESPAnet ITALIAUniversità degli Studi di Salerno, 17 - 19 Settembre 2015 Welfare in Italia e welfare globale: esperienze e modelli di sviluppo a confronto

From citizens to subjects: immigrants in the country of Southern Italy (1991-2015)

Autore Carlo Colloca

Università di Catania

Versione preliminare. Non citare senza il consenso dell’autore

From citizens to subjects: immigrants in the country of Southern Italy (1991-2015)1

Paper Work-in-Progress

Abstract: The following pages deal with remarks on social and economical vulnerability of seasonal immigrants, in particular the ones settled in rural areas of Southern Italy. An analysis concerning the strong conflicts between the natives and the immigrants follows, the main attention being given to Gioia Tauro zone and to Rosarno rural area. The latter (a bit over 15.000 inhabitants) has included immigrants’ presence since the early 1990s, on citrus crop. Most immigrants are from South-Sahara region. At first, the paper aims at pointing out the critical analysis of what emerged from data, paying attention to rural labour transformation, to immigrants’ ways of life and to some social-cultural aspects, typical of the social environment. Finally, the question concerns immigration role from the point of view of concept-process through which it is possible to analyze the relationship between the town and the country and the social-territorial change in key cosmopolitan.

1. Introduction

The essay deals with the results, still in progress, about immigrants settling in the socialterritorial and productive planning of agriculture in Southern Italy, with particular attention to “Rosarno case” (in Calabria). It is a ‘story’ about underpaid work and exploitation and about immigrants’ new social riots where previously Southern peasants had fought social and economical inequality due to large agricultural estates. Immigration problems in the South of Italy seem to start a ‘new’ Southern question and a ‘new’ kind of large estate if we think of the social and cultural practice characterizing the management of foreign manpower relegated in the same condition of exploitation and exclusion as ancient local rural day labourers. As far as Southern immigrants are concerned, such condition reminds us of the experience of immigrants narrated by Charles Dickens in Hard Times. Proletarians were packed in the slums studied

1 Carlo Colloca is National Secretary of the Scientific Council of Sociology of the Territory; Professor of sociology and analysis methods for the design of the territory - University of Catania, Department of Political and Social Sciences ([email protected]). 1 by Fredrich Engels. Houses had crumbling walls, doors were made up by nailed boars or did not even exist (Engels 1845). Nowadays immigrants live among plastics and cardboards or in abandoned and fatiscent country houses. Such immigrants live in social and economical poverty as well as the ones described by Charles Booth and Fredric Le Play in details. The following pages deal with remarks on social and economical vulnerability of seasonal immigrants, in particular the ones settled in rural areas of Southern Italy. An analysis concerning the strong conflicts between the natives and the immigrants follows, the main attention being given to Gioia Tauro zone and to Rosarno rural area (ref. fig.1). The latter (a bit over 15.000 inhabitants) has included immigrants’ presence since the early 1990s, on citrus crop2.

Fig. 1 – Italy. The Map of Calabria. “A” shows the territory object of the research.

Most immigrants are from South-Sahara region. At first, the paper aims at pointing out the critical analysis of what emerged from data, paying attention to rural labour transformation, to immigrants’ ways of life and to some social-cultural aspects, typical of the social environment. Finally, the

2 Once more, Southern society, mainly in Calabria, can be understood through the particular prism of the relationship with citrus cultivation in order to reflect upon agriculture roles, upon the chain of informal intermediation structures, upon the opening to global market (Lupo 1990). Such elements are present in the margins of Rosarno riots and of African day labourers’ driving out nowadays as well. 2 question concerns immigration role from the point of view of concept-process through which it is possible to analyze the relationship between the town and the country and the social-territorial change in multicultural key.

2. Social and economical vulnerability of immigrants in the rural sector of Southern Italy

2.1. Multiethnic agriculture. Immigrants’ presence in Italian rural sector happens in a context of great transformation of rural system. It has taken place for thirty years, and concerns farming organization and productiveness in particular. For five/six year-periods, a huge migration from country to town has happened, from agriculture to other economical branches, with constant self- consume production and family breeding diminution. Products from far away countries have become more and more important, along with the industrially transformed process. At the same time, rural areas have been reduced remarkably. Such phenomenon has been a consequence to urban expansion and to soil desertion or recycling on no rural use (i.e. farm holidays). Besides a drastic diminution in manpower has taken place, both employed and selfemployed also because of workers’ old age. The process appears inferior to others, thanks to immigration manpower. Immigrants’ presence in the branch is a consequence to the changes which have just been remembered. They have favoured the birth of “de-structured farms” now working beside the traditional ones, where the owner and his family are always present. The structured farms are more diffused in Southern Italy. They are characterized by an absentee farmer. He is not the typical large estate owner from noble family. He is a professional or a civil servant. He owns small farms or is a shareholder of larger undivided estates, whose management is entrusted to an executive director supervising the whole production cycle. In particular the “factotum agricultural expert”, in contact with other local operators, entrusts other farms with some production phases, organizes team-work, takes up labourers for crops chooses pruners. Finally, he has products transformed and sold, taking care of several aspects of the economy of scale connected to his office in various areas and in various farms (Corazziari 2009, 168-174). Immigrants are of great importance in such condition. They have had an added position for the work market in South Italy since the early 1980s (Iori, Mottura 1990). It made demand change as to quality, which had immigrants liked better than local downgraded workers in the South of Italy. Rural statistics – XIX Rapporto Caritas-Migrantes – on immigration to Italy in 2008 can show immigrants’ presence is structural and extra-communitarians are almost necessary to farms in the branch: 90.000 present work contracts of which 64.000 under forward

3 contracts, 15.000 under full contracts and some 11.000 under seasonal contracts3. The latter shows extracommunitarian workers are about 76% out of the total employed. More considerable incidence rates are in the North, oscillating from 34% in Liguria to 18% in Veneto. They are about 6,5% in the South, from 19,7% in Abruzzo to 0,6% in Calabria (Caritas-Migrantes 2009, 269-274). There may be a paradox in the South: unemployment and immigration co-exist. It is advisable to deal with this particular problem through labour segmentation theory (Piore 1979; Pugliese 2009). The phenomenon can be interpreted according to the fact that rural workers’ wages are much inferior to the contractual ones and working conditions are too often characterized by law breach, as regards security and guarantee, which also explains why the local rural unemployed are not available for such works, mainly the young though education rates are still very low in the South. Immigrants satisfy work demand, because of the way of life and the poor wages in their native countries, they accept the so called “3-D jobs” (Dirty, Difficult and Dangerous) (Stalker 2001, 23). It is a Mediterranean immigration pattern which has got one of the most complex achievements in Italy, its indicator being the remarkable presence of immigrants in primary sector particularly in agriculture (Baganha 2009, 24). 2.2. Seasonality. Immigrants’ settling in Southern rural work market is mainly linked to seasonal activities, which take place – after the rossi-dorian pattern – “in the reign of the tree and of horticulture” (Marselli 1990). They consist in intensive culture areas (horticulture, fruit, tobacco and wine) where picking phases happen in short periods and require rather rapid labour rhythms. In summer, when daylight is longer, work can go on all day. From North to South such characteristic of demand, though differently from recruitment, work position and wage, can be satisfied only by a ‘store’ of flexible manpower, such as immigrants. In the South, the calendar of rural day labourers shows a fast mobility, a ‘raid’ of small migration into the ‘big’ one; it is a raid made up by sudden changes of destination, retreats, unexpected and prolonged stops which add to the polymorphic aspect of migratory mobility (Osti 2010, 58-59). It can be of interest to draw the attention to some of the main stages of the above side phenomenon4. Foreigners move to Reggino, Rosarno, from November to March, on citrus picking; in late March they go to Cassibile, near Siracusa, on potato crop; in April and May they are by Caserta on vegetable picking; in July and August they get to Agro Sarnese Nocerino, Salerno and to Acerrano-Nolano, Napoli, on tomato and peach picking. In late August they

3 It is advisable to note that seasonal workers are accepted after yearly quotae. They are taken up for nine months. 4 This mobility reminds of the Sicilian peasant, in the last decades of the XIX century. He would work in different farms during the year. It was the large estate era, which required manpower. A peasant was not employed permanently, he had to move from a farm to another. He was precarious and easy prey to bandits. His private employers would protect him in return of a tribute (Blok 1974). Present seasonal have to pay their tributes to ‘corporals’ to get jobs and to be granted physical integrity. 4 move to Matera area, on melon picking. In the same period, till the end of September, they go to Capitanata boroughs, Puglia, on olive and grapes crops. In September and in October they work near Salerno and pick up fennels, then they are in Trapani area, Marsala, on grapes picking. Not only do they move to zones of special production, but also to other regions: just a very small number of them can work with the same employer all the year round, alternating picking with different activities in the employer’s farm. On account of their remarkable mobility they may often be without family links or may have left their relatives in their native country since they think of joining them after their jobs have become more settled and they have got more comfortable houses. If they are clandestine they wish to regularize their ‘status’. Their no family situation gets them to accept very oppressive working hours. It is typical of workers from Asia (India or Pakistan). They usually work in husbandry sector for two/three years, they have no holidays, then they go back to their countries for long periods. Sometimes they do not come back any more. Immigrants from Maghreb and Sub-Sahara Africa often move to Salerno plain for summer only during their holidays even if they live in Northern Italy. They are the ‘trans-migrants’, new social subjects: they start new social relationships in the poles of migratory movement characterized by frequent commuting. As to workers’ native countries, they are mainly situated in Sub-Sahara Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo) and in Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia). Recently numerous immigrants have arrived from Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine) and from Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan and India). Some immigrants alternate rural work and jobs in different branches. The Moroccans, for instance, leave itinerant trade for a short time, when they work in the farms. The Albanians and the Eastern Europeans combine rural work and trade or building (Caputo 2007, 136). As a matter of fact, the ones who have just arrived in Italy can work as day labourers more easily, in agriculture or building trade. The same can happen to the immigrants who set free by passing from one job to another. They must be ready to work hard, to have very low wages and total lack of rights. Time passing by, such condition cannot be accepted and exasperates the immigrants as soon as social capital becomes greater and they have already worked in different branches, i.e. manufacturing industry or tourism. Recently it has happened because of the crisis affecting these sectors in Northern-Central Italy. It forced a lot of them to go back to Southern farms, to Gioia Tauro plain for instance, undergoing unacceptable life standards social exclusion and racism, which paved the way to riots in 2008/2010. 2.3. Irregularity and way of life. Besides seasonality, special characteristic of rural work is due to the high presence of irregular workers, which is a structural elements of the sector. “An irregular immigrant is reasonably sure to be able to find an employer who will not be too strict as to papers”. The ‘availability’ of employers is largely paid back through tax evasion granted by irregular work and

5 by the fact that connected risks are very little (Sciortino 2006, 1041). Moonlighting work phenomenon regards also neo-communitarians. They represent a minor risk to employers not afraid of being prosecuted for favouring clandestine immigration. Even if they are from Eastern Europe, they live in the same way and after the same standards as the extra-communitarians. Irregularity concerns a large number of immigrants employed in citrus, olive, tomato and grapes picking in Southern Italy. Such condition is connected to human and social decline and should not belong to a state by law. The datum can be definitely confirmed by recent enquiries on behalf of Medici Senza Frontiere, aiming at assisting foreigners from the sanitary point of view and investigating on their ways of life and work. They carried on two surveys about foreign workers with particular attention to the seasonal employed in picking vegetables and fruit in the south of Italy. The first enquiry, I frutti dell’ipocrisia. Storia di chi l’agricoltura la fa. Di nascosto, had shown the immigrants shameful lives and their poor health. The second enquiry Una stagione all’inferno. Rapporto sulle condizioni degli immigranti in agricoltura nelle regioni del sud Italia (“A season in Hell. A Report on immigrants’ condition in rural areas in Southern Italy”), underlined nothing had changed three years later. Seasonal immigrants and greenhouse workers are obliged to live and to work in the greatest poverty, precariousness, marginality and social exclusion. They are ill paid, exploited and housed just as in the worst refugee camps. They often run the risk of undergoing violence and intolerance. The word used in the above mentioned essay is ‘hell’. It would be the hell next to our towns, to our villages and to our country, anyway “in the complex phenomenon of immigration to Italy, seasonal workers’ condition is a weak link hypocritically concealed” (Medici Senza Frontiere 2008, 2). The enquiry held in 2007 concerned Piana del Sele in Campania, territories of Latina, of Foggia, of Palazzo San Gervasio, Valle del Belice in Sicilia and Gioia Tauro in Calabria. From July to November 2007 643 immigrants have been interviewed 400 questioners have been distributed. Almost all the interviewed rural workers – 97% men out of whom 84% from 20 to 40 of age – have no regular contracts employment 72% of no residence permits. There is a remarkable number of immigrants looking for political asylum and also refugees. Since they can’t find a welcome apparatus and adequate supports, they are obliged to move out the territory and to become easy preys to the world of irregular manpower. Besides, foreigners are not protected even if they have residence permits: 68% of the interviewed have got moonlighting employees. In Calabria 95% of the immigrants involved in farm picking are clandestine (Cicerchia, Pallara 2009, 174-176). As to immigrants’ recruitment such condition goes back to the ancient curse of ‘caporalato’ (i.e. ‘corporals’) illegal mediation. Besides, work conditions do not respect security rules stated by law. Employers hardly ever supply workers with gloves, masks, special clothes. The times of break are not respected into greenhouses, after exposition to phyto-drug devices and pesticides. Surviving struggle

6 happens every day. 65% of interviewed immigrants live in abandoned buildings 20% in lodgings, 10% in tents or in welcome camps run by the local authorities, 5% sleeps in the streets. Overcrowding affects life in both occasional and let shelters. 50% share room with 4 or more people, 21% have to share their bed with one person, at least 53% sleep on the ground on mattresses or cardboards. 62% have no sanitary hygienic services. 64% have no water at home and have to get it from irrigation tubes, outside taps and public fountains. 69% have no electric light, heating and fridges (Medici Senza Frontiere 2008, 6). Therefore, though young and healthy, after arriving in Italy they are destined to fall ill because of hard work and of the very bad ways of life and of hygiene. Diseases5, usually possible to be treated by simple medical therapy and hygiene, become chronic because they have no medical doctors to address to or money enough to buy medicines. The upon said enquire confirms the same results as in 2004. In particular it underlines the inadequate behaviour of the Italian National Sanitary System to grant immigrants health rights. Both irregular and regular immigrants are not given either good information on medical offices for foreigners, as imposed by law (art .35 TU 286/98, Turco-Napolitano Law), of the existence of sanitary structures in the areas where immigrate workers are located. They are not informed about existing surgery offices at work and the lack of culture mediation affects the access of immigrants to medical assistance6.

3. Immigrants in Gioia Tauro countryside

3.1. Calabria and the emergence of seasonal foreign workers. The importance of agriculture in economy is much more marked in Calabria than in other parts of Italy: the importance of agriculture as regards work and income is about twice the national average. One inhabitant out of seven runs a farm in Calabria: one family out of four get part of income from autonomous farm activity. According to ISTAT data from the V Censimento generale dell’agricoltura (2000), the importance of rural added value in comparison with the Calabria total one has been about 6,5% since the early 1990s. Anyway it is possible to see the exodus of autochthonous Calabria manpower and the diminution of used agriculture surface. It is about ha 2,8 in the region. It is inferior by the half of the national average (ha 5,9). In the meantime immigrants working in agriculture can be understood with reference to growing trends endowed of remarkable work needs concentrated from territorial and temporal points of view (Cavazzani, Sivini 1998). Olive and citrus cultures do not require uniform work, mainly in picking

5 The most frequent pathologies are osteopathies, loin sciatica in particular, dermatitis, respiration and gastroenteritic diseases. 6 Contemporary Italian society – as Bauman remarks (2010, 45) – shows a triple retreat of civilization: the retreat from the same standards it had fixed, the retreat from its engagement and the retreat from its results (real and apparent). 6 They are public offices dealing with labour settling. INAIL take care of workers affected by labour accidents. 7 phase. They cannot be met with only through family manpower, not even in the smallest farms. Theses production phases are entrusted to external people, i.e. immigrants. In spite of official figures of Centri per l’Impiego and INAIL6 indicating a minimal presence of regular immigrate workers in Calabria (about 46.600 of 3 million foreign workers in the country), further reductions can be found in agriculture (about 10.000). The ‘immigration problem’ appears mainly linked to irregular seasonal manpower. The workers in the sector should double presences connected to foreign rural sector. The situation reinforces the question of lack in planning the economic and political system. It favours a spontaneous immigration pattern almost without care particularly in the recent past, on behalf of social policy. Such immigration is present in sectors of the market where seasonal work is more diffused on account of information nets and of the solidarity which links the immigrants of the same country and because of the social and economical ruling in the hands of criminal power. Foreign workers, both communitarians and extracommunitarians, are exploited. They become targets of violence and social exclusion, as shown by the episodes happened in Gioia Tauro-Rosarno Plain in January 2010. There the use of African Sub-Sahara workers amounts at 95% mostly irregular and employed in citrus and olive crops. The Africans are prior to Eastern Europeans – in particular Albanians, Poles and Romanians – and Asians, mainly Pakistani and Indians. Such phenomenon does not show only emergency characteristics. It requires definite welcome policy, social settling and integration. It also needs researches and oriented sociological analyses in order to get to the real knowledge of the various territories and to start sensitiveness to prevent such matters from spreading further. Even the area of Sibari and Cirò-Crotone plains might be involved in future. Immigrated manpower is employed in wine, citrus and olive branches there, as well as Lamezia Terme country where rural workers are employed in more permanent activities, like flower growing culture, and the rural internal and marginal areas (Valle dell’Esaro and Sila) where extracommunitarians are taken up to work in husbandry and in potato crop. 3.2 Rosarno: an agro-town divided into “men and corporals”. Every year Gioia Tauro plain is crowded with thousands of immigrants getting to the region to work in mandarin and orange picking from October to March. Rosarno, counting 15.300 citizens, is one of the numerous towns of the South where immigrants are exploited. It is probably the only one where they have been victims to disconcerting violence episodes since 1990, though the story of this small town has experimented important struggles against irregular agriculture behaviours. Such struggles ended by killing Giuseppe Valoriati, a trade-unionist. in 1980 after ‘ndrangheta instigation. The following pages sum up a reflection on what emerged from interviewing some representatives of the public institution and civil society (from 20 January to 11 February 2010). The interviewed can be considered ‘privileged witnesses’ of the latest events in Rosarno and, more generally, of the

8 immigration to this rural area. In particular we pay attention to: a) two representatives of Omnia, an inter-culture association, situated in Rosarno; b) a representative of Caritas in Reggio Calabria diocese; c) two medical doctors, collaborators in the local seats of Medici Senza Frontiere; d) a reporter of RAI regional channel; e) an officer of Reggio Calabria INPS7. We refer to a series of documents – made available by the interviewed – concerning immigrants’ ways of life and to the socio-economical features of Rosarno and nearby small towns like Gioia Tauro and San Ferdinando, which we could compare/integrate thanks to an accurate press review based on local and national papers, with reference to the above mentioned zones, from June 2009 to January 2010. From the collected and analyzed material, Rosarno is not only the territory of fierce ‘ndrine 8 threatening foreign day labourers, it is something else. Secular and catholic voluntary associations have been engaged to help immigrants in the area since the early 1990s. Any violence episode has been followed by the reaction of civil society. Rosarno is one of the first sites in Calabria to plan welcome through aids policy in favour of immigrant since 1995, thanks to the tenacity of two left local governments and to the contributes of volunteers. The general attention to immigrate day labourers has marked the period from the second half of the 1990s and the new Millennium: political rights, canteens, social aids, sanitary help, financial demands addressed both to the Region and the Government. Such attention has always been spaced out by bloody episodes until the ones happened in January 2010, which showed that “ill negotiated multi-culture” (Amendola 1997, 186) is still in progress and keeps alive the problem of immigration from the point of view of territory security and defence. We think it advisable to sum up the moments of the ‘target shooting’ to immigrants from ‘ndrangheta in order to oblige foreign workers to live and to work in the fields under exploitation and inhuman condition, because the criminal gangs use to threaten, to beat and to shoot them (Mangano 2008 and 2010). All that started in September 1990 by kneecapping an Algerian and by dozens of violence attacks. 9 The first two dead people were killed in 1992 and they were Algerians. The town commemorates them, people are astonished and disappointed, they show their feelings, but there is no trace of what happened those days in their memories. Three people were killed in 1994, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast, two from Burkina Faso; there were wounding episodes in the countryside. 1994 marked the presence of Giuseppe Lavorato, a PCI MP, in the local government: Lavorato had always been on the front against ‘ndrangheta since 1970s. Rosarno electors voted him

7 It is an institution that deals with the social security. 8 ‘Ndrine are local criminal gangs similar to Mafia clans. They operate in country centres like Rosarno. 9 Almost an year had passed since Jerry Essan Maslo had died at Villa Literno. He was a South-African politician killed on 25 August 1989 in an abandoned country house while robbing immigrants. Maslo case moved Italian public opinion and caused the first organic legislation on immigration theme (Martelli Law). 9 as a trustee candidate: they chose him. The ‘ndrangheta clans were afraid: they took advantage of New Year’s night and launched a violent attack through gun shootings against Public Palaces, from the Tow-hall to state schools. On 6 January 1995 the strong desire to counter-attack mafia was very strong. The Town-hall council and some associations arranged for distributing hot meals to immigrants in Valarioti Square. Immigrants were more and more numerous in the rural area. Such ceremonies have gone on nine years, Epiphany became people’s festival in Rosarno. Such welcome signal was broken in October 1996 when an African of about 25/30 years of age was found in the rural zone next to Laureana di Borrello. His body was in advanced decomposing condition. It was impossible to recognize his identity: he might have been a victim to criminal exploitation in the Plain. Migrants became more and more, their conditions worsened. Rosarno went on showing the Africans its double face: welcome and brutality. As a consequence, a letter was sent to the Mayor, elected for the second time, by the Africans. They wanted to protest and to stop the “violence of unrivalled racism”, real “racist conjurations” put into effect “24 hours a day, even at night” by “underage boys who […] spit at faces, by clandestine gangs on scooters, by incredible attacks of violence and of any kind […]. Good people are terrified – the migrants wrote, they refuse to let us houses, thus we are obliged to sleep in an inhuman way in the ghettos, without water and electric power”. The Africans appeal to mobilization, they are not listened to: on 15 November 1999, the local Town Council passed a by-law unanimously on violence against African labourers and passed a number of pro-migrant rules, from giving life to a contact group soliciting institutions and authorities, to sending the paper written by migrants to schools, in order to make students aware of the situation. Language courses for foreigners were arranged and a big manifestation was carried out on immigration and solidarity: it involves migrants and Rosarno citizens in the presence of Don Luigi Ciotti, the founder of “Libera”, an anti-mafia association. In 2003 the ‘anti-mafia mayor’s’ experience is over. Centre-left party lost Rosarno ruling. The town is run by successions of civic list, scandals, arrests, resignations, dismissals due to mafia infiltrations. While immigrants’ problem becomes more and more difficult and about two thousand clandestine people sleep in the “Cartiera” - an abandoned factory, the Modul System Sud started by a group of business-man from Romagna, financed in the early 1990s with public money to produce computer forms, never working – silence falls on welcome policy and peoples’ festivals. Only Medici Senza Frontiere, catholic and secular volunteers attend the Africans’ refuges 10. In December 2008 after gun shooting to citizens from the Ivory Coast, the first strong protest

10 There are also the “Rognetta” and the “Collina” sleeping rooms. The former is a dismissed orange juice factory placed inside the urban nucleus, while the latter names two country roofless houses in the middle of olive grounds in Rizziconi area.

manifestation happens in the streets of the town. They write on the walls: “avoid shooting black” (ref. fig. 2).

Fig. 2 - Rosarno, December 2008. Immigrants write: Avoid shooting Black on the wall of one of the numerous shelters.

“For the first time the town, used to promoting and to hosting epic struggle manifestation from day- labourers and olive women pickers, has seen such phenomenon, unrivalled in the history of Calabria. Hundreds of black people – a part of the 5000 seasonal communitarian and extra-communitarian workers in the territory, without social rights, even nameless (except for ‘clandestine’ commune to everybody) – have wanted to shout enough to the condition they have been swallowed in” (ref. “Italia, basta uccidere i neri”, Giuseppe Lacquaniti, in La Gazzetta del Sud, 14 December 2008). Songs and dances, also the ‘ryte’ of turning down dustbins on the way happen in the course of the manifestation. The protest takes place pacifically and demonstrators can show their rage for what happened to their wounded colleagues. From December 2009 to the beginning of 2010, there are some a thousand immigrants in the “Cartiera” area. They find a shelter occasionally (ref. fig. 3). Some of them are not regular, plenty have the residence permits on humanitarian causes, so many have expiring ones because they come from the North, where they lost their jobs on account of the crisis affecting Italian manufacturing industry. Dismissals sent them directly to Rosarno ‘limbus’ between Africa and Europe.

Fig. 3 - Rosarno, the “Cartiera”, November 2009. Cardboards and rags used to divide the room.

Abandoned settling of Opera Sila, ARSSA and ESAC agriculture offices, development agencies are situated in the area. All of them have settled factories hardly ever in use, to refine olive oil where silos become a sleeping room for several immigrants (ref. fig. 4).

Fig. 4 - Rosarno, Factory of ex Opera Sila, December 2009. An oil silos is changed into ‘sleeping room’.

A further violence episode burst out on the night of 7 January 2010. On the occasion some young people from Togo were wounded by the natives. The news spread among the immigrants, they know one of them has been killed, while Rosarno inhabitants are informed about a wounded pregnant

12 woman. They get angry. What follows is a recent story of violence, of forced ‘cynicism’ practice and of contradictions in local society. It is important to underline some aspects of such society. With reference to a phrase from Pasolini, it is possible to say that rural South, and also the areas of Gioia Tauro, have undergone a remarkable “anthropologic mutation” these late years. Far from shining pounds the countryside have globalized. Today they appear a complex of rural de- territorialized boroughs where ancient cafoni have disappeared, replaced by seasonal immigrants who live there three/six months lodged in slums on the limits of rural villages. If we think of settling in Rosarno abandoned factories, images from Charles Dickens’s pages of Hard Times (1854) describing Coketown come into our minds: there people used to live in poor houses they would leave home at the same time, they would walk on the cobles all together and would make the same work. They were exploited and poor just like immigrants in Southern Italy. In general, nowadays, is globalized even more radically than urban outskirts; fruit picking, especially when tasks become harder, the country is still run in the same way as a century ago. Day labourers are foreigners at present, and as well as in Rosarno, during crop time in 2009, about 4.000 pickers are employed, 90% are irregular and 87% under 30 of age11. 55% live in waterless shelters, 57% without electric power, about 60% without hygienic services and 91% without heating able to grant an at least acceptable thermical condition. The ‘corporals’ provoke such ways of life. They oppressed rural day labourers of large estates in the past. Today they are even more powerful because of the influence of criminal bands controlling ‘corporals’. Violence has become a private use, an instrument to control public space and to control the market. The first selection of foreign workers is made by the so called “sovrastanti”, that is men entrusted with making workers’ teams in the ancient “social territory of large estate” (Petrusewicz 1989, 144-153). The “sovrastanti” were considered important on account of their personal knowledge regarding people to select, which was often referred to family links. Nowadays such link can be on ethnic basis. There are immigrate “sovrastanti” in “Cartiera” and “Rognetta” buildings, where they take care of the total structure, letting beds and selecting manpower to be offered to autochthonous ‘corporals’ called “provvisionati”. The latter were the mediators between proprietors, or

11 It is interesting to point out that a remarkable number of women are employed in seasonal works, particularly from 2004 to 2005 various reasons can explain the fact. First of all, the type of work: picking potato and tomato requires physical force and resistance, which is not so important in citrus picking. Orange working needs a series of connected activities fit for women (i.e. peeling for getting juice). Secondly, such workers come from UE: several Eastern European labourers work in Calabria. With reference to witnesses immigrants from Eastern Europe show particular characteristics they are people who usually move with their whole families (husbands wives and often children) when they get to Calabria, they already know a lot of orange picking chances. Their migration is exclusively economic, it consists of ‘pure’ seasonal workers. They are going back to their native country when the “season” is over. Eastern Europe community is well rooted in the area. Immigrants can grant their fellows contacts and practical information of great use when they arrive (i.e. as regards lodgings, work, sanitary offices and organizations supplying hot meals and so on). 13 administrators, and day labourers, whom they recruited and trained. Even today, the “provvisionati” are determinant on the choice of immigrate ‘goods’. Workers are carried in lorries and driven to the farms. They work up to ten/twelve hours a day. They earn about € 25 a day, according to what emerged in the first phase of the present research. Women earn even less (€ 16-20). The “sovrastante” corporal gets about € 8 of the above said wages, because of his role in selecting manpower and in lodging workers in cottages in ruin, while the “provvisionate” often asks up to € 10 for providing jobs and driving people to the fields. Owing to such precarious condition, the “provvisionate” corporal can even decide not to pay ‘his’ men at all. Consequently they cannot save either for their families or for improving their ways of life. It is a closed environment, it is difficult to rebel against it owing to the almost total absence of trade unions. A further aspect of local society, appeared through interviews and analyses of documents, is the interaction between dynamic elements, like family links, nepotism and community (Piselli, Arrighi 1985). They create illegal solidarity relationships in order to achieve socio-economic results able to damage foreign day labourers and the State. From official INPS data, citrus plantations in Gioia Tauro are cultivated only by local workers and by immigrants just in a very small part. In 2009 Italian day labourers enrolled in Rosarno INPS were 1600, instead of, extracommunitarians were 36. Figures are the same in the nearby areas of Gioia Tauro: 600 Italian rural workers and 19 extra-communitarians; the same in San Ferdinando: 317 local day labourers and 27 extra-communitarians. On the whole there are 2517 Italian regular workers and 72 regular extra-communitarians in the Plain. Enquiries from Palmi magistrates along with INPS inspective services could find out they are false day labourers. They are formally employed people just to take advantage of tax relief, unemployment, disease and pregnancy indemnities. It is enough declaring from 51 to 151 working days a year (usually never worked) to be entitled to aids for the rest of the year. Somebody does not work but is given contributes, which damages State finance. Immigrants work irregularly, underpaid and exploited. The system can rely upon communitarian, parental and nepotistic links. They rely upon the complicity of local authorities, of trade-unionists, officials of patronages and accommodating medical doctors. Small-average farms are particularly involved. They take on immigrants but they officially indicate members of their family. The whole matter is run under ‘ndrangheta supervision, since ‘ndrangheta is deeply settled in agriculture social providence, as pointed out and denounced by Palmi Tribunal (Ciconte 2008). It is necessary to be in contact with the local ‘ndrangheta boss as far as false registration is concerned. As a consequence, the boss increases his power which becomes stronger and stronger. It happens that pregnant women are given INPS registrations from the “compare”12. We

12 The “compare” is the one that baptized, confirmation, or is a witness to someone’s wedding.

14 must not forget frauds to UE: the most recent one is known as “Paper Oranges” and was discovered in 2007. It consisted in putting up orange production quotae to get communitarian contributions disposed as a compensation in favour of producer for the withdrawal of exceeding citrus from the market. All this is possible by falsifying fiscal and administrative figures with regional clerks’ help. The fraud returned € 44.000.000 from contributes undeservedly received by about 49 farms and producers (ref. Report of the Commission to European Parliament and Council, COM 390/2007). Consequently the three above said Town Councils have been dismissed because of mafia infiltration. At present they are run by three prefectorial commissioners. Everybody can get a profit, but the Africans go on living in huts and silence covers their condition. In the mean time citrus price slums (from Lit. 1.400 a kilo in 1999 to 10/20 cents at presence). Takings are inferior to costs, therefore a lot of orange fruits remain on the trees. Such situation was in progress in November 2009, thus, in comparison to three/four thousand day labourers of the past, some hundreds of them would be enough: Bulgarians, Romanians and the Polish, citizens of the UE, would surely be more desirable than the Africans. Most Africans are unemployed, also the ones expelled from the Northern market. Tension has increased in the ghettos, the local community has started thinking they are unfit for the system. A sparkle has been able to start the conflicts of last January. After the Africans have been pushed away, Rosarno has not been in a position to solve numerous problems because local economy is based on “paper oranges” and European aids, at the moment undergoing a crisis. Even the young are escaping, about two thousand of them left the area these last six years (about 80% of the new generation).

4. Conclusion

Since the survey is still in progress we must reflect on some problems from a theoretic point of view more than conclude. First of all it seems interesting to underline poor immigrants’ destiny, they are obliged to bear heavy forms of exploitation and violence, are present in the South. Trans-national migrations have gradually led to “a global situation of lack land peasants” as migrant rural workers can be defined (Pérez-Vitoria 2009, 56-57). Foreign presence in the countryside focuses how “place centrality in a context of globalization processes” (Sassen 2007) it does not affect only towns. The countryside can give a contribution through migratory processes in order to shape the idea of “place” emphasizing local dimension in rural territories where global elements are situated and where cultures from far off lands can find new settlements. In particular seasonal immigrants stress the “trans-local” dimension, full of new contradictions and capable of giving origin to new ideas of ethnic partaking

15 after the Weber’s notion of community. They show moments of contact and intermittent regarding the same wavelength of trans-nationality trend of migratory processes. Besides, in the countryside inserted in the globalization process immigration, ethnics are perceived as alienation so that they cause subordinate settling in Southern rural society through moonlighting work. Such alienation is evident thanks to biological isolation, after the terminology introduced by Park and Burgess (1921) to underline that space separation is progressively affected by functions leading to communication exclusion. It happens as a consequence to migrants’ segregation in “noplaces”, such as abandoned factories, rubbish dumps, camps, degraded areas, to mark a difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This can increase social distance and can stress immigrants’ space illegality. This effect becomes also a feeling of fear and insecurity typical of contemporary society. It emphasizes the “need of homogeneity and research of the fellow” (Amendola 2003, 28). This theme concerns security and arouses a reflection on a new cleavage town/country in Italy. The cleavage is to be considered as to the distinction between native/foreign conflicts, typical of urban suburbs, where ethnic/cultural differences are mixed with the problems of residence, of neighbourhood, of the second generations of immigrants (Bergamaschi, Colleoni, Martinelli 2009), of occupation and of space admittance (Nuvolati, 2009). Breaks happen in rural marginal areas from the use of first necessity resources, material, immaterial physical and symbolical. There – because of social regulation mechanisms managed by criminals and based on ancient cultural heritage and social practice deriving from large estate tradition affecting work organization – it is not possible to see voice processes rather than surviving struggles (as shown recently by Rosarno case and Castel Volturno case in 2008). As a consequence to globalization process country areas have turned into a spot of social differentiation and of individualization – because of the combined effects of macro processes, connected to the multiplication of symbols produced and changed in cultural interaction, and of micro processes regarding individuals stimulated by new kinds of knowledge and by cultural heterogeneity more directly (Mignella Calvosa 2006, 13) – however, they are still much farther from being defined “cosmopolitan” than towns thus country areas are not able to have a positive approach to the ethnic- cultural differences which characterize them (Amendola 2010, 51). Both towns and country require local government interventions so that they stress the idea that “cohesion consists in a special quality of social relationships substantially founded on local social capital” (Finocchiaro 2006, 72). Local authority would be pushed to intervene through bottom up processes. All this is the starting point to build a multi-cultural public space. Which can happen if citizenship rights are granted to migrants. The events characterizing immigration to Southern countryside urge to a debate on “citizenship belonging and territory” (Guidicini 2007). Immigrants appear citizens divided between their native country, their source of identity, and the destination country, the source of their rights. The

16 consequence is they live suspended between rights and identity, between culture and policy. Such unreliable and precarious conditions are also supported by the authorities of the social environment where they arrive. Immigrants are given social rights not adequately supported by political rights. Thus the natives seems to grant citizenship under repeal reserve. Social integration theme cannot be studied from a strictly distributive point of view, by foreseeing aids for income and consume to immigrants. It becomes an essentially law problem, able to recognize the “right of difference” (Bettin Lattes 2002, 351-353). Immigration analysis with reference to Southern Italy can become a sort kaleidoscope in movement through which it is possible to understand the towncountry relationship and the social-territorial transformation as to the culture of places and the communitarian links. ***

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