"Ghetto Ghana workers and the new Italian ‘slaves’", 22 Jul 2016

Contemporary Italian agriculture...involves physical violence, illegal labour recruitment through the gang-master system of caporalato, ‘slavery-like’ working conditions for some workers, passport confiscation, social and physical isolation, disease and even death...Since 2008, when the global economic crisis started, refugees, asylum seekers, documented migrants and in some cases Italian citizens have all become involved...Now, as a result of all this, some trade unions, media outlets and civil society organisations have begun to respond by depicting these workers as ‘new slaves’. But the voices of workers themselves are too often sidelined in such depictions...Do they consider themselves as ‘slaves’?...[T]he voices of these workers must be at the centre of the debate on ‘modern slavery’ in the Italian agricultural sector. The working biographies collected in ghetto Ghana reveal a high level of consciousness of the limits of the terminology of slavery and exploitation. What is seen as unbearable from the outside can, on closer inspection, seem tolerable and acceptable. This is not to deny the harshness of the human and labour rights violations that ghetto workers face. But it is to make a plea for outsiders to speak – and listen – to workers themselves.The ‘top-down approach’ to their protection claims to help them whilst simultaneously ignoring their lived experiences, worlds of meaning, and practices of resistance.