TERRAINGIUSTA Unfair land | Medici per i Diritti Umani

TERRAINGIUSTA Unfair land

“Unfair Land”, a report on working and living conditions of foreign agricultural workers, was released in April 2015. The report was produced by MEDU – Medici per i Diritti Umani (Doctors for human rights) in collaboration with the Association for Judicial Studies on Immigration (Asgi) and the Laboratory of Theory and Practice of Rights of Roma Tre University (Ltpd). It photographs the deprivation of basic human rights that concerns not only the south of Italy but that should interest the entire national community.

Comunicato Terraingiusta

MEDU presents the report “Unfair Land. Report on the working and living conditions of foreign agricultural workers” that comes as the result of eyewitness accounts and data collection in five regions of central and southern Italy, over the course of eleven months. The report denounces the exploitation of migrant work in agriculture: off- the -books jobs, grievously irregular employment, sub-minimum wage employment, illegal recruitment , excessively long working , lack of safety and of proper health conditions, barriers to healthcare access and disastrous conditions in terms of housing and health. Following the cycle of agricultural seasons, MEDU’s team moved from the Plain of Gioia Tauro in Calabria , to the Sele Plain in Campania, from Vulture Alto Bradano in Basilicata to Lazio’s Agro Pontino. Furthermore, during the summer, MEDU monitored tomato-picking activity in the Capitanata, Puglia. Thanks to the mobile unit, MEDU’s operators mapping and reaching migrants’ shelters, providing first medical aid and socio-sanitary direction. MEDU interviewed 788 migrants, of which 744 received medical aid for a total of 876 medical consultations.

In all regions, the majority of foreign workers assisted by MEDU’s team held a regular residency permit. These were of different kinds depending on the context: in particular, work permits were more prominent in areas with the greatest number of permanent workers such as Campania and Lazio, while permits linked to international protection or humanitarian reasons were found more in areas with seasonal workers such as Calabria. Mixed situations were present in Basilicata. The percentage of migrants with irregular status was negligible in the Agro Pontino and Vulture Alto Bradano and limited to about a quarter of the migrants assisted by MEDU in the Sele and Gioia Tauro plains.

The phenomenon of off-the books employment was most evident in the Gioia Tauro plain where 83% of the migrants encountered by MEDU’s operators was working without a contract. However, also in other areas where workers with a regular contract were the majority – about two-thirds in the Plain of Sele and Vulture Alto Bradano and almost 90% in the Agro Pontino – a gray area of working conditions represent a widespread and pervasive mode of working, characterized by most employees usually being underpaid and being subject to contractual and fiscal irregularities. In other words, the presence of a contract does not guarantee migrants a fair working relationship. Specifically, in all the areas where we operated the pension contributions resulted well below the number of working days actually performed. Likewise, the salaries were on average about 30-40% lower than the minimum daily wage guaranteed by the national and provincial contracts in the presence of both a regular or an irregular contract.

The practice of illegal recruitment, an historic plague upon the fields of Southern Italy, is widespread in all contexts where MEDU’s intervention took place and is particularly pervasive in territories with the greater presence of seasonal workers such as the Plain of Gioia Tauro and the Vulture Alto Bradano. In these areas, respectively two thirds and half of the migrants interviewed by MEDU denounced that they had to resort to this type of illegal recruitment in order to find a employment . Notably, in a territory like the Agro Pontino, where almost all of the workers are permanent, the phenomenon of illegal recruitment shows very peculiar characteristics. Here, in fact, it encompasses the entire work cycle, from recruitment in the country of origin to sometimes becoming a phenomenon with characteristics of human trafficking.

In the areas characterized by strong flows of seasonal laborers, such as the Plain of Gioia Tauro, the Vulture Alto Bradano and the Capitanata, housing and sanitary conditions appeared to be very serious without any significant improvement compared to previous years. Slums and crumbling farmhouses still represent the dramatic landscape of these campaigns, which represent nothing less than a “humanitarian crisis” . In Calabria, 79% of migrants assisted by MEDU are living in temporary and run-down settlements without any services. In Basilicata the percentage of agricultural laborers that live in such conditions reach 98%. Regarding the health situation, the most common pathologies found in a young population of, on average, 30 to 39 years old, were mostly correlated to the hard working conditions in the fields and to the critical social, living and sanitary conditions.

Therefore, the response of the institutions to a phenomenon of exploitation of such dimensions has been totally insufficient. While in certain areas, no changes seem to occur, in others something seems to be evolving. In the last season, the regional governments of Puglia and Basilicata have started a comprehensive plan with the specific objective of improving the working and living conditions of migrants working in agriculture. But if on the one hand, the strategies of the two ad-hoc Task Forces have had the merit of addressing the problem in its complexity, on the other hand, the practical realization of specific actions showed serious deficiencies in both the planning and the operative aspects. In particular, in Puglia, the initiative called “Capo free ghetto off” remained largely unimplemented.

As a consequence of the serious situation found in all these areas, MEDU asks the local and national institutions to adopt several urgent measures, aimed at improving the working and living conditions starting from the very next season. At the same time, it is necessary to start comprehensive and integrated actions to address the problem in its complexity in the medium and long run. These measures would have to necessarily overcome the vision of the problem as an emergency and to take into account multiple connected aspects such as work, reception on the territory, health services, transportation, legal aspects, action against illegal recruitment and support to ethical companies.

In the last part of the report, several operational guidelines, articulated in seven points, are proposed: an integrated strategy against the system of exploitation; a program beyond emergency to be run in the medium and long term; laws and investments for revamping agriculture; fostering culture of legality; minimum standard of reception for seasonal workers; living solutions other than slums; access to the national health service. In the final chapter is presented an analysis of the so called “Rosarno Law”. After more than two years from its implementation, it appears to be unable to reach the complexity of the production system and of the transformations that agricultural work underwent. It also has not efficaciously contrasted work exploitation, nor the position of weakness and social marginalization of these workers.

Read the full Report in Italian
Read the Summary in English
Video, photos, stories

Medu press office – 3343929765 / 0697844892 info@mediciperidirittiumani.org

Medici per i Diritti Umani (MEDU) is an independent humanitarian organization, which started in 2014 the project “TERRAGIUSTA. Campaign Against the Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Agriculture in Italy” in collaboration with Association for Judicial Studies on Immigration (ASGI) and the Laboratory of Theory and Practice of Rights of Roma Tre University (Ltpd). The project and the report Terragiusta are realized with the support of Fondazione Charlemagne, Open Society Foundations, Fondazione con il Sud and Fondazione Nando Peretti.


Document type: Press releases