Photo credit: the New York Times
Like many other European Union member states, Italy desperately needs migrant labour and immigration. However, the government has admitted that the pathways for legal entry are rife with abuse.
The New York Times reports that it has taken the death of a migrant labourer to expose the country’s conflicted relationship with migrants.
An Indian, Satnam Singh, was a migrant fruit picker who had his arm chopped off in an accident in June while at work. Instead of taking him to a hospital, his employer dropped him off in front of his home with part of his arm in a fruit basket.
Mr Singh died shortly afterwards.
He arrived in Italy in 2021 from India on a temporary worker’s permit. But he remained working illegally for more than two years after his work permit expired. He was hoping that an employer would legalize him. However, his hopes were in vain.
He found himself, like so many other migrants, ground up in a nearly feudal system that offers scant protection to some of Italy’s most necessary workers.
The death of the 31-year-old stirred an uproar in Italy this summer, setting off a new round of soul-searching about the country’s conflicted relationship with migrants.
The country’s population is ageing and dwindling. It desperately needs migrant workers, but the public discourse has been dominated by years of talking about how to keep migrants away. Now, those who had warned of “ethnic replacement” of Italians by foreigners, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, have acknowledged the nee for migrant labour.
Meloni’s government has vowed to improve pathways for migrants to work legally in Italy. However, experts and Ms Meloni herself have said the system is rife with abuse, leaving many vulnerable to exploitation and blackmail.
She described Mr Singh’s death as “disgusting” and said it “does not reflect” Italy.
While trying to draw a sharp line between regular and irregular migration, she is cracking down on illegal arrivals by boat and also significantly increasing the number of work permits for migrant workers.
But the distinction between regular and irregular migrants remains flimsy, according to experts.
Many migrants come on seasonal contracts but then remain and work illegally in the country when their permits expire. Others come under the promise of a contract but are never given one as the government’s current quotas for legal migrant workers do not bind employees to hire the workers they bring in.
Being already in the country, with no contract and sometimes with no permit, the workers are easy prey for unscrupulous employers.
Many investigations have revealed that workers are paid a few euros an hour, with contracts grossly underrepresenting their work hours or without papers. Some employers seize workers’ documents to keep them beholden to them. Middlemen, who are sometimes migrants themselves, keep a large part of the workers’ slim salaries in exchange for backbreaking work in the fields and filthy housing.
Once in a long while, an especially horrific act of abuse exposes the system, but the outcry fades, and the exploitations continue.
Lt. Col. Michele Meola of the Carabinieri police said Mr Singh’s treatment was ruthless. He was working with a plastic wrap machine when his arm got stuck. A good chunk of it was completely smashed.
His boss later drove him and his partner, Soni Soni, who was working in the fields, to their house. She later testified in court that their boss “threw” Mr Singh from his van, leaving his head bleeding, as well, according to her lawyer, Gianni Lauretti.
