10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4930
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2239-625X
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urn:nbn:it:unica-28913
Giuliana Sanò
Anuac
“The eternal return” of normality: Invisibility and essentiality of migrant farmworkers before and during the Covid-19 pandemic
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac
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Thematic section: Economic nationalisms in a world on fire
2022-11-25
2021-09-27
2022-12-23
2022-12-23
151-174
1
Giuliana Sanò
2022/11/25
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4930
151
University of Messina, Italy
2239-625X
2
174
urn:nbn:it:unica-28913
“The eternal return” of normality: Invisibility and essentiality of migrant farmworkers before and during the Covid-19 pandemic
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac/article/download/4930/5317
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                                          2022 | Anuac. Vol. 11, n° 2, Dicembre 2022: 151-174




The eternal return of normality
Invisibility and essentiality of migrant farmworkers before and during
the Covid-19 pandemic
Giuliana Sanò
Università di Messina




Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the central link between inter-
national mobility, migration policies and economic nationalism in Italy. Drawing on
ethnographic data collected during and after the national lockdown, this article focus-
es on the motivations behind the amnesty approved in 2021 by the government as part
of the “Decreto Rilancio”, which was aimed at regularising the status of undocumented
migrant workers employed in those sectors of the labour market considered essential (ag-
riculture, domestic and care work). Through the categories of essentiality and invisibility,
the ambivalent role played by migrants within the labour market and the national econo-
my are investigated, with a particular focus on the agri-food sector. Above all, the article
focuses on the paradoxes made explicit by the amnesty introduced during the pandemic.
The scarcity of submitted applications, especially in the agricultural sector, proved its
complete ineffectiveness. This article aims to show how, in the face of the essentiality
and numerical centrality of the migrant labour force within the agri-food sector, the na-
tional economic policy still does not recognise those workers’ importance, encouraging
exploitative practices and policies of socio-economic marginalisation.

Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic; Migrant farmworkers; Invisibility; Essentiality.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giuliana Sanò
The eternal return of normality. Invisibility and essentiality of migrant farmworkers before and during
the Covid-19 pandemic
2022 | Anuac. Vol. 11, n° 2, Dicembre 2022: 151-174.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4930
152	Giuliana Sanò

Introduction
   At the onset of the pandemic, in March 2020, I was grappling with the final
phase of a research project on the geographical and biographical trajectories
of migrants and refugees outside the reception system; an investigation that
kept me committed for two years, between 2018 and 2020, first in the Autono-
mous Province of Trento and, subsequently, in Sicily and Calabria1.
   In these years of fieldwork, I learned that, once their reception project is
over, asylum seekers and refugees encounter numerous difficulties in stabilis-
ing themselves in the labour and housing market, very often ending up living
on the streets (Sanò, Storato, Della Puppa 2021) or within ghettos and infor-
mal settlements (Semprebon, Marzorati, Garrapa 2017; Lo Cascio, Piro 2018,
Caruso 2018; Ippolito, Perrotta, Raeymaekers 2021) and working in the coun-
tryside of Northern and Southern Italy.
   Due to its high level of flexibility and informality, agriculture is one of the
most decisive sectors in the reproduction of unqualified, low-paid and, more
generally, exploited workers. Here, the combination of unfavourable employ-
ment conditions and the low attractiveness of agricultural work, together with
the characteristics of Italian labour legislation and migration flows (King,
Lazaridis, Tsardanidis 2000; Perrotta, Sacchetto 2012), has progressively led to
the growing need for foreign labour to replace the local workforce and to the
compression of labour costs2 (Colloca, Corrado 2013; Azzeruoli 2016; Garrapa
2016; Corrado, Lo Cascio, Perrotta 2018).
   Focusing on the role played by migrant agricultural workers during the
health crisis, this article aims to show how, in the face of the essentiality and


1. The project “Unacknowledged/Disconosciuti”, carried out in the Autonomous Province
   of Trento, was founded by Demarchi Foundation of Trento. The research project “After
   the reception: New social networks, housing solutions and work among migrants in Sicily
   and Calabria” was supported by the Alsos Foundation of Bologna in collaboration with
   the COSPECS Department, University of Messina. This article was made possible by the
   exchange work that took place at the AAA/ CASCA Annual Meeting, 2019 in Vancouver. I
   would like to thank Anuac anonymous reviewers, the editors of this thematic section and
   all those who took part in the panel discussion Transnational Perspective on Economic Na-
   tionalism and Contested Belonging organised by Ann Kingsolver.
2. An elaboration by CREA on data collected by INPS shows that in 2017 out of a total of
   1,059,998 agricultural workers, the number of employees of foreign nationality was
   364,385. Among employees of foreign origin, the top five nationalities represented were
   Romania, Morocco, India, Albania and Poland, with a percentage increase in the years
   between 2008 and 2017 of workers from Senegal (+164.22) and China (+1177.16). (Macrì
   2019) However, the official data do not take into account the anomalies that characterise
   this sector and, in particular, the presence of undeclared and grey work.


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The eternal return of normality                                                           153

numerical centrality of the migrant labour force within the agri-food sector,
Italy’s national economic policy still does not recognise those workers’ im-
portance, encouraging exploitative practices and policies of socio-economic
invisibilization and marginalisation.
   Although the pandemic kept me away from the research camps, the fact
that I had built strong personal relationships with workers, trade unionists
and activists in Northern and Southern Italy allowed me to stay in touch with
them and interview them by telephone about the conditions of asylum seekers
and refugees during the pandemic and home confinement3.
   Despite the several points of contact between the areas investigated, how-
ever, there are differences between the two contexts; differences that, as will
be shown in the following pages, proved crucial in the management and or-
ganisation of migrant labour during the confinement due to the pandemic.
   The geographical area of Trentino Alto Adige is characterised by the pres-
ence of farms specialised in the production of apples and wine. In this context,
the foreign labour force employed in harvesting is mainly made up of seasonal
workers from Eastern Europe. In the Plain of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, the pres-
ence of migrant labour is mainly linked to the citrus fruit harvest. Here, the
migrant labour force is indiscriminately composed of EU migrants, non-EU
migrants, asylum seekers and refugees rather than a particular group.
   With the end of my research project on migrants who had left the reception
system, in September 2020, I started to deal with a religious rite celebrated by
a group of Senegalese Muridi4.
   Every year, for the feast of Magal – the most important feast in the ritual
calendar of the Muridi Senegalese – dozens of migrants gather at a ghetto of
farm workers located halfway between Campobello di Mazara and Castelve-
trano, in the province of Trapani.

3. The data and materials reported in this paper concerning the Autonomous Province of
   Trento and the Plain of Gioia Tauro were collected during fieldwork and through tele-
   phone interviews with social workers (5) and migrants out of the reception system (10).
   The comparison is the result of multi-sited ethnography, aimed at studying and analysing
   the living and working paths of migrants who have left the institutional reception system.
   Specifically, a period of participant observation was carried out in informal settlements,
   meeting places, spaces for the care of homeless migrants, and spaces for legal and labour
   advocacy. In addition, 40 in-depth interviews and informal conversations were carried out
   with activists, migrants, workers in the reception system, employers, and trade unionists.
4. The research Migrazioni, spaesamento e appaesamento: letture antropologiche del nesso ri-
   tuali/migrazioni in contesti di Italia meridionale is financially supported by the Prin 2017
   grant. It involves the study of the Magal Festival celebrations by a group of Senegalese
   Muridi labourers living in a rural ghetto in the Province of Trapani.


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154	Giuliana Sanò

    Despite the shift in my research, which now involves studying the celebra-
tion of Magal’s feast, the opportunity to frequent the space of the rural ghetto
and to participate in formal and informal ethnographic interactions allowed
me to continue to elaborate on the role of the pandemic in the lives of these
extremely flexible and precarious workers5.
    In the autumn of 2020, despite the ministerial provisions for the contain-
ment of the Covid-19 pandemic within the ghetto of agricultural workers, the
celebration of the Magal’s feast took place without any restrictions. It was not
the benevolence of the institutions that guaranteed the holding of the festival,
but rather the disinterest they showed towards invisible living spaces, which
at the same time turned out to be decisive for the local and national economy.
Paradoxically, the fact that the festival had taken place within the ghetto of
seasonal agricultural workers was but a confirmation of the conditions of mar-
ginality and invisibility that certain classes of workers, especially migrants,
have continued to experience, even during the pandemic.
    Based on ethnographic examples collected between April 2020 and De-
cember 2021 in Northern and Southern Italy, the article shows how the
“essentiality” of immigrant farm workers should not be sought in the excep-
tionality of the pandemic, but in the “normality” of the organization of migrant
labour. More specifically, in the so-called “Mediterranean immigration model”
(King, Lazaridis, Tsardanidis 2000; Pugliese 2006) which historically combines
the high level of informality of the local labour market with the processes of
illegalisation of migrants produced by migration policies.
    The case studies reported in the text analyse the consequences of the sea-
sonal mobility blockade of Eastern European agricultural workers who are
employed in the autumn in the grape and apple harvesting in Trentino; the
implications of grey and informal work on the (im)mobility of labourers living
in the Plain of Gioia Tauro (Calabria) engaged in the citrus fruit harvest in the
winter months; and the effects of the health crisis on the loss of work and the
consequent retreat of migrant labour within the agricultural sector, as clarified
by the case of the rural ghetto of Campobello di Mazara (Sicily). The decision
to put these case studies – collected at different times (during and after the


5. Also in this case the research made use of an ethnographic methodology. Access to the
   workers’ ghetto was mediated by the presence of activists from the local branch of the
   association Fuori Mercato. Together with around 15 in-depth interviews and informal
   conversations collected with activists, migrants, and local authorities, one period of par-
   ticipant observation was carried out in the local ghetto, in spaces for legal and working
   support, and meeting spaces.


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The eternal return of normality                                                      155

confinement) and in two different geographical contexts (North and South It-
aly) – into dialogue, aims at highlighting the different mechanisms that were
set in motion during the pandemic. As we will see in the ethnographic sec-
tions, the invisibility/essentiality binomial played a different role depending
on the territory and the organisation of work. In Trentino, this binomial gave
rise to the employment of asylum seekers in the agricultural sector, caused
by the absence of seasonal workers from Eastern Europe; in Calabria, it facili-
tated the activation of measures aimed at regularising irregular labour: those
who due to the scarcity of workers with residence permits and, therefore, had
been unable to go to work. In Sicily, it promoted support actions by civil soci-
ety to overcome the difficulties caused by the invisibility and marginalisation
of people living in ghettos.
   Together, these examples are used to analyse the work of the government
during the first phase of the crisis with particular reference to the implemen-
tation of the decree (Decreto Rilancio) which provided for the regularisation of
workers employed in the agricultural and domestic sectors. The comparison
of these sets of data will provide the key to an overall reading of the trans-
formations but, above all, to the lines of continuity that exist in this specific
economic and employment sphere.

Migrant agricultural labour in Italy and the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact
   Since March 2020, the transformations and changes generated by the out-
break of the pandemic have attracted the attention of researchers and social
scientists, who have focused their reflections and criticism on the acceleration
of processes and forms of social inequality triggered by the health crisis6.
   The Covid-19 pandemic unravelled hidden realities within society (El Guin-
di 2022) and showed that the current dominant political-economic system is
precarious and unsustainable (Fuentes 2022). The prolonged confinement as
well as the economic and social risks resulting from the pandemic have not
been the same for everyone, but have mainly adversely affected informal work-
ers, migrants, the homeless and the poor. Despite the traditional invisibility
that surrounds those living on the margins of urban and rural spaces, what the
Covid-19 pandemic has ironically made visible is the essential role played by
some of these informal economic actors within the national economy.



6. See, among others: Aumercier et al. 2020; Gover et al. 2020; Gravlee 2020; Della Puppa,
   Perroco 2021; Della Puppa, Sanò 2021; Elias et al. 2021.


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156	Giuliana Sanò

   More specifically, the pandemic demonstrated how essential the migrant
labour force, particularly from African nations and Eastern Europe, was to
Italy’s national food security. Likewise, products marketed as Italian prod-
ucts appeared as essential to the global food supply chain. However, what the
pandemic has brought into sharp focus is that despite the export of products
marketed under the Made in Italy label being a crucial element in strength-
ening national pride (Redini 2017), the distribution and production of specific
products, especially foodstuffs, is globally dependent on underpaid, racialised
and exploited migrant labour.
   Rather than showing a state of crisis in the organisation of agricultur-
al work, what the Covid-19 pandemic made visible were the “normal” – that
is, structural – conditions of the Italian agricultural sector. In this context,
“normality”, signifies a series of elements that, taken together, represent the
foundation on which the entire agri-food sector rests.
   Namely “normality” represents: informal recruitment of foreign workers
(Corrado 2011; Perrotta, Sacchetto 2012; Perrotta 2014; Piro 2014, 2021; Aval-
lone 2016; Corrado, De Castro, Perrotta 2016); stratification of workers based
on ethnic-racialisation or racialisation of labour (Grappi, Sacchetto 2013;
Sanò 2018; Piro 2021); “refugeeisation” of the migrant labour force (Dines,
Rigo 2015); precarious, overcrowded and unhealthy housing conditions (ghet-
tos and informal settlements), and the spatial segregation and invisibility of
labourers (Semprebon, Marzorati, Garrapa 2017; Caruso 2018; Lo Cascio, Piro
2018; Ippolito, Perrotta, Raeymaekers 2021).
   In light of the structural conditions that systemically characterise and
shape the lives of migrant farm workers, it may be useful here to overturn the
usual observations of the pandemic and ask ourselves what kind of economic
and social implications this “normality” has had when intertwined with the
health crisis.
   In the first place, this “normality” has meant that workers have gone from
being “invisible” to becoming “essential”, since the closure and slowdown of
production activities has made the centrality of the migrant workforce nu-
merically evident (Caruso, Corrado, 2021). Secondly, due to the legal and
contractual irregularity of many workers7, which prevented them from leaving
the ghettos or their homes to reach their workplaces during the lockdown,

7. Due to the cancellation of the “humanitarian protection” and the “registration of resi-
   dence” provided by Law Decrees 113/2018 and 53/2019 (the so-called “Security Decrees”
   or “Salvini Decrees”), converted respectively into Law 132/2018 and Law 77/2019, between
   2018 and 2020 a gradual process of “irregularity” of migrants has taken place.


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The eternal return of normality                                                           157

“normality” also contributed to the planning of economic measures (the De-
cree-Law n.34 of 19 May 2020/Decreto rilancio) to address regulating foreign
workers. However, as will be seen below, by virtue of the criteria established by
this decree, the amnesty that was supposed to allow these workers to emerge
from their irregularity turned out to be a complete failure (Campomori, Mar-
chetti 2020; Caruso, Lo Cascio 2021; Caproglio, Rigo 2021, Dal Zotto, Lo
Cascio, Piro 2021).
   Moreover, given the immobility in the months of lockdown that affect-
ed the groups of workers without employment contracts, the “normality” of
labour practices caused situations of high health risk for the inhabitants of
ghettos and informal settlements: they became places that were particularly
overcrowded and characterised by unsafe sanitary conditions (Dal Zotto, Lo
Cascio, Piro 2021; Caruso, Corrado 2021)8.
   It should come as no surprise that this “normality” has been widely targeted
by academics and activists, as it is decisive in worsening the health, economic
and social conditions of migrants and those in the most precarious, flexible
and extorted positions in the society and in the labour market.
   The list of anthropologists and social scientists who have criticised the issue
of “normality” during the pandemic is long9. Highlighting the link between fa-
miliarity and ambiguity that underpins the notion of the “not so new normal”,
Kurnosov and Varfolomeeva (2020) suggest: “In this combination, the familiar
hierarchies and inequalities are reinforced through the deliberate ambigui-
ty of decision-making”. While, in a recent work, Goode, Stroup and Gaufman
(2022) analyse how the normality prescribed by everyday nationalism in un-
settled times has actually become the basis for exacerbating everyday forms
and practices of exclusion towards marginalised groups of people.
   From this perspective, the critique of “normality” – widely considered a risk
factor and at the same time the cause of the economic and social inequali-
ties highlighted by the health crisis – represents the very focus of this article,
which brings to light the links between economic nationalism, working and
living conditions of migrant farmworkers, and the socio-economic implica-
tions of the pandemic.


8. The living conditions inside the ghettos and camps are reported by the farm workers
   themselves in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b2qx7utFlo, accessed on
   01/11/2022.
9. Among others, the works of Elias et al. 2021; Laster Pirtle 2020; Oliveira et al. 2020; Pir-
   rone 2020; Perocco 2020; Sanò 2020; Dominguez 2021, highlight the transformations,
   fractures and lines of continuity taking place during the crisis.


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158	Giuliana Sanò

The ambivalent role of migrant farm workers and “Made in Italy” products
before and during the Covid-19 Pandemic
   In the recent work edited by Ippolito, Perrotta, Raeymaekers (2021), the
transformations of the agri-food system are analysed in light of the con-
nections between the economic-productive plan and the implications of
racialised Italian migration policies. Regulated by the large distribution
chains which nowadays act as “food authorities”, the transformations of the
agri-food system determine both production and consumption costs (Cor-
rado 2021) and the strengthening of the transnational organisation of work
and trade, the benefits of which fall mainly in the sector of “Made in Ita-
ly” products, with food foremost among them (Corrado, Lo Cascio, Perrotta
2018; Iocco, Lo Cascio, Perrotta 2020; Howard, Forin 2021; Ippolito, Perrot-
ta, Raeymaekers 2021).
   In addition, “Italian and foreign retail chains - through their ‘buyer pow-
erʼ - have become increasingly able to influence where, how, by whom and at
what price food is produced” (Iocco, Lo Cascio, Perrotta 2020: 737). If, from
an economic point of view, these transformations have led to the contraction
of small and medium-sized enterprises in national and international markets
(due to their impossibility of fitting logics and the conditions of the so-called
“supermarket revolution”), from a labour perspective they have pushed small
farmers to expand the use of low-cost and flexible immigrant labour (ibid.).
   Based on these elements, the reason for including the case of agricultur-
al workers in this special issue devoted to economic nationalisms becomes
clearer. It lies in the possibility of establishing lines of continuity between the
transformations induced by the pandemic and migrants’ previous living and
working conditions. These lines of continuity can be traced by looking at the
emergence of the category of “essential work” and “essential workers” through
the lens of racism and economic nationalism. It is no coincidence that many of
the sectors that became essential during the pandemic (agriculture, logistics
and care work) are predominantly occupied by foreign labour. However, in the
case of agriculture, in addition to the characteristics that this sector shares
with the others, it also becomes necessary to consider the strategic impor-
tance it holds within the policies and rhetoric of economic nationalism.
   The symbolic identification between products and national identity (Redi-
ni 2017) is part of the game that helps build and meld the feeling of national
unity and belonging. In this regard, some of the major works on nationalism
(Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983; Pratt 2003; Appadurai 2013) have focused on


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The eternal return of normality                                                 159

the power of symbolic activities and the combinations they can generate with-
in a specific community.
   Pratt (2003) highlighted how the image of the Italian working class was
transformed and reshaped during the early years of industrialisation. In that
period, the figure of skilled and specialised workers was replaced by that of an
indistinct, unskilled and masculinised working class. Far from remaining on
the level of representations, this transformation resulted in the worsening of
living conditions in the factory and the lowering of labour costs.
   Comparing the economic nationalist rhetoric of US and Indian leaders,
Kingsolver and Pandey point out that: “they similarly invoke the symbolism
that originated with independence from British colonialism (almost two cen-
turies later) and both offer marginalised labour to produce ‘American-madeʼ
or ‘Indian-madeʼ goods” (2019:14).
   Consistent with these themes is the role played by the rhetoric of “Made in
Italy”, reshaped and implemented in correspondence with the economic cri-
sis of the early 2000s and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interest shown
by the political class in the agricultural sector during the crisis reveals the
symbolic activity at stake. Rhetoric about the high quality of Italian agricul-
tural produce and the countryʼs rural identity was indiscriminately used by
politicians to convey the reliability and stability of the Italian economy in the
European economic market.
   Together with the defence of the “good health” of the national econo-
my, the revival of the “Made in Italy” rhetoric has also brought to light the
deep ambiguities that characterise the organisation of work in agriculture,
starting with the use of cheap migrant labour. Only apparently interested in
promoting high quality products and labour, the “Made in Italy” rhetoric has
not seriously addressed the widespread exploitation in the local agricultural
sector. On the contrary, the intervention of more populist political forces has
rearticulated and strengthened previous processes of “criminalisation” and
“invisibilisation” of the migrant labour force (Iocco, Lo Cascio, Perrotta 2020).
   The far-right populist party led by Matteo Salvini has been one of the main
advocates of this “struggle” to recover a symbolism linked to the countryʼs
agricultural and rural identity. However, while the leader of the Lega party, on
the one hand, extolled national identity and the pride represented by food, on
the other he implemented more restrictive migration policies, which led to
further and deeper economic and social marginalisation of migrant workers
employed in the agricultural sector (ivi).



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160	Giuliana Sanò

   In the face of the hegemonic narrative on the bucolic identity of Italy, which
represents one of the main vectors for the promotion and diffusion of “Made
in Italy” products (Howard, Forin 2021), the dependence of the agri-food sec-
tor on the migrant labour force is barely reported by national politics. Just as
in the early days of capitalism the living conditions of workers, necessary for
their reproduction, were not mentioned, we still see the concealment of the
most essential part of maintaining the national economy: the racialised and
invisible immigrant workers.

From invisible to essential workers: The ineffectiveness of amnesty as
migrant policy
   Among the needs and contradictions that the pandemic has brought to
light are those related to migrant labour and its role in the labour market. The
blockage of the mobility of workers from Eastern Europe, employed for the
most part in the agricultural sector and in care work, has contributed to coun-
teracting the media representation that is mainly focused on the presence of
African workers in the countryside of Northern and Southern Italy (Caproglio,
Rigo 2020). Starting from this element, it is possible to state that the health
crisis has definitively laid bare “the link – as evident as it is often concealed in
the political-media debate – between the regulation of international mobility
and the management of the domestic labour market” (ibidem: 33).
   Aware of this link and of the serious shortage of labour due to the block-
age of mobility, the employersʼ organisations have taken immediate action,
making explicit proposals and requests to the national government (Caruso,
Lo Cascio 2021). These requests triggered a heated debate among internal
political forces, especially with those of the extreme right, since at first they
envisaged increasing the requirements for regularisation to all migrants pres-
ent in Italy without a residence permit. Subsequently, in the face of growing
protests in Parliament and among opposition parties, the government chose
instead to significantly reduce the requirements for regularisation, stipulat-
ing that only people employed in agriculture, livestock and animal husbandry,
fishing and aquaculture, personal care and domestic work could benefit from
this measure (Campomori, Marchetti 2020).
   It is, therefore, within this debate between the usefulness of the migrant
workforce and the resistance of the political class to the regularisation of
these people, that the Decree-Law n.34 of 19 May 2020 (the so-called “Decre-
to rilancio”), Article 103 was inserted. Titled “Emersione di rapporti di lavoro”



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The eternal return of normality                                                          161

(“Emergence of labour relations”), it contained the rules for making official
existing irregular labour relations with foreign nationals, as well as the exten-
sion of temporary residence permits to foreign nationals who were previously
in possession of them and which expired after 31 October 2019. The channels
identified by the government to access the amnesty were mainly twofold.
     The first one, identified in paragraph 1 of art. 103 of the DL Rilancio, provides
     for the issuance of a residence permit for subordinate work in the presence
     of an offer of new employment or the declaration of emersion of an existing
     irregular relationship in one of the following sectors: agriculture, livestock
     farming and related activities; domestic work and personal assistance. The
     duration of the residence permit is linked to the work contract and the
     initiation of the procedure is left to the initiative of the employer, who may
     be an Italian, European or non-EU citizen, provided that they hold an EU
     long-term residence permit pursuant to art. 9 of the Consolidated Act on
     Immigration. The second channel, referred to in paragraph 2 of the same
     article, provides for the issuance of a provisional residence permit, lasting six
     months, to non-EU citizens who have held a residence permit that expired
     after 31 October 2019 and have previously worked in one of the three sectors
     mentioned above (Caproglio, Rigo 2020: 35).

   The requirements for access to the regularisation measure, thus conceived,
led to a low number of applications, meaning the total failure of the amnesty.
Caruso and Lo Cascio (2021) attributed the low numbers, especially in the ag-
ricultural sector, to the requirement of paragraph 2, concerning the expiration
of the residence permit after 30 October 2019. This requirement did not take
into account people who – despite being present in Italy for many years –
had lost their residence permit due to the introduction of the security decrees
launched in 2018 by the previous government led by the Lega and Five Star
party (security decrees). These people could not benefit from the regularisa-
tion measure, thus continuing to remain invisible.
   But according to the two authors, who collected several testimonies through
research conducted from the desk of a grassroots trade union (USB), another
of the critical issues of this amnesty has to do with paragraph 1 of Article 103,
which provided for the commitment to hire by a farm. If, on the one hand, the
employersʼ associations complained about the scarcity of labour due to the
blockage of workersʼ mobility, they, on the other hand, showed little willing-
ness to activate the regularisation procedure for their employees and to bear the
costs (equal to 500 euros). Based on this unwillingness on the part of employers,
Caruso and Lo Cascio rightly pointed out that “farmers feared the possible lack
not of labour tout-court, but rather of surplus labour, necessary to maintain the
mechanism of competition and downward regulation of wages” (2021: 78).


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162	Giuliana Sanò

   In examining the conditions of farmworkers during the pandemic, we also
had to consider the economic and territorial distinctions already partially
described elsewhere in the text, since the different types and geographical
origins of farmworkers played a decisive role in the organisation of the work-
force and the resilience of single territory agricultural sectors.
   In February 2021, during a telephone interview, a social worker from Tren-
tino told me that with the beginning of the harvest season the immobility of
seasonal workers from Eastern Europe had helped to redefine the organisation
of the local labour force.
      With the agricultural season everyone knew that there would be great demand
      because all the seasonal workers in Eastern Europe that usually come for
      this seasonal work were missing as they were blocked from travelling by the
      Covid-19 pandemic. Especially in the apple harvest period of September,
      there was a shortage of workers. The farmers and the employers could not
      find people because not everyone wanted to do the work and because the
      countryside is inaccessible without a car. Usually in Val di Non the workers
      would arrive by train, then the owner of the company goes to retrieve them
      by bus. But due to Covid-19 pandemic regulations they could not do the bus
      pickup anymore. Employers could also no longer accommodate that many
      in the lodgings. These are small and family businesses. There are no big
      companies here. Since there is more demand for agriculture, small groups
      of illegal recruitment have been created… the Nigerian who knew the farm,
      the owner asks him to help find workers and zac(!). Before, there were no
      Nigerians organised to do this thing, farming. This year I saw them. In my
      opinion, this thing came about spontaneously. Maybe one of them worked for
      a producer and found people for him. Me too, personally… some companies
      called me to send them people [asylum seekers and refugees], they need
      people, but there weren’t many. Somewhere, I read that an employer had
      Romanian workers flown in by helicopter10.

   Despite the resistance shown by local farmers to the employment of new
unskilled labour, the blockade of seasonal workers from Eastern Europe has
nevertheless led to a change in the trend, favouring a gradual insertion of asy-
lum seekers and refugees into the agricultural sector to replace the seasonal
labour force from Eastern Europe.
   On the other hand, in the Plain of Gioia Tauro, the slowdown in production
activities was not due to the lack of available labour, but rather, as Giuseppe
– an anthropologist and operator of a reception centre in Villa San Giovanni –
told me, because labourers could not go to work as they did not have a regular
contract:



10. Fabrizia, social worker at a Reception Center, Trento, February 2021.


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The eternal return of normality                                                         163

      The difficulty of the institutions to govern labour mobility now translates
      into people stuck in the Plain. The tent city at this time does not formally
      welcome, but informally it does. And now there are more people than usual.
      A month ago, many of the people without a contract could not go to work
      because the police stopped them and without a contract prevented them
      from continuing. At this stage, those who were not contracted could not go
      to work. So, if on the Plain there was not as much work as before, it is partly
      because the slowdown came from above, from the GdO [large-scale retail
      chains], but also because there were people without contracts and therefore
      immobilised. Even those with contracts are stopped on the way and the
      police tell them to stop and go home. So the possibilities of going to the
      workplace were very, very limited11.

   The accounts of the two operators thus make explicit the reasons that led
the national government to introduce measures aimed at regularising the sta-
tus of migrants present in Italy, with particular reference to the position of
migrants informally employed in agriculture and domestic and care work.
   Focusing on the Trentino case, we can see how the dependence of the ag-
ricultural sector on the seasonal presence of Eastern European workers has
led employers to resort to the employment of asylum seekers and refugees – a
practice already widely present in other agricultural contexts, but which in this
specific case was conditioned by the unavailability of seasonal labour and the
immobility of Eastern European workers caused by the pandemic. Although
the situation of agricultural workers in the Plain of Gioia Tauro is different,
in this case the relationship of dependence of the agricultural sector on the
migrant labour force, immobilised in centres and informal settlements due to
the lack of contracts, necessitated a push for the regularisation of migrants.
   According to the reconstruction of a USB trade unionist, during the first
confinement the labourers were closed inside the tent city for a few days only:
      R: After a few days they broke down the fences and went out to work.
      A. But werenʼt they stopped by the police?
      R: Yes, sometimes they did stop them. But they figured out some tricks. But
      then you have to consider that this area has particular conditions. Here the
      farms are fragmented and in most cases are family-run; there are no large
      settlements of farms. It is complicated to carry out checks, you have to seek
      people inch by inch. Then in agriculture, unlike other sectors, there is this
      trick. The employer can record the days worked by their employee at a later
      date12. So what happens? I make you a contract… so if you are stopped, or if
      checks are carried out on the farm, you formally have the contract, but the


11. Giuseppe, anthropologist and social-worker, Villa San Giovanni, April 2020.
12. Legislation allows employers to declare working days retroactively. As a result, in many
    cases employers declare fewer working days than those actually performed by workers
    (Caruso, Corrado 2021: 17).


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164	Giuliana Sanò

      days you worked are recorded later. Thus, even if you have worked a certain
      number of days, the employer marks down the number of days worked. In
      agriculture, there is this problem of working days, which protects employers
      from controls, but which exposes workers to cheating. Even when they have
      to renew their documents and the police ask them for their pay slips, they
      have problems because they are paid for far fewer days, and these are not
      sufficient for the renewal. During the pandemic, therefore, with that type of
      contract the workers had a pass. The problem was for those who had to move
      from Calabria to Foggia, because the season here was over and in Puglia it
      was beginning. Not having the contract in Foggia, the labourers were blocked
      at the station.
      A: The amnesty, how did it go?
      R: The amnesty was a failure, because almost none of the agricultural work-
      ers were able to prove that they were previously employed in agriculture.
      Some managed to find a contract as a domestic or caregiver. With this system
      of days in agriculture it is difficult to prove how much work has actually been
      done. In fact, we were asking for the activation of a health emergency docu-
      ment, as they have done in Portugal, not an amnesty13.

   Similarly, a social worker working in Trentino told me that:
      The amnesty in Trentino was boycotted by the professional associations.
      Since I work with people who have just arrived from the Balkan route and are
      waiting to be placed in the reception system mine is a particular point of view.
      This summer, at 7 am there was no one left in the dormitory, they all went to
      work on the farms. Our guests in the harvesting period are heavily employed.
      In recent years, seasonal work and grey work contracts have increased. In
      general, the amnesty in Trentino did not go well for workers in the agricultural
      sector because it was boycotted by the trade associations. When employers
      called for information on the amnesty they were discouraged. They were told
      that it was not convenient to regularise new workers14.

   The decision to regularise only those employed in the primary sector of the
labour market coincided, therefore, with the governmentʼs need to guarantee
maximum protection for entrepreneurial activities managed by employ-
ersʼ associations that are more dependent on the corporations and “food
authorities” represented by the large-scale retail chains. Although the im-
plementation of a regularisation measure has been potentially beneficial, the
agri-food systemʼs double dependence on the migrant labour force and trans-
national labour and trade rules has not contributed to changing the material
existence of migrant workers. Since the requirements set by the government
for access to the amnesty were particularly stringent, only a small number




13. Roberto, trade unionist, San Ferdinando, October 2021.
14. Francesco, social worker, Trento, December 2021.


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The eternal return of normality                                                              165

of people were able to apply for regularisation15, almost entirely thwarting
the efforts of those who had hoped to regularise their status after the long
season of measures and decrees aimed at the irregularisation and invisibility
of migrants in Italy. Moreover, none of these workers has been offered better
housing conditions, nor have they been guaranteed inclusion in national pre-
vention and care programmes.

Conclusion: “Normalised” structural inequalities for the “essential”
transnational workers
   In the first days of October 2020, with the activists of the campaign Letʼs
bring water to the ghetto, I took part in the celebration of the Magal festival
inside the ghetto of farmworkers Ex Calcestruzzi located in Campobello di
Mazara, in Western Sicily16.
   The campaign, promoted by the national association Fuori Mercato and co-
ordinated by a group of local activists, is part of the work to promote and
protect the rights of farmworkers in the ghetto that local associations have
been carrying out in this area for many years. With the onset of the pandemic
and the spread of the virus, the lack of water and sanitation within these infor-
mal living spaces has proved to be a crucial factor in the health and well-being
of the workers. Thus, while the national government was concerned with
bringing some of the migrant workers in line with the law to ensure that pro-
duction activities could continue to be carried out, voluntary associations and
grassroots trade unions denounced through national campaigns the worrying



15. Compared to the figures estimated by the government, in the agricultural sector 29,555
    applications for emersion were submitted, while in the other key sector of the amnesty,
    domestic work, 176,848 applications for emersion were collected (see Caruso, Lo Cascio
    2021). By comparing the data relating to the first nationalities of foreign workers officially
    employed in the agricultural sector (see footnote 2) it is interesting to note a correspon-
    dence between this data and those that report the numbers of workers who have applied
    for regularisation, namely workers from Albania, Morocco, and India. To these numbers a
    component of Senegalese workers (1,265 applications) must be added. According to Caru-
    so and Lo Cascio (2021) such high numbers among citizens from Albania and Morocco can
    be explained due to their long settlement and to the role played by the previous migratory
    chains, which ensured and still ensure a greater territorial rooting and a social capital able
    to activate inclusion and, as in this case, regularisation paths (2021: 73).
16. This ghetto was established in 2018, after the local authorities and the police committed
    to clearing the previous one in Erbe bianche (White Herbs). However, the commitment
    shown by the authorities has practically run out of steam with eviction activities alone.
    Far from finding adequate housing solutions for the farm workers, they left them living in
    a space without water, electricity and sanitation.


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166	Giuliana Sanò

health and living conditions of the people living in the ghettos, deprived of
water and the most basic sanitation services (Cordova 2021).
   In those days, the ghetto was taken by storm. Dozens of devotees had come
to Campobello from neighbouring areas to celebrate with their brothers, while
others had arrived from other parts of Italy to work on the olive harvest. During
the preparations for the festival, the group of activists was busy activating wa-
ter supplies and putting up posters bearing the words “Fuori Mercato” – the
name of a national association that fights the extractivist logic of the market
and promotes mutualistic practices. While reading the posters, Mamadou17, a
young man of Senegalese origin, asked us about the meaning of Fuori Mercato.
After listening carefully to the explanation of one of the activists, Mamadou
told us that he had already heard about the existence of this association in
Puglia, the region where he lives. Before the pandemic, Mamadou worked as
a welder in a small town in Apulia. When the business closed down, he had
to find another job. Like many other asylum seekers and migrants in Italy,
Mamadou turned to the agricultural sector, one of the few remaining sectors
actively looking for labour.
   After the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, I returned to the field to
carry out my research project. In the winter and spring months the ghetto
tends to empty, but this year dozens of people were unable to leave the ghet-
to because they had no documents. Together with the activists of the Casa
del Mutuo Soccorso, a project of the Fuori Mercato network coordinated by the
group of local activists, every Friday we worked to collect cases of undocu-
mented people awaiting documents.
   Among these people, the percentage of those who had applied for regularisa-
tion under the amnesty was very low. The difficulty of fulfilling the requirements
of the governmental measure meant that most of the ghetto workers were ex-
cluded and remained in the invisibility that characterises this sector.
   Before the start of the new harvest season, in September 2021, the local au-
thorities organised a couple of meetings. These meetings were mainly aimed
at preserving the agricultural district and the local economy, while still no at-
tention was paid to the living and working conditions of the immigrant labour
force. Invited by the labourers, the mayor of Campobello attended the Magal
Festival. During his visit, he stated that “there was no time and they should
wait until the next harvest season to move to better housing”.


17. A pseudonym.


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The eternal return of normality                                                 167

    Three days later, on the night of 30 September 2021, the ghetto went up
in flames and was destroyed. One Senegalese labourer, Omar Baldeh, lost his
life in the fire, while others lost all their belongings, and the shacks they lived
in were destroyed. Following the fire, in the middle of the harvest season, the
local authorities were unable to find adequate responses to the needs of the
labour force. Interested only in the maintenance of the local economic district,
the local administrations set up housing modules with a very limited capacity
and reserved only to those in possession of a green pass and a document. The
workers, on the other hand, asked to be let free to take care of themselves, but
above all to remain united (Lo Cascio 2021). The essentiality of agricultural
work and workers in Campobello – expressed by the statement of the mayor –
has not, therefore, made their living and working conditions less critical, but
above all it has not made them any less invisible.
    The acceleration in the health crisis since its inception has not simply
reinforced pre-existing economic inequalities and disparities but also char-
acterises the growth of certain economic sectors, the centrality of which has
been fuelled and supported by rhetoric based on national economic autonomy
and identity.
    In the pandemic period, we have seen national identity sentiments grow
exponentially everywhere, starting with calls for unity by the media and poli-
ticians in every country to speed up the end of the crisis and the exit from the
pandemic. The instrumental use of sentiments of unity and national identity
was not only used on the medical and health front but also, and above all, on
the economic front.
    Based on this appeal to unity and national identity, the article has tried to
reconstruct the link between economic nationalism, the working and living
conditions of migrant farm workers and the pandemic. Starting from the pref-
erence that political actors have shown for specific economic sectors in this
phase of the crisis, particularly those considered “essential” for the preserva-
tion, growth and promotion of the economy and national products abroad, we
have tried to demonstrate the worsening of the economic, social and working
conditions of migrant workers.
    In the face of that “normality” which, intertwined with the health crisis, has
allowed governments to subordinate the rights, health and needs of workers
– especially racialised workers – to profit and the continuation of economic
sectors and the labour market in their exploitative form. The pandemic has
helped to reveal specific factors: it has brought into sharper focus the depen-



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168	Giuliana Sanò

dence of the national economy on the migrant labour force; the ambivalent
role played by migrant workers, who are seen as both invisible and essential;
and the processes and mechanisms of racialisation that underpin the capital-
ist development model.
   The cases reported in the text should therefore be read in light of the char-
acteristics of the national economy, which pursues very high and competitive
quality models and productivity standards pandering to the logic of the “food
authorities”, while simultaneously pursuing the compression of labour costs,
the exploitation of migrant labour and the social and economic marginalisa-
tion of this workforce.
   In this sense, the pandemic and the resulting socio-economic crisis rep-
resent a key to understanding the processes that have historically led to
structural inequalities and disparities, but also those that are likely to occur
in the future, unless the cycle of economic and migration policies that have
brought us to this point is interrupted. At the moment, circumstances do not
seem to agree with the theses of those (myself included) who at the beginning
of this crisis had hoped for a radical change. After all, the thousands of peo-
ple excluded from the amnesty are the clearest demonstration of the lack of
change and the return of “normality”.




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The eternal return of normality                                                         169

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2022 | Anuac. Vol. 11, n° 2, Dicembre 2022: 151-174
The eternal return of normality                                                                   173

  Giuliana Sanò is Senior lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Messina. Her
  main research interests include international migration, mobility, migrant labour,
  the reception system for refugees and asylum seekers and social transformations in
  urban and rural areas. She is the author of the book Fabbriche di plastica. Il lavoro
  nellʼagricoltura industriale. With Francesco Della Puppa she has recently edited: The
  Prism of New Mobilities. The Mobility Trajectories of Refugees and Asylum Seekers Out-
  side the Italian System of International Protection, (Journal of Modern Italian Studies,
  2021); Stuck and Exploited. Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Italy Between Exclusion,
  Discrimination and Struggles (Ca’ Foscari Press, 2021).
  giuliana.sano@unime.it




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giuliana Sanò
The eternal return of normality. Invisibility and essentiality of migrant farmworkers before and during
the Covid-19 pandemic
2022 | Anuac. Vol. 11, n° 2, Dicembre 2022: 151-174.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4932
