Agriculture and migration in the European Union

International seminar – University of Bergamo (Italy), 24-25 October 2013

 

Department of Human and Social Science

An event organized in collaboration with l’ORA – Osservatorio sui Segni del Tempo, University of Bergamo

 

Room: Sala Riunioni, Piazza Rosate 2, third floor (Bergamo, Città alta)

 

 

 

El Ejido (Andalusia, Spain), February 2000: around sixty Moroccan greenhouse workers are injured during three days of race riots.

Morecambe Bay (Lancashire, UK), February 2004: 23 Chinese cockle pickers, under contract to a Chinese gangmaster, are drowned by an incoming tide.

Poscros (Bouches-du-Rhône, France), July 2005: 300 Moroccan, Tunisian, and Chinese seasonal workers go on strike to demand unpaid wages and better housing and employment conditions.

Rosarno (Calabria, Italy), January 2010: following the wounding of three Sub-Saharan African orange pickers, violent riots break out between immigrants and the local population.

Nardò (Apulia, Italy), August 2011: hundreds of Tunisian and West African watermelon and tomato pickers go on a two-week strike against their employers and caporali.

Manolada (Peloponnese, Greece), April 2013: about 25 Bangladeshi strawberry pickers are shot by their Greek supervisors, after they demand unpaid wages.

 

These conflicts and tragedies – the most famous in a long list of events that have occurred over the last fifteen years in rural areas across the European Union – have revealed the often dramatic living and working conditions of hundreds of thousands migrant agricultural workers. The events have stimulated a series of reports, inquiries, research projects as well as interventions by activists.

The purpose of this seminar is to gather researchers from different disciplines and countries, as well as activists, farmworkers and peasants.

 

 

Program

 

Thursday, 24 October

 

13.45, Welcome, Giuseppe Bertagna, Head Department of Human and Social Sciences

14.00, Introductory remarks, Domenico Perrotta (University of Bergamo)

 

14.30-16.30, Session I:  Patterns of mobility in rural areas of EU

(chair: Simona Tersigni, University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre, Sophiapol)

• Apostolos      Papadopoulos, Loukia-Maria Fratsea (Hapokopio      University, Athens),      Migrant labour and precarious employment in agriculture: reflections on      new employment relations in rural Greece
• Vanessa      Azzeruoli (University of Padua), The (sacred) cows’ business. Narratives and practices of an “Ethnicized niche      work”: the Indian Punjab bergamini in the Pianura Padana.
• Chantal      Crenn (Université de Bordeaux), Eternels saisonniers ou      combinards ? : Les ouvriers agricoles « arabes » des      vignobles bordelais

• Romain Filhol (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée), Spécificités de la province de Caserta au sein de la « roue saisonnière » des travailleurs agricoles migrants du Mezzogiorno

 

16.30-17.00, Coffee break

17.00-19.00, Session II: Agricultural labour markets

(chair: Giovanna Fullin, University of Milano Bicocca)

• Emmanuelle      Hellio (University of Nice), “We don’t have women in boxes”: channelling      seasonal mobility of women farm workers in Andalusia
• Gennaro      Avallone (University of Salerno),      Making history. Labour market and      migrant workers in Piana del Sele’s agriculture (Campania,      Italy)
• Pamela Robinson (University       of Birmingham), Strawberry      fields forever: Supermarkets rule and consumers benefit, whilst migrant      workers adapt to their employment situation, but does it have to be this      way?
• Héloise      Claudon, Julie Rouan (Confédération Paysanne), Providing services or subcontracting labour? Two cases of the European trend of private      intermediation, in Germany      and Italy

 

Friday, 25 October

 

9.00-11.00, Session III: Migrant labour in agro-industrial supply-chains

(chair: Alessandra Corrado, University of Calabria)

• Anna      Mary Garrapa (University of Milano Bicocca), “Just in      time” immigrants. The work of seasonal harvesting by sub-Saharan      Africans in the commercial chain of citrus products in the Piana of Gioia      Tauro
• Carlos      De Castro (University Autónoma de Madrid), with Elena Gadea, Andrés      Pedreño, Marta Latorre (University of Murcia), Social      sustainability and agricultural workers in agro-food industry in the      region of Murcia
• Kaveri Qureshi (University of Oxford),      Ben Rogaly (University       of Sussex), “That’s      where my perceptions of it all were shattered”: oral histories of food      sector employment in an English city region
• Domenico      Perrotta (University of Bergamo), The ghetto and the      district. A qualitative comparison between processing tomato supply chains      in Southern and Northern Italy

 

11.00-11.30, Coffee break

 

11.30-13.30, Session IV: Conflicts and forms of resistance

(chair: Devi Sacchetto, University of Padua)

• Irene      Peano (University of Bologna), Emerging subjectivities in the space      of exception: Affective composition and militancy of and with migrants in      contemporary Italy
• Simona      Tersigni (University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre, Sophiapol), Resistance,      ambivalence and agency of foreign workers in Brittany slaughterhouses
• Valeria Piro (University of Milan), Giuliana Sanò (University       of Messina), Bodies at Work or Bodies’ Work? The Case of Day Laborers in Vittoria (Sicily)
• Francesco      Saverio Caruso (University of Calabria), Migrant farmworkers in Southern Italy between crisis and riots: from      Gramsci to the revolts of Castel Volturno and Rosarno

 

13.30-15.00 – Lunch break

 

15.00-17.00, Roundtable: Research and practices of militant intervention

(chair: Federica Sossi, University of Bergamo)

Nicolas Duntze (Confédération Paysanne, France), Fabrizio Garbarino (Associazione Rurale Italiana), Network Campagne in lotta (Italy), Marco Paggi (Associazione Studi Giuridici sull’Immigrazione, Italy), Collectif pour la défense des travailleurs étrangers dans l’agriculture des Bouches-du-Rhône (to be confirmed).

 

Seminar Languages: English and French

info: domenico.perrotta@unibg.it