Humanitarian reason and the representation and management of migrant agricultural labour

Abstract

This article critically examines how humanitarianism has reshaped both the representation and management of migrant agricultural labour in Southern Italy over the last ten years. Drawing on media analysis and ethnographic research of sub-Saharan tomato pickers in the regions of Puglia and Basilicata, the article traces the rise – starting from Fabrizio Gatti’s famous undercover report ‘I was a Slave in Puglia’ in the national weekly L’Espressoin 2006 – of an increasingly dominant public discourse in the mainstream press that sees migrants as ‘victims’ of human rights abuses, unscrupulous gangmasters and perilous housing. The recourse to humanitarianism has worked to conceal the centrality of labour relations in agricultural work and the wider question of the agri-food value chain. At the same time, humanitarianism has provided the ideological rationale to a series of governmental responses to poor working and living conditions in the region, including most recently the work camps set up and run by the Red Cross in Basilicata during 2016. It is argued that ‘humanitarian reason’ – to draw on the term coined by Didier Fassin – is underpinned by a disciplinary logic that is both functional to the regulation of the migrant labour force and the perpetuation of unsustainable forms of intensive agriculture.