Migranti che contano. Percorsi di mobilità e confinamenti nell’agricoltura del Sud Italia

This article will focus on immigrant labor in Southern Italy agriculture. In particular, it will consider the different status of the “new hired hands”: there are seasonal workers annually engaged by the Quota Agreement (Decreto Flussi); workers from new EU member countries that can circulate freely within the Schengen area (since 2004 or 2007); non-EU workers with a dependent work permit, among whom those with labor contracts in other sectors and often in other Italian regions; asylum seekers or refugees; and immigrants with any permission or overstayers, and so “irregular”. The analysis develops two main arguments: on the one hand, the migration status conditions the strategies, the patterns, the insertion in the labor market and in the gangmaster system; on the other hand, even if in conditions of precariousness and exploitation, migrants develop different forms of sociality and practices of mobility answering to individual and collective needs of reproduction. The article is based upon ethnographic data and in-depth interviews collected in Calabria, Basilicata and Apulia.