UNDOCUMENTED: BUREAUCRATIC ENCOUNTERS AND MIGRANT LABOUR IN SOUTHERN ITALY

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This research project will investigate the dynamics of undocumented migrant agricultural labour inthe region of Calabria, Southern Italy, and how the position of these migrant workers - in terms oftheir living and working conditions, and within global agricultural supply chains - is sustained bytheir lack of documentation. Scholars of migration in Italy and elsewhere have highlighted how thecountry's bureaucratic immigration regime, through inconsistency and incomprehensibility, servesto produce a precarious workforce which is best viewed as a function of statecraft, rather thanoccurring 'outside' of the state. Building on such theories, this project will explore the ways in whichthese regimes are negotiated in practice, and what such negotiations and tactics tell us aboutbroader anthropological tropes of agency and bureaucracy. Focusing on labour practices, temporarycamps, policies (official and unofficial, local and national), and 'bureaucratic encounters', this project will unpack the production of commodities and workforces, and how the movements ofboth are sustained by the lack, or presence, of paperwork.Research Problem:Agriculture is crucial to the economic performance of Italy; agricultural products made up 1.9% ofItaly's total GDP in 2018, with employment in the sector increasing by 4.2% and gross investment inthe sector growing by 4.1% (value) in the same year. In 2010, 43% of Italy's land area was devoted toagriculture which was the second greatest area in the (then) EU27; in the same year, the Italianagricultural labour force accounted for 14% of the economically active population. In Calabria, theregion in which this research will be based, 8.3% of the regular workforce was represented byagricultural labour in 2010.Within this context it is hard to overstate the importance of foreign agricultural labourers. Forexample, one estimate by the Italian Union of Farmers puts the proportion of foreign labourers inthe agricultural sector at 36%. Many of these migrants will be employed in Italy under the guise ofpermanent and seasonal work permits. However, it is a common occurrence that when these expire(the 'permanent' ones need to be renewed every two years), a significant number of migrantworkers opt to stay in the country illegally rather than return to their country of origin. This processmeans that many of those who remain end up in one of many agricultural slums, ripe forexploitation. As such, the Global Slavery Index calculated that there were 50,000 agriculturalworkers enslaved in Italy in 2018. It should come as no surprise that through weak regulation andobscure, nebulous networks of distribution, thefruits of this slave labour find their way intolegitimate supply chains.