Italy’s migrant fruit pickers

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1:30Liz:Oh, it's got pretty flowers. I didn't know oranges had flowers like that. I mean, obviously they do because it means we pollinated, but... Wow, that's a really nice scent. You should smell that, John. It's not citrusy. It's very sweet, very floral, but I can also smell the oranges.

1:51Liz:Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Lizzie McNeill in the far south of Italy, in the toe of the country. Each year, thousands of illegal migrants arrive here, often after a treacherous journey across the Mediterranean. The harvest season's basically over, but we've managed to track down an orange tree. It's got fruit still on it, and it's a really nice fruit, actually. And this is the kind of thing that the migrants come to harvest. Now, this region, Palabria, is one of the biggest citrus growers in the whole of Italy. They grow about 60 % of Italy's clementines, 30 % of their oranges, and 25 % of all citruses, including lemons and mandarins.

2:33Liz:So it is a big agricultural hub. But despite this, it's one of the poorest regions of Italy and Europe. And it's actually perhaps more famous for the Ndragada, one of the most famous mafios or organisations in the world.

2:51Liz:Much of Calabria's fruit is picked by migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Many of them live in informal encampments like this one. We're just going into the camp and we've had to abandon our microphones because understandably journalists make people very nervous here so we're not using our normal recording equipment, we're using our phones and we're walking past another trash heap, rubbish pile. There's an open fire, people sitting around it, barrels, a sofa. It's all very makeshift. A man in a dressing gown, I think he's just going for a shower. Oh no, he's eating a banana actually. It's all very makeshift.

3:32Liz:It's just plastic sheeting tied with bungee straps. Lots of holes in it. There's a big bucket of rain, collecting rainwater. there's just evidence of a campfire everywhere an old mattress on the ground, bikes everywhere this is the tent city the government opened this place in 2017 how many tents are there? I don't know but during the harvest season we will find here 500 people or more are they all men here? all men all men, yeah Mauro and his colleague Usman, who's originally from Senegal work for Emergency, a non-governmental organisation that helps migrants like these access the Italian healthcare system this camp's nicknamed Tendopoli, or Tent City it's not the only one in Italy, but it is one of the most notorious lying between the towns of Rosano and San Ferdinando both important fruit-growing hubs in Calabria These people are here legally Most of them, they are legal They are regular And the government's giving them visas to come here And yet they're living in very third world conditions Living here, they can ask to the municipality To obtain the residence But this is an informal place The problem is when the stay permit is going to expire And when you have to renew it You don't have the place You don't have the residence This is the problem.

5:08They are regular, but it's a precarious regularity.

5:15Liz:Migrants are a hot topic here, with Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney's right-wing coalition government elected partly because of its tough rhetoric on immigration. And yet, migrants are vital to Italy's economy. Despite her anti-immigration stance, Maloney's had to be pragmatic. Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, and with a rapidly aging population, they're desperate for workers. The government plans to fill the gap, in part, by giving 500 ,000 temporary work visas to migrants over the next couple of years. That's where fruit picking in Calabria comes in. For assignment, we've come to see what the reality is on the ground.

5:56Liz:You said some people have been living for years in this group? Yes, many people are living here. Many years, they became elder. Working in the fields, they now can't work. Is there running water? There is running water, but sometimes if you want hot water, there is someone here that is boiling water and sell it. Oh, wow. So there's drinking water? There is no drinking water here. No, no, no, there is no drinking water. Oh, there's chicken. That chicken doesn't look very well. There is not only chicken, but also sheep. Sheep in here? Yeah. This is the toilet. So that's the toilet, and that's what?

6:39Liz:But it's not working. It's not working. It's not working.

6:45Liz:Each year, thousands of people try to make the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe, many towards Italy. An unknown number perish on the way.

7:02Oh, they pray.

7:04Liz:This is the prayer room. So this is the makeshift mosque. It's a long tent. It's got prayer rugs all over it. Currently empty.

7:26Liz:Migrants didn't always live in large encampments like this, but 16 years ago there was an event that was instrumental in the creation of the Tendopoly. Steep stone steps lead to the church of Santa Marina at the top of the town of Polestena. The local priest, Don Pino de Mazzi, has the calm, steady aura of a man who's lived through many threats, spiritual and physical, including from the local mafia. The twinkle in his eye gives a hint that he's a force to be reckoned with. I was there that evening. I remember it very well. In 2010, Don Pino was witness to a pivotal moment in the local area's recent history, one that soured relations between migrants and local residents.

8:10Well, the atmosphere in Rosano was very worrying at the time. The local residents were becoming less tolerant of migrants. They thought they didn't go to work. and so they tried to insult the immigrants, to constantly provoke them.

8:29Liz:At the time, Rosano's local government was shut down, as it had been infiltrated by the local mafia, and tensions between locals and migrants were coming to a head.

8:42The immigrants who were being constantly provoked reacted to fake news that some immigrants had been killed. They stormed the centre of Rosano. It was violent. A lot of damage was done.

8:57Liz:Shop windows were smashed, cars destroyed. Anger and resentment spilled out in a spate of vandalism.

9:07There was a fight between two groups. On one side, the migrants. On the other side, the locals, spurred on by the Andrangheta. They started to go around with iron bars on what they called a hunt for the black man.

9:21Liz:It was decided that the migrants had to be removed for their own safety. Because there would have been a massacre. They were looking for them just so they could kill them. Some of the migrants were taken further north. Others were rehoused by the government in what were meant to be temporary tent camps like Tendopoli. We went from Tendopoli to Tendopoli, from ghetto to ghetto.

9:53Liz:It's hard to talk about social issues in Calabria without mentioning the infamous crime organisation, the Ndrangheta. In Calabria there are a system made by Ndrangheta. They're the local mafia. Yes. Vincenzo Linarello is the president of GOEL, a non-profit community movement. Local farmers join their cooperative with the promise of fair pricing for their produce, as well as community support against the mafia. In return, they need to run sustainable and ethical businesses. The aim? To free Calabrian society from the grip of the Ndrangheta. Ndrangheta actually is considered the first mafia in the world.

10:40Most powerful. Yes. They have an annual turnover around 60-70 billion euros.

10:49Liz:60, 70 billion euros a year. It's a balance of little country of Europe. Wow. Like Serbia, like Bosnia. And it's the first importer of cocaine in Europe. In Calabria, they have their roots. And actually, they are infiltrating all countries in Europe with their money. Really? Yes. So how does this all relate to agriculture? Agriculture is important for the control of territory. Agriculture is poor in Calabria. It's not the sector from what they gain much money. But it's important to control, to manage the territory. And then they start to burn the farms. Burn farms. Yes, and other attacks to the farmers.

11:46And finally, the farmers, exasperated, go to the mafia people to say, why I received all this? Please stop. And they stopped. They don't want money. They want that the farmers are grateful to them.

12:08Liz:That fear, then gratitude, becomes a reliance. And so the Ndrangata families cement their control over the territory and the local people. How do migrants feed into this? Because the farmers come back to the mafia people and say, well, do you have some workers to suggest us? As you know, it's so difficult in Italy to be regular as migrants. And then the mafia use the law to blackmail the migrants. So would you say the migrants' vulnerability is the mafia's strength? Absolutely. The more difficult have the migrants to be regular, the more they depend on the mafia and the mafia becomes strong. They are parasites.

13:00Liz:Some of the farmers who have joined Goel have been targeted. Their fields burnt, bullets sent to them in the post. Goel's response was to organise a festival on the destroyed farmland. The community turned out in support to rebuild what was ruined, sending a message of defiance to the Ndrangata. Do you ever get scared? Yes, sometimes, but I think people need to have more fear if they do nothing, if it's passive. So doing nothing is scarier than fighting? Yes, because drangheta is powerful because many people think they are weak. If the people stay together with the festival, drangheta have fear, not us.

13:58Liz:like any diseased crop Vincenzo says the Dendrangheta needs to be ripped up by its roots but it's not just the local mafia that have created division between migrants and the community people we spoke to also blame government bureaucracy

14:22Liz:We meet Francesco Piobici under rolling rain clouds on the outskirts of San Ferdinando on Calabria's northern coast. The town is home to a beautiful stretch of beach and Italy's largest container port, Gioia Taro, allegedly the main entry point of most of Europe's cocaine. Francesco's from Mediterranean Hope, a charity set up by the Protestant Church in 2013 after a shipwreck off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa killed an estimated 368 migrants. We're in a hostel run by the charity. It houses up to 70 migrant workers. Francesco's also an artist. There's something that's on the table there.

15:06Liz:It seems to be a picture that you're halfway through. What is that?

15:12This last drawing recounts the story of a migrant worker who committed suicide inside a camp in Foggia some days ago

15:22Liz:and his name was Allagi. So the drawing is chalk on black paper and it's lots of containers stacked on top of each other and out of one of the containers is a noose made of barbed wire. It's pretty striking. Do you think was part of the reason this person killed themselves to do with the conditions they were living in? Alle condizioni del campo e alle leggi dell 'Italia. I guess it's completely linked to the living condition in the camp, but also it's linked to the Italian laws that, as you can see from these other drawings, create a sort of steps, hurdles. So he's opened up this magazine, it's got lots of his drawings in them, and there's this one where there's this person surrounded by barbed wire, and he's carrying a crate of oranges above his head and trying to get over these different hurdles and all these different hurdles or sort of different barriers that the government have in place.

16:13Liz:And so there's per meso sugiore. So the first one is residence permit and then there's right to work and there's various different ones, legal code. And they're trying to jump over carrying this crate of oranges and they're about to fall into a trap hole into the barbed wire. So Georgia Maloney is part of an effort to sort of help the Italian economy is issuing 500 ,000 temporary work visas for seasonal workers. Do you think Calabria is a region that needs this measure? No, absolutely not. No, absolutely not, because this model of visa doesn't work now, but didn't work even before. And quite often people come here with the idea that they are going to have work, but when they come here, they find nothing.

16:58They have nothing.

17:01Liz:Reaching into a bag. Oh, I think we're going to... He's drawing. So he's got a piece of black paper and he's got a white marker. Okay, during the winter.

17:16Liz:So he's drawing oranges. He's saying that the people in Rosano... During the summer. In the north, in Saluzzo. They pick apples. Then they go to Puglia to pick tomatoes. Afterwards, they go to Sicily to... And then they go back to Rosano. And he's drawn a circle with all of the different harvests.

17:43Liz:So these people, they work there and then they return.

17:49Yeah, Italian government used tents and containers to house these people and they were put in closed areas far from the city centre and a ghetto, basically.

18:01Liz:So he's drawn a ring with tents and things inside and then a clear division between that and the city where the Italians live. Sì. Questa separazione è apartheid. This separation is an apartheid. Non c 'è il filo spinato che separa, ma è come se ci fosse. There are no physical fences, but he says that mentally the barricades between the two places are as much as barbed-wired fences. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.