Oranges amères
The Luxembourg anthropologist Gilles Reckinger spent more than 10 years, between 2009 and 2022, studying the living conditions of “failed” African migrants on the Italian coastline, particularly on the island of Lampedusa. We write “failed” because, contrary to one of many common misconceptions, many of the individuals described in this short work are men who, in the vast majority of cases, never deliberately set out to get to Europe or, more specifically, Italy. It was the war in Libya, where many of them had stable jobs, that forced them to flee the country. The book takes the form of a long series of reports and personal statements bringing to life the wholly unacceptable living conditions in which these people are forced to live, the neglect of the Italian authorities and the socio-economic situations, including the role of organised crime, in poor regions of southern Italy, such as Calabria, Apulia and Sicily.
The book lays bare the vicious circle of contemporary slavery, benefiting legal and criminal networks alike, in Italy and Spain, on the back of a captive labour force. Readers of this column will, however, undoubtedly remember the book “Slavernij aan de Schelde” (see kiosk no. 088 – EUROPE B13228) by the Flemish journalist David van Turnhout, which demonstrated how human trafficking rings have set up to exploit other migrants in the heart of Europe, including Belgian, benefiting major industrial groups or prostitution rings. Many of the victims we encountered on the shores of the River Escaut originally came from Asia or the Pacific, and had skills that were recognised and exploited mercilessly, with those of them who found work being underpaid if paid at all, or unemployed, housed in filthy blocks of flats, etc. The migrants we meet in southern Italy are for the most part West Africans (Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Gambia, Nigeria), with a few Sudanese. Some of them speak several languages and have professional skills, in the construction sector, for instance, but are forced to work as agricultural labourers on slave wages for their survival. In both cases, the responsibility for these scenarios does not lie solely with the states in which they are played out. Europe, wilfully blind, allows and even encourages the situation to continue through the Dublin system, the joint work of the Twenty-Seven and the institutions of the European Union.
“Unlike political and media discourse portraying the migration phenomena of recent years as a new problem, [the book sets out to] draw attention to a reality that is systematically ignored even though part of the very structure of these phenomena: they perpetuate the function of making an abundant migrant workforce available to a precarious employment market on which they have no rights and are therefore obliged to accept abusive working conditions. The harsh reality is that migration control policies as they exist today lead to a form of modern slavery in which physical violence may appear less visible, but is continually expanding, in forms that adapt to every change in global capitalism”, Reckinger argues (our translation throughout).
The author stresses that in Italy, “most of the people denied [asylum rights] are not expelled from the country, but with no papers, no visa and no money for the journey back home, they are unable to leave the country and therefore find themselves in an illegal situation”. Those who have refugee status, subsidiary protection and a residence permit on humanitarian grounds do not fare much better: “most of them have neither housing nor financial support” and are therefore “obliged to accept any work they can get in order to survive”. “Africans put to work as pickers (of citrus fruit, tomatoes, olives or fennel) generally do not have any legal contract (…). Even when employment contracts are issued, most of them are fake. In the event of any official checks, the employers quickly send the pickers of the plantation: the law enforcement authorities generally do not go after migrants. They do not execute expulsion decisions, they look the other way and thereby uphold the status quo”. In certain cases, workers receive just €25 for a day’s work that can last for between 10 and 13 hours and often have to pay five euros to be squeezed into old trucks and driven to the plantation, Reckinger explains. Wages may also be calculated by 22 kg crate, on the basis of 70 euro cents for oranges and €1.20 for clementines. Obviously, the work is seasonal and workers tend to work between just five and 10 days in every month of harvest. The number of pickers in the informal agriculture sector has been put at more than 300,000 throughout Italy.
Referring to the Crotone area, Reckinger points out that “although emigration has fallen in most regions of Italy since the 1980s, Calabria is on the opposite trajectory”. “Unemployment and corruption are high, prospects limited and tourism underdeveloped. A Mafia group, the ‘Ndrangheta, controls not only the European drug trade, but also many sectors of activity in southern Italy. Decadence and lack of State involvement are apparent everywhere. Entire villages lay abandoned, most houses dilapidated”, he writes, painting the backdrop of areas often strewn with tumbledown buildings, abandoned cars, unauthorised rubbish dumps, amidst which migrants pitch their tents and shantytowns have grown up, without access to electricity or even drinking water.
And should readers commit to memory only one of the personal statements contained within this book, it should be that of Frederick, whom the author meets in Rosarno: “(…) The wages they pay us are ridiculous. 11 hours of work for €25, it’s just wrong (…)! We have been crowded into camps outside the town (…), the government doesn’t do anything (…). We are living in slums. Okay, we get enough to eat. But we might eat today and then have nothing to eat for the next two days (…). And to top it off, you struggle to get paid by your Italian bass. He arranges to meet up to pay you whenever it’s convenient for him. It’s not acceptable! You work: okay, it’s ‘black market’ work as they call it, abusive work. But the employers are not afraid of the government or the police, or the labour inspectorate. They’re not afraid of anything! They have made us into slaves. Slavery today is not like slavery used to be, the slavery of the 18th century, its modern, spiritual slavery! We have been brought here, we are paid badly: if you have no means to move on, you don’t move on! That’s how you are used here. We are here to move from one slave job to the next: in Sicily, we pick olives and once that’s finished, we go to Rosarno (Calabria) to pick oranges. And if the orange harvest was good and have a bit of money for the journey, it’s off to Foggia (Apulia) for the tomatoes. Infinite repetition. You can work for a month like that, or 10, but you wouldn’t earn a thousand euros in a year that way (…)! It’s modern slavery. You’re not held prisoner, you’re not tied up, they don’t do anything to you! But they do it spiritually. And when you ask for your wages, they say ‘I’ll pay you later’ (…). Sometimes you work for a white man and when it’s time to be paid, he says ‘I have already paid you. If you want to put in a complaint, you’d better go to the police!’ And if you do go to the police, they tell you that its undeclared work, there is no legal framework for it and you have to negotiate with your employer. That is why we have to accept any job we can get for whatever the pay. Because if you don’t work, don’t have anything to eat”.
Is it too much to wonder whether the so-called European values of the rule of law and respect the human rights are actually universal? (Olivier Jehin)
Gilles Reckinger. Oranges amères – Un nouveau visage de l’esclavage en Europe (available in French only). Raisons d’agir Éditions. ISBN: 978-1-0970-8428-8. 170 pages. €12,00
Europe: quelle autonomie dans un monde turbulent ?
The review Futuribles about the special theme of his latest edition to Europe’s autonomy, looking at it in particular from the point of view of its demographic decline, but also from those of the repatriation of value chains and the security of supply, but also that of an incomplete foreign policy.
In it, Vincent Vicard and Pauline Wibaux (Centre d’études prospectives et d’informations internationales) stress that the “map of the EU’s dependencies, based on the principle country of origin for each dependent product, indicates a net shift of product origin to China” (our translation throughout). “While it was already one of the three main countries of origin in 1996, China was the principal exporter for just 50 dependent products in 1996 (or one sixth of all the EU’s dependent products). It has been the principal source for around 150 dependent products since 2010, representing nearly half of products identified (by way of comparison, China’s share in EU imports was 7.3% in 2010 and 8.8% in 2020). In 2019, the United States was the country of origin for 50 dependent products and India just 30. The total share of the three largest countries of origin has grown, as they were supplying 150 dependent products in 1996 and this figure has passed the 200 mark today and this is mainly down to the growing share of Chinese products”.
In another article, Aymeric Lachaux, economist for the directorate general of the French Treasury, points out that according to the WTO, “despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the international trade in goods grew by 3.5% in 2022”, but that a “significant reorganisation of trade” has been observed. He goes on to explain that “since the war broke out Russian exports to Europe, Japan and the United States fell by 80% in value and Russian imports from these countries have fallen by 47% (…). At the same time, an increase in Russian trade with the emerging countries, particularly India and China, has been observed. Trade with India has grown fivefold, while trade with China as grown by 75%”. (OJ)
Europe: quelle autonomie dans un monde turbulent? (Available in French only) Futuribles. Edition 457, November-December 2023. ISBN: 978-2-8438-7472-7. 140 pages. €22,00
Building Weapons Together
The author of this brief by the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) takes as his starting point the observation that there are many people today in Europe who are calling for the joint development of weaponry, on the basis of the argument that this will make military equipment less expensive, will strengthen the industrial and technological basis underpinning European defence, will consolidate supply by reducing the number of players and will pave the way for economies of scale. This view is not shared by Jan Joel Andersson. At least not entirely.
The author argues that the European defence industry is not as fragmented as is commonly believed. As evidence of this, he offers the fact that the number of weapons systems currently in production in Europe is similar to that of the United States. The many different systems currently equipping the European armed forces is in reality simply the result of earlier production runs. For instance, the only tank production line in place since 2008 is for Leopard 2, just as the United States is now producing only one tank, the M1 Abrams. Similarly, three fighter planes are produced Europe (Eurofighter, Gripen, Rafale) while the United States produces for (Boeing F-15 and F-18 and Lockheed Martin F-16 and F-35) and although there is only one early warning system made in Europe (Saab’s Global Eye), there are two in the United States (Boeing E7 and Northrop Grumman E2).
Andersson also makes the point that a Pentagon report of February 2022 stresses that the concentration of businesses in the United States has reduced the number of different producers and weakened competition, which is a source of innovation and drives prices down. He stresses that the former American Defence Secretary William J. Perry observed in 2015 that would have been more beneficial to have more small businesses than a small number of large businesses. Against this backdrop, the F-35 is often put forward as a warning as to how a programme can grow too big, too complex and too expensive. It is therefore not so much consolidation of supply that should be the objective as competition between players and from that point of view, the 2009 directives were going in the right direction. However, the author rightly points out, these have remained largely ineffectual due to the systematic invocation of article 346 TFEU (vital security interests) by the member states to block the application of traditional public procurement procedures and pay for a national champion or source outside the EU in exchange for offsets which are theoretically illegal.
Andersson offers several different courses of action to bolster the European defence industry: (1) the EU could support the development of strategic catalysts (strategic transport, satellite communications and air surveillance), which are consistently lacking, either by financing this development or by acquiring hours of service on behalf of the member states; (2) borrowing a leaf from NATO’s book on the eastern flank, the EU could pay for munitions storage infrastructure on its territory but also, more generally, the renovation of military infrastructure; (3) finally, the EU could subsidise weapons certification for various systems in order to support interoperability, and likewise the competitiveness of the Europe industry on the markets, in Europe and beyond. (OJ)
Jan Joel Andersson. Building Weapons Together (or not). EU Institute for Security Studies. Brief 20, November 2023. This brief may be downloaded free of charge from the Institute’s website at: https://www.iss.europa.eu