Italy PM Pays Homage to Migrant Laborer

Italian PM Giorgia Meloni paid homage to Satnam Singh, the farm worker originally from Moga, Panjab who was killed last week in the country. Addressing the Italian Parliament, Meloni offered her condolences saying, ‘These are inhumane acts that do not belong to the Italian people. I hope that this barbarity will be punished harshly.’ (SDW Vol. 2 Issue 26, Story 7). Satnam’s death sparked massive protests with laborers calling for swift justice and improved labor laws in the country. Gurmukh Singh, head of the Indian community in Lazio, says he sees his own story in Satnam’s. For, it was some three decades ago that Gurmukh arrived in Italy from his village near Jalandhar, Panjab as an undocumented laborer and was soon trapped in a quagmire of debt and exploitation. Little has changed since then or in the 50-odd years since Indian immigrants started making their way to the dairies and farmlands of Europe. 'Satnam is the 100th migrant worker who has died in Italy this year,’ says Carlo Caprioglio, a researcher. Alessandra Corrado, professor says ‘By the end of 2022, there were almost 362,000 foreigners in the agriculture sector, which is almost 32% of the farm workforce. If we also consider the undocumented workers, the numbers become much higher (with estimates of up to 50%).’ Another researcher Annamaria Laudini says, ‘There is a more complex story hiding behind the issue of caporalato (illegal form of labor intermediation) in the Italian labor market. It is a problem of the whole legal, political, and cultural framework, which makes turning to caporali (gangmaster) almost an inevitable choice for both employers and migrants.’