Migrants’ slavery in the rural areas of the continental Mezzogiorno

Abstract Thirty-five years have passed since the killing of the South African refugee Jerry Masslo in Villa Literno in 1989 to the death of the Indian labourer Satnam Singh in Latina in 2024, marked by exploitation, violence, and abuses in the Southern Italian countryside. Only a few journalistic reports have documented this situation, and the article aims to fill this historiographical gap with a timely investigation, calling for the start of an international debate on the inhuman working conditions of foreigners in the countryside of developed countries. The article highlights some variables that have remained steady over time: the absence of public policies to regularise agricultural labour, the widespread presence of informal settlements in the countryside with risks to the safety of farm labourers, the low wage levels that violate people’s dignity, the persistent illegality in recruiting labour through ‘caporalato’ (forced labour), deaths at work due to exploitation and climate change. These are elements of critical analysis that call for an in-depth reflection on how to improve the working conditions of labourers in the rural economy today. The contribution of foreigners, as emerges from the quantitative analysis in the article, is irreplaceable for the well-being of developed societies. This is why history has an essential ethical and civic mission in highlighting the conditions of severe exploitation in which they are forced to work.