SLAVES IN ITALY

Photo Reportage on the living and working conditions of the Indian immigrants hand workers in the Agro Pontino. (Italy)

About 10.000 immigrants from Punjab, India, live in the Agro Pontino area, south of Rome. They are employed as hand workers in the intensive agro industrial fields. To reach Italy with a working visa they afford kind of a "mafia" cost from 8 to 15 (some times even 20) thousands Euros. To find that amount of money they often run up debts or sell family lands in Punjab. But as they reach Italy they are in fact unemployed. Some of them can find a job as hand worker for around 3,50 Euros per hour without any working contract, without any guarantee or insurance. It happens that at the end of the month the employers just don't pay them, or pay the half. It often takes 50 minutes by bike to reach the working fields and other 50 minutes to go back home the evening. To afford the Italian high living cost, they rent houses where usually 4 or 5 people sleep in the same bedroom. They are not regularly able to send money back home, which entails that they are somehow trapped in Italy. In fact they seldom get to earn enough money to realize their migration project, nor even to recoup the migration costs. Fortunately they can trust on the community organization with its numerous temples where everyone is welcomed and can eat for free. Recently Italian volunteers have organized Italian language classes, which give them the opportunity to improve a bit their working conditions. But, as something really different was expected, Italy is for them a bad dream that never ends.