Università di Bergamo25 ottobre 2013

"Migrant farmworkers in Southern Italy between crisis and riots: from

Gramsci to the revolts of Castel Volturno and Rosarno"

Francesco Caruso (University of Calabria)

fracaruso@unical.it

Cases Studies: from ghetto to tanatopolitics riots

Tableland - Foggiatomato (winter)

Piana Volturno - Casertafruit and vegetables (All year)

Piana Gioia Tauro - Reggio C.

Citrus (Winter)

Plain Sele - Salernoserricoltura (All year)

Cassibile - Syracusepotato (all year)

Ghetto of Villa LiternoFire in September 1994

Ghetto of San Nicola VarcoEviction November 2009

Ghetto Rignano

Ex-Rognetta of Rosarioeviction January 2010

Ghetto CassibileFire in June 2006

The revolt of Castel Volturno(18 September 2008)

The revolt of Rosarno(7/8 January 2010)

Cassibile - Syracusepotato (all year)

The social and structural causes: The ropture of equilibration betweenMediterranean migration and californian agricolture in Southern Italy

"In the advanced countries it is possible to record a pulmonary mechanism that attracts and expels migrant workers as a function of the economic situation“ (Perocco 2003).

But in the rural contexts of southern italy the traditional relationship between crisis and migration is opposite

If southern agriculture is in crisis "defect " , the Mediterranean model of migration in crisis for " excess “: while twenty years old the fruit was too much and farmworkers were few, now on the contrary the fruits are becoming less and the farmworkers always more.

AGRICOLTURE=CRISIS FOR DEFECT

- Fishler Reform (C.A.P.)

-Liberalization and deregulation

-disadvantage economical

MIGRATION=CRISIS FOR EXCESS

- Block of general legalization(classical transit from South to North)

-Migration of regression(from North to south)

-Cycle of ethnic replecment(Enlargment East EU)

And effects of the riots?

• Certainly the riots of Castel Volturno and Rosarno have been "an explosion immediate , spontaneous manifestation of the instinct of survival and of previous paths of solidarity" (Borretti , 2007 ). But this approach dichotomy between spontaneity and organization may to underestimate the existence and consistency of paths to subjectivity , thus relegating these forms of irruption of the invisible in the public space as a mere and simple expression of proto -political , episodic flare of anger and uncontrolled rambling .

• To reverse this interpretive scheme , it can come in handy breaking method of the Subaltern Studies have put in place before the elitist interpretations of the Indian peasant revolts , trying to rebuild historiographically an alternative vision for catch the self-expression of the struggles of the subaltern (Guha , 2002, 2008).

I apply methodical review of the subaltern studies Indians of the Gramscian dichotomy between civil

society and political society.

THE ABUSAGE OF GRAMSCIAN CIVIL SOCIETY

State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armor of coercion"

(Prison Notebook , p.796)

From Bobbio (1967) to "Centre for Civil Society (London School of Economics) “refers to Gramscito support their incompatible thesis according to which civil society would be the non-state

sector and non-economic interaction " ( Buttigieg , 2007) .

the Indian Subaltern Studies in resuming the original setting Gramsci , they advance a theoretical framework which in many ways reverses the liberal vulgate : is civil society , because Gramsci understood as a space for expression of cultural hegemony of the ruling classes , the space of interpenetration between state and society , what Foucault (2005) define the "governmentalisation the state”.

“part of no part” (Ranciere)authorized but not recognized and

unauthorized but recognized (Sassen)

CIVIL SOCIETY POLITICAL SOCIETY

Spaces, links and related entities on the basis of

equality, rights, freedom

No-citizens with rights, but particular groups of the population subject to

particular practics of governmentality

Political society as a space of conflict and negotiation between the activity of

governmental control and the needs and demands of the

excluded

CIVIL SOCIETY AND POLITICAL SOCIETY

When the state recognizes these requests, it is forced to do so because of a straightforward application of administrative rules, but taking a political decision and declaring a state of exception. The governmental response to the claims of political society, then, is irreducibly political rather than purely administrative

(Chatterjee 2008, 219)

ROSARNO: POWER AND EMERGENCY (CIVIL SOCIETY)

EMERGENCY AS A PARADIGM OFGOVERNMENT

Rosarno: from the "hunt for Black" to institutional ghetto

(800.000 E)

•The "revolt of Rosarno " has helped to strengthen the claims and instances of these realities and their efforts to try to put the issue on the public agenda removed dignified hospitality to seasonal workers .

• the institutions have responded immediately with "governamentality of emergency " mechanism that is well proven in the southern regions for hoarding and dissipation of public money by the local political class that in the name of an alleged extraordinary , claims and special funds that exceptions to the law for the discretionary use of the same.

• The management of precisely what will be called "emergency Rosarno " is delegated to the Department of Civil Protection, body set up in the aftermath of the earthquake in Irpinia to coordinate assistance and help during natural disasters : in Rosarno not are unexpected emergency but the predictable and cyclical arrival of seasonal laborers , tent cities that local associations will not take long to denounce as "for the installation have spent 500,000 Euros and another 300,000 it'll take for the dismantling , it is easy to consider how the same sum would provide a comfortable place in the apartment for 4 to 2000 laborers for two seasons " ( Africalabria 2012).

Rosarno and the gomvernamentality of emergence

CASTEL VOLTURNO: SUBALTERN AND EMERGENCY (POLITICAL SOCIETY)

- Practice of the exception- Autocensus - Mobilization and protest actions

EXCEPTIONAL CLAIM

AUTOCENSUS

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSEBreak of the wall of legal formalism and the rule of law= FAST TRACK.

2000 permits for humanitarian reasons to S.V.I. (a precompilated list by activists of the movement for many applicants who had previously been rejected the request)

POLITICAL SOCIETY (CASTEL VOLTURNO)

Before each event they take the "presence " that you collect the photocopies of the documents of those present . The collection of "presence“ ensures a big partecipationof subjects traditionally been reluctant to weak social mobilization and ,a privileged access to the benefits earned in course the mobilization itself.

Ambivalent relationship between threat perturbative and promise of self-control of a portion of the subaltern itself threatening because relatively invisible to the power:“in the eyes of those who have some familiarity with the ideas of Foucault , this may look like a worrying form of self- governalmentality , insidious in its capillarity. But from my point of view , this kind of governmentalityfrom below , in the world of the urban poor , is a countergovernmentality (Appadurai 2011)

New categoritation= S.V.I. (exploited , Vulnerable , not expellable) minted by the movement

ROSARNO: SEASONAL WORK

CASTELVOLTURNO: RURURBAN WORK

CONCLUSION (1/2)

CivilAction

Politicalaction

singular subject, individualized and categorized, who come into contact

with organized groups to find in them the ability to mitigate in some way the most dramatic aspects of their

daily lives.

subjectivity agents who are trying to overcome, in the struggle in

common, the condition of exploitation and social segregation

in which they are forced to live through the disarticulation of

devices harnessing of their freedom of movement

CONCLUSION (2/2)Popular (not revolutionary) Politics

-The subaltern not having access to the traditional instruments of pressure and submission of applications "citizens" of civil society: the "popular politics " is one of the few available channels of expression

-The size of the subordination is expressed in this point : the ability to identify the central paradigm of emergency in governmental strategies to control population and territory in the southern Italy -and the subsequent attempt to bend it to their own issues , but without compromising the foundation .

the popular politics= process of (partial) subjectification, and gym of struggle and mobilitation for own rights.