A death on a melon farm sheds light on hard lives of illegal Indian migrants in Italy

Gurmukh, head of the Indian community in Lazio, has appealed to immigrant farm labourers in the region to stop work after 2 pm on June 25 and assemble at the main bus stand in the city of Latina for the protest march.

Gurmukh 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 as an undocumented labourer 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 in the hope of a better life.

Indian workers at a dairy farm in Calabria, Italy. (Picture: Alessandra Corrado)

“Things were even worse then because we had no means of communicating with our families or with each other. We lived inside our homes – mostly discarded caravans — and didn’t dare to venture out for fear of being found out. I was luckier than most as I had a better owner who got my papers sorted out and in six years, I became a legal immigrant. Fifteen years ago, I left the farms and set up my own shop,” says Gurmukh.

It’s the kind of reversal of fortunes that Satnam Singh, too, would have hoped for himself when he arrived in Napoli three years ago through the illegal route, lured by agents with stories of a life of plenty in one of the most developed countries of the world.

But it ended disastrously for Satnam. On June 17, while working on his owner’s farm in Agro Pontino, a rural part of Lazio that’s two hours from Rome, he was caught in the grip of a machine that’s set up to gather the swathes of cloth used for covering the harvested melon. As the machine sucked him in, Satnam’s arm was wrenched off and his legs were crushed.

Indian workers at an onion farm in Calabria, Italy. Most of them are undocumented migrants, working under gangmasters for long hours, poor pay. (Pictures: Alessandra Corrado)

“Writhing in pain, he called out to his fellow labourers. The owner panicked, ordered Satnam to be put into one of the crates, put his severed arm in another crate and drove him towards his house. He then dumped him in front of the gate with the crate of severed arm and sped away. His wife ran screaming to her neighbours for help. By the time an air ambulance arrived and he was airlifted to hospital, he had lost a lot of blood. Two days later, he died in Rome,” recounts Gurmukh.

Police have filed a case against the Italian owner over potential charges of manslaughter and failure to assist a person in danger. For now, Satnam’s wife has been given special residence permit.

“Satnam is the 100th migrant worker who has died in Italy this year,” says Carlo Caprioglio, researcher and aggregate lecturer of the Legal Clinic on Migration and Asylum at Roma Tre University in Rome, who has been studying and working with migrants. “Every year, thousands of men come from India to Italy. However, there is a lot of grey area about their working conditions and there is a high degree of exploitation due to the lack of solidarity networks,” Caprioglio told The Indian Express.

Satnam Singh arrived in Napoli three years ago through the illegal route, lured by agents with stories of a life of plenty in one of the world’s most developed countries. Words translated in photo: The owner of the company was investigated. Labourer who died in Latina, special residence permit for the widow. (Credit: Gurmukh Singh)

Alessandra Corrado, professor at the University of Calabria who has been researching on migrant labour in Italy, says most farm labourers work 8 to 12 hours and are paid about 3 to 4 Euros (around Rs 350) an hour. About 30,000 Indians live in Agro Pontino, a hub for greenhouse farming of olives and melons that sees high labour demand through the year.

“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%),” she says.

Dr Reena Kukreja, Associate Professor at Queen’s University in Canada who specialises in migration and masculinity studies, says Italy’s notorious Caporalato system – where gangmasters, who act as middlemen in the agricultural sector, recruit immigrant labourers and subject them to poor wages and working conditions – makes it one of the most exploitative labour markets.

Kukreja, who was in Italy last month for her research on undocumented South Asian migrants, says, “The living conditions of the workers are the same everywhere – eight to nine of them crammed in a small room or in discarded containers or sheds without adequate toilet facilities for which they must even pay rent. Their passports are usually taken away by the gangmasters as soon as they land. The tragedy is that many of these gangmasters are Indians who came as labourers and have now settled down in Italy and risen in their workplace only to continue the debilitating circle of debt bondage, of which they were once the victims. They incentivise young men from their villages to come to Italy by loaning them the money required to do so and the workers then spend their lives repaying that money.”

A young illegal migrant from Punjab who recently arrived in Central Italy says on condition of anonymity, “Being undocumented means you are exploited by everyone. You get reduced to a machine that is put to use without rest… We are stuck doing this harsh labour here – our families are depending on us to earn and send back money. But the debt keeps mounting. The worry of managing all this consumes me. Sometimes I cannot sleep at night thinking how I will manage everything.”

Huge turnout at Latina on Tuesday to protest the death of Satnam Singh. (Picture: Alessandra Corrado)

On Saturday, Italian Labour Minister Marina Calderone announced new measures, including an increase in labour inspectors, to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers.

Back in Moga, Satnam’s family hasn’t recovered from the shock. His elder brother Amritpal Singh says he last spoke to Satnam on Sunday, June 16. “It was a relaxed call on Sunday, his day off. He usually also calls us every evening after work. So when he didn’t call on Monday and Tuesday, we started to worry,” says Amritpal, who last saw his brother about four years ago.

Satnam would send home around Rs 25,000 every month for his parents and sister, says the brother, who worked in the Gulf as an electrician but returned home last year to tend to his son who is unwell. “We have no idea what will happen now. We didn’t even know Satnam had a wife, so there is no question of calling her,” he says.