All weekend long, Gurmukh Singh, 52, was busy finalizing the details of a protest march he had organized for Tuesday, June 25, in Lazio, central Italy. The rally was organized to pay tribute to Satnam Singh, a 31-year-old Indian farm worker who died in a melon farm accident on June 19, and to highlight the dangerous working conditions of undocumented Indian immigrants in Italy.
Satnam Singh, an illegal immigrant from Moga, Punjab, was sucked into the farm’s heavy machinery, had his arms severed and legs crushed to death, after his employer threw him out of his house and fled.
Gurmukh Singh, head of the Indian community in Lazio, has appealed to migrant farm workers in the area to stop work after 2pm on June 25 and gather at the Latina city’s main bus station for a protest march.
Gurmukh Singh says he sees his own story in Satnam’s story. Because Gurmukh Singh arrived in Italy as an undocumented worker from his village near Jalandhar, and soon became mired in a quagmire of debt and exploitation. Since then or in the 50 years that have passed, there has been no improvement in the conditions of Indian immigrants who migrated to the dairy farms and farmlands of Europe in the hope of a better life.
“Things were even worse then because we had no means of communication with our families or with each other. We lived mostly in abandoned caravans inside our flats and didn’t dare go out for fear of being caught because we didn’t have documents. I was very lucky because I had a great owner who helped me get my documents. , and in six years, I became a legal immigrant. Fifteen years ago, I left the farms and started my own shop,” says Gurmukh.
Lured by agents with stories of a glittering life in one of the world’s most developed countries, when Satnam Singh arrived in Naples three years ago by illegal means, he believed in his luck.
But it ended disastrously for Satnam. On June 17, while working on his owner’s farm in Agro Pontino, a rural area of Lazio, two hours from Rome, he got caught in the clutches of a machine set up to collect cloth used to cover harvested melons. Satnam’s arm was severed and his legs were crushed as the machine absorbed him.
“Shocked with pain, he called his fellow workers. The owner panicked and ordered Satnam Singh to be placed in a box, his severed hand in another, and drove the vehicle towards his house. He then threw him with the severed hand box in front of his mouth and sped away. His wife screamed for help from the neighbors. By the time the air ambulance arrived and airlifted him to the hospital, Satnam had lost a lot of blood. Two days later, Satnam died in Rome,” says Gurmukh.
Police have registered a case against the Italian owner on charges of murder and failure to render aid to a person in danger. Currently, Satnam’s wife has been granted a special residence permit.
“Satnam is the 100th migrant worker to die in Italy this year,” says Carlo Caprioglio, a researcher and senior lecturer at the Legal Medicine Center on Migration and Asylum, who studies and works with migrants at Roma Tre University in Rome. “Every year, thousands of men come to Italy from India. However, there is a lot of cover-up about their working conditions and there is a high level of exploitation due to the lack of networks of connection,” Caprioglio told The Indian Express.
Professor Alessandra Corrado of the University of Calabria, who has been researching migrant workers in Italy, says most farm workers work 8 to 12 hours and are paid 3 to 4 euros (about Rs 350) an hour. About 30,000 Indians live in Agro Pontino, a center for greenhouse farming of olives and melons, and the farm sees a high demand for labor throughout the year.
“At the end of 2022, there were almost 362,000 foreigners in the agricultural sector, which is almost 32% of the agricultural workforce. If we also consider undocumented workers, the number is even higher (with estimates up to 50%),” says Alessandra Corrado.
Dr. Reina Gugreja, an associate professor at Queen’s University in Canada and an expert in migration and masculinity studies, said Italy’s notorious Caporlato system, where gangmasters acting as middlemen in the agricultural sector employ migrant workers and subject them to poor wages and working conditions, is one of the most labor-exploited markets.
Reina Gugreja, who was in Italy last month for research on undocumented South Asian migrants, says, “The living conditions of the workers are the same everywhere, eight to nine of them are crammed into a small room or in discarded containers or sheds without adequate toilet facilities, for which they even have to pay rent.
Once they landed, their passports were taken away by the gangmasters. Tragically, many of these gangmasters, who came to Italy as mercenaries, continue their weakened circle of gangs, once victims, by lending them the money they need to get to Italy induce, and then the workers spend their lives paying that money back.”.
A young illegal immigrant from Punjab who recently arrived in central Italy, on condition of anonymity, says, “Being undocumented means you are being exploited by everyone. You have become a tireless machine… We are stuck here doing this hard labor – our families depend on us to earn and send money back. But the debt continues to rise. The anxiety of dealing with all of this is eating away at me. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night thinking about how I’m going to cope with everything.”
On Saturday, Italian Labor Minister Marina Calderone announced new measures, including an increase in labor inspectors, to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers.
Back in Moga, Satnam’s family is still reeling from the shock. His elder brother Amritpal Singh last spoke to Satnam on Sunday, June 16. “It was a relaxing call on Sunday, his day off. He also usually calls us every evening after work. So when he didn’t call on Mondays and Tuesdays, we started getting worried,” says Amritpal, who last saw his brother four years ago.
Satnam used to send home about Rs 25,000 every month for his parents and sister, says brother Amritpal, who worked as an electrician in the Gulf but returned home last year to take care of his ailing son. “We don’t know what will happen now. We didn’t even know that Satnam had a wife, so there was no question of talking to him,” says Amritpal.
