This document summarizes a presentation given at Università di Bergamo on October 25, 2013 titled "Migrant farmworkers in Southern Italy between crisis and riots: from Gramsci to the revolts of Castel Volturno and Rosarno". The presentation discusses two cases - Rosarno and Castel Volturno - where migrant farmworkers rioted. In Rosarno, the government response framed it as a civil emergency and set up tent cities, while in Castel Volturno the farmworkers engaged in political action and popular protest to gain rights and recognition. The document analyzes how the farmworkers in each case used different strategies to move from invisibility and exploitation to gaining some control over their situation.

1. Università di Bergamo
25 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

2. Cases Studies: from ghetto to tanatopolitics riots
Tableland - Foggia
tomato (winter)
Piana Volturno - Caserta
fruit and vegetables (All year)
Plain Sele - Salerno
serricoltura (All year)
Piana Gioia Tauro - Reggio C.
Citrus (Winter)
Cassibile - Syracuse
potato (all year)
Ghetto Rignano
Ghetto of Villa Literno
Fire in September 1994
Ghetto of San Nicola Varco
Eviction November 2009
Ex-Rognetta of Rosario
eviction January 2010
Ghetto Cassibile
Fire in June 2006
The revolt of Castel Volturno
(18 September 2008)
The revolt of Rosarno
(7/8 January 2010)
Cassibile - Syracuse
potato (all year)

3. The social and structural causes: The ropture of equilibration between
Mediterranean migration and californian agricolture in Southern Italy
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)
"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

4. 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.

5. THE ABUSAGE OF GRAMSCIAN CIVIL SOCIETY
From Bobbio (1967) to "Centre for Civil Society (London School of Economics) “refers to Gramsci
to support their incompatible thesis according to which civil society would be the non-state
sector and non-economic interaction " ( Buttigieg , 2007) .
State = political society + civil society, in other words
hegemony protected by the armor of coercion"
(Prison Notebook , p.796)
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”
authorized but not recognized and (Ranciere)
unauthorized but recognized (Sassen)

6. CIVIL SOCIETY AND POLITICAL SOCIETY
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
When the state recognizes these requests,
it is forced to do so because of a straight
forward 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)

7. ROSARNO: POWER AND EMERGENCY (CIVIL SOCIETY)
EMERGENCY AS A PARADIGM OF
GOVERNMENT
Rosarno: from the "hunt for
Black" to institutional ghetto
(800.000 E)

8. Rosarno and the gomvernamentality of emergence
•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).

9. CASTEL VOLTURNO: SUBALTERN AND EMERGENCY (POLITICAL SOCIETY)
- Practice of the exception
- Autocensus
- Mobilization and protest actions

10. POLITICAL SOCIETY (CASTEL VOLTURNO)
EXCEPTIONAL CLAIM
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 partecipation
of subjects traditionally been reluctant to weak social mobilization and ,a privileged
access to the benefits earned in course the mobilization itself.
AUTOCENSUS
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 governmentality
from 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
INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE
Break 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)

11. CONCLUSION (1/2)
ROSARNO:
SEASONAL WORK
CASTELVOLTURNO:
RURURBAN WORK
Civil
Action
Political
action
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

12. 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.