“The eternal return” of normality: Invisibility and essentiality of migrant farmworkers before and during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Among the factors that the Covid-19 Pandemic has brought to light, the link between international mobility, migration policies and economic nationalism is central. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during and after the lockdown, the article focuses on the real motivations behind the amnesty approved last year by the government as part of the Decreto Relaunch, and aimed at regularising undocumented migrant workers employed in those sectors of the labour market considered essential (agriculture, domestic and care). Through the categories of essentiality and invisibility, the contribution investigates the ambivalent role played by migrants within the labour market and the national economy, paying particular attention to the agro-food sector. Above all, it focuses on the paradoxes made explicit by the measure: whose numbers, especially in the agricultural sector, demonstrate its ineffectiveness. This article aims to show how, in the face of the essentiality and numerical centrality of the migrant labour force within the agri-food sector, the national economic policy still does not recognise its importance, encouraging exploitative practices and policies of socio-economic marginalisation.