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Carole Reckinger

Bitter Oranges Project All Galleries
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56 images Created 14 Mar 2013

Bitter oranges Project

Most African migrants and refugees who enter Europe through Lampedusa end up working on the fruit and vegetable plantations in Southern Italy. Every year around Christmas thousands of migrant workers pick our oranges for a hunger wage in the village of Rosarno, Calabria.

For the rest of the year not much work is available in Rosarno, but some people earned so little that they can not afford the journey to another region to find work for the rest of the year. They stay all year around, barely having enough to eat during the long hot summer months where very little work is available.

From 2012 - 2014 Carole Reckinger, Dr. Gilles Reckinger and Dr Diana Reiners visited Rosarno regularly to research and photograph the living conditions of migrant agricultural workers in Rosarno.
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  • Most African migrants and refugees who enter Europe through Lampedusa end up working on the fruit and vegetable plantations in Southern Italy. Every year around Christmas thousands of migrant workers pick our oranges for a hunger wage in the village of Rosarno, Calabria. <br />
<br />
For the rest of the year not much work is available in Rosarno, but some people earned so little that they can not afford the journey to another region to find work for the rest of the year. They stay all year around, barely having enough to eat during the long hot summer months where very little work is available.<br />
<br />
From 2012 - 2014 Carole Reckinger, Dr. Gilles Reckinger and Dr Diana Reiners visited Rosarno regularly to research and photograph the living conditions of migrant agricultural workers in Rosarno.
    Bitter Oranges project 2012-2014
  • Once arrived in Lampedusa, the boat people only receive first aid. After a few days they are transferred to one of 13 identification centres throughout Italy.<br />
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2) In the identification centres the asylum procedure starts. <br />
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3) While waiting for the asylum decision, they must leave the camp. However, only a minority receive accommodation and support.<br />
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4) During the several months waiting period, most migrants are left to their own devices.<br />
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5) To survive, many have to seek work as day laborers in agriculture. <br />
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6) They are informed about the outcome of their asylum application.<br />
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a) If  the application is rejected, the migrants receive an expulsion order in which they are asked to leave Italy, but only half of the rejected migrants are deported. However, with neither documents nor money, they are unable to leave, and remain illegally in the country.<br />
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b) The asylum applications are evaluated positively. However, there are not enough places available to offer accommodation and financial support to people with either refugee status or temporary residence status for humanitarian reasons.<br />
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7) Regardless of what their status is, most migrants have to take any job they can find. Many African men work as migrant workers on fruit and vegetable plantations. Women without a family usually only find jobs in the lowest service sector or as sex workers.
    Storyboard
  • The plane of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, between the Strait of Sicily and the mountains of Aspromonte, offers ideal conditions for the cultivation of oranges. Summers are hot and dry, winters cold and rainy. Following the Second World War, large scale citrus cultivation was promoted in the economically weak region. <br />
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Until the early 1990s, many locals were employed in the agricultural sector.
    Bitter oranges
  • 2010 Rosarno featured briefly in the media. Italian teenagers shot an African harvest workers with an air rifle. Following this event, about 2000 African seasonal workers demonstrated against discrimination and for better working conditions. Violent clashes ensued, and the Africans were driven out of the city overnight. Video surveillance of the city later proved that violence and vandalism was committed by the locals and not by the migrants. The uprising did not change working conditions for the better. Nevertheless, many of the migrants returned shortly afterwards.
    Rosarno
  • Rosarno in Calabria has about 15,000 inhabitants. It is one of the poorest areas in the whole of Italy. Unemployment is very high.<br />
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Waste disposal is a problem everywhere in Calabria. Waste in the tent city has never been collected.
    Bitter oranges
  • Orange production
  • Before sunrise, the job seekers gather in the center of town. A foreman – capo – picks them up and drives them to the plantation. As many men as possible are crammed into the van. The workers have to pay the Capo 3-5 euros each for the drive. Competition is very high, and it is difficult to find work without a Capo. These foremen are mostly Africans, who have been promoted in the system.
    Rosarno - waiting for work.jpg
  • Regardless of what their status is, most migrants have to take any job they can find. Many African men work as migrant workers on fruit and vegetable plantations. Women without a family usually only find jobs in the lowest service sector or in prostitution. <br />
<br />
On average, a daily wage for 12 - 14 hours work is 25 Euros. However, the workers can usually only find work a few days each month.
    Rosarno orange pickers.jpg
  • working conditions
  • Bitter oranges
  • Bitter oranges
  • The EU's agricultural subsidies were awarded according to production volumes. It became lucrative to increase production volumes with illegal imports of cheaper oranges from South America. This led to a decline in sales prices. To remain competitive, seasonal workers from Eastern Europe were increasingly employed on lower wages. A new reservoir of even cheaper labour became available with the increasing number of boat migrants from Africa.
    Bitter oranges
  • Orange plantation southern italy.jpg
  • Local processing plants prepare the oranges for sale. Subcontractors transport the oranges throughout Europe to wholesale distributors.
    Ready for export
  • Map
  • Following the uprising in 2010, the abandoned factories where the african workers lived, were demolished. Several emergency shelters  were built outside town. One of those is a container camp about 5 km outside of Rosarno. Between October and March, about two thousand african migrant workers come to Rosarno. The container camp offers about 200 people a place to live.
    Container camp
  • How can I live without work
  • To receive a much sought after space in this camp, you need to arrive about two months before the start of the orange season. Without savings, most harvest workers can not afford this.
    Bitter oranges
  • 8 -10 person share a container, with a small kitchen, running water and electricity.
    Life in the camp
  • Tendopolis
  • In a remote industrial area, 5 km from Rosarno, a tent camp was constructed.<br />
The 64 emergency tents, accommodating about 380 people, when six people share a tent, were built with government funds.
    Bitter oranges
  • The municipality has no money for the support and maintenance of the emergency shelters. The first tent city was demolished for hygienic reasons in the summer of 2013. A new tent city was built only 200 meters away. The ragged tents of the first camp were never disposed of.
    Bitter oranges
  • I have lost so many years of my life
  • Access to running water is only available in the sanitary containers. These are not connected to a sewage system
    Bitter oranges
  • Summer
  • Electricity and lighting for the camp were planned, but were never actually connected to the power grid.
    Bitter oranges
  • The men from the tent city originate from different african countries. Several communities exist, usually formed according to religious and linguistic lines. The different groups have their own meeting points. Italian is often the communication language among africans of different ethnic groups.
    Bitter oranges
  • I cannot return
  • Only very few women live in the camp.
    Bitter oranges
  • Football
  • never before I had to live under suc..ions
  • This abandoned dog was hit by a car. Her hindlegs have been paralysed since. The residents of the camp have adopted her and given her the name Jonathan.
    Jonathan
  • To buy ready made meals is expensive. Most men cook themselves.
    Bitter oranges
  • Many people in the tent city use their skills and resources as a supplementary income
    Bitter oranges
  • Usually, cooking is done outside over the open fire
    cooking
  • During the winter, fresh meat is available, even halal slaughtered. Several men bought the sheep from a farmer.
    Halal
  • R is earning her living with a small shop and a food stall. A plate of freshly cooked food costs 2 Euro.<br />
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R has one of the few fridges in the tent city and sells besides of canned food and drinks some typical african ingredients. To buy these, she regularly takes a train to Naples, 400 km to the north.
    Little shop in Tendopolis
  • Communication
  • Very few people in the tent city have access to a fridge. Most people keep their food products, also raw meat, below their camp beds. Fish is sun dried, in order to conserve it.
    Cooking
  • Bitter oranges 44_final_a.jpg
  • During the harvest season in the winter, a sprawling slum area built out of temporary material develops around the blue tents. People who could not find a bed in a tent live here.
    Rosarno big camp.jpg
  • Camp in the wood
  • In a small wood on the outskirts of Rosarno, a dozen muslim and arabic speaking men, most of them recognised refugees from Sudan, built a makeshift camp for the harvest season. There is not electricity or running water in this camp. Nonetheless, they prefer this place, because it is closer to town, and in contrast to the crowded tent city, it forms a smaller community.
    A camp of migrant workers in Rosarno.jpg
  • The kitchen<br />
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The men receive water to cook and wash from italian workers of a nearby factory.
    Kitchen
  • Bitter oranges 74_final_a.jpg
  • A tent is not sufficient to brave the rains. In order to insulate against the cold, the inhabitants protect their tents with a second layer of plastic
    Living conditions of migrant workers...jpg
  • Cooking
  • Nobody cares about us
  • Bitter oranges 78_final_a.jpg
  • The men put their money together to buy groceries, and share the food. Even if some of them can not find work for days, they can still eat.
    Bitter oranges
  • Fallen tree trunks serve as firewood. In order for the wet wood to dry and to burn, the tree trunk is slowly pushed into the fire.
    Migrant orange pickers in Rosarno.jpg
  • The camp is inhabited only during the harvest season. For the rest of the year, the inhabitants move to fruit and vegetable plantations throughout Italy in search of work.
    Bitter oranges
  • 2014, the small forest was during the summer months transformed into an illegal rubbish dump.
    Bitter oranges
  • Ethological research
  • Team
  • copyright