- Jun 9
- 7 min read
Killed migrant workers shed light on Italy’s gangmaster labour system
The victims, including a Pakistani national and three Afghan nationals, were locked inside a minivan and set alight by two gangmasters
By The Immigrant Times
Deadly assault on a vehicle packed with migrants; Tomato pickers in southern Italy; Informal camp for agricultural migrant workers (Photos: CCTV footage of attack; Adobe stock photo; Giorgia Orlandi)
Introduction
June 2026: An estimated 200,000 workers in Italian agriculture are employed under irregular labour arrangements, meaning without contracts, proper pay slips, or social security registration. Workers labour in Italian agriculture under conditions of systematic exploitation. The killing of four migrant workers in Calabria in June 2026 has brought renewed scrutiny to Caporalato, a labour system that has persisted for more than a century.
The killing of four migrant workers
In June 2026, four agricultural workers were burned alive at a petrol station in Amendolara, a small municipality on the Ionian coast of Calabria. The victims, including a Pakistani national and three Afghan nationals, were locked inside a minivan and set alight by two gangmasters they had confronted over unpaid wages. A fifth worker survived by smashing a window and escaping. Two men were arrested on suspicion of premeditated murder within hours of the attack.
The sole survivor told Italian media that the dispute began over transport fees the victims refused to pay. According to his account, the gangmasters had threatened the group with knives and guns, forcing them to work without wages: "They didn't give us any money; they gave us food, yes, housing, yes, but no money."
The killings did not happen in isolation. They represent the most extreme form of a criminal labour system, known as caporalato, which has shaped Italian agricultural employment for generations and still traps hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in harsh conditions of exploitation.
The Caporalato (gangmaster) system
Caporalato is the Italian term for illegal labour intermediation, commonly described in English as the ‘gangmaster system’. The term derives from the Latin caput, meaning head or leader, and is related to the word caporale. Historically, the caporale acted as a foreman in agricultural settings; the term now represents the exploitative nature of intermediaries who profit from vulnerable workers.
In operational terms, a gangmaster links the demand for agricultural labour with a supply of vulnerable workers, whether migrants or locals, providing them on short notice and for low wages. Such gangmasters usually retain part of the workers' wages and control negotiations with employers over pay.
The system has operated in Italy for over a century. It has survived past challenges from farmworkers' unions and remains essential for providing inexpensive, flexible labour for a farming sector influenced by asymmetric global value chains and the market power of retailers, which force farmers to stay adaptable and reduce labour costs.
The influence of gangmasters reaches well beyond the fields. In addition to acting as illegal recruitment agents who collect workers and transport them to farms, gangmasters charge fees for transport that can eat up between 40 and 50 per cent of a worker's daily wages. Most wages paid through the caporalato system are based on piecework or task-based pay, with workers employed for between eight and twelve hours a day, often without rest days or breaks, and they are seriously underpaid.
Operationally, intermediaries arrange early-morning call-outs, organise pick-ups and transportation to scattered worksites, allocate on-site tasks, and communicate wages only at the end of the day. The workers have no contract, no recourse, and no alternatives.
A third of farm workers are irregularly employed, with many more under threat
Approximately 200,000 workers in the agricultural sector are employed irregularly, including 55,000 women. The proportion of irregular employment is increasing and now accounts for 30 per cent of total agricultural employment. The latest ISTAT estimate from 2023 indicates that this issue is widespread across Italy (from Piedmont to Trentino, from Calabria to Basilicata). Many of these workers are migrants driven by the need to earn money who, lacking alternatives, accept a daily wage of around 20 euros to work 12 to 14 hours in the fields without any protection.
Research has also documented its presence in construction and, increasingly, in platform-based gig economy work.
The agricultural trade union FLAI-CGIL and the Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto estimate that between 400,000 and 430,000 farmworkers in Italy are subjected to irregular labour intermediation, making them potential or actual victims of the caporalato system.
The gangmasters are strongest in Italy’s southern regions
Calabria is among the regions most severely affected by the Caporalato system, but it is not the only one. The regions consistently involved include Campania, Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily. In Puglia, the province of Foggia, long considered the national epicentre of the caporalato system, has an estimated 10,000 irregular farmworkers concentrated in informal settlements.
In Sicily, the agricultural triangle of Ragusa, Caltagirone, and Siracusa employs approximately 18,000 underpaid seasonal workers, mainly from North and East Africa. In 2023, national labour inspections identified the highest rates of irregularity in Puglia, followed by Sicily, Campania, and Calabria. Recently, the issue has spread northward, with documented cases in Lazio, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, and Tuscany.
Within Calabria, the Ionian coastal strip, including areas such as Corigliano-Rossano, Sibari, Cassano Jonio, Tarsia, and Trebisacce, is one of the main centres of the phenomenon, especially during harvest seasons. According to the CNR-Ismed report on Calabria, the relationship between gangmaster and worker involves power and subordination, exercised through control of individuals, economic dependency, and, in the most serious cases, threats and violence. In the Calabrian context, violence is not episodic but institutional.
Some 12,000 of the 200,000 irregular agricultural workers toil in Calabria. Inspections in the region have found that almost 70 per cent of companies examined were operating illegally. The affected workforce in Calabria mainly comes from India, Morocco, and Mali, although the Amendolara attack has highlighted a significant community of workers from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Workplace exploitation is strongly connected to the living conditions of these workers. In most informal settlements across Italy where migrant agricultural workers live, residents lack access to running water, functioning toilets, gas, heating, or electricity. Since 2016, at least 14 people have died in such settlements due to these dangerous conditions. Many workers are required to work long hours in exhausting environments, paid very low wages, and often denied contracts or correct pay slips.
In Amendolara, the survivor and the four men who died had been living together in a flat provided by the same Pakistani gangmasters who later carried out the attack, with ten workers sharing the same accommodation in the nearby town of Villapiana.
Across Puglia, one of the most heavily affected agricultural regions, thousands of migrant farmworkers live in shantytowns far from city centres, with no access to water, proper sanitation, or health services. Medical organisations operating in these settlements report that most workers who seek help have been in Italy for several years, following seasonal harvests across different regions — citrus in Calabria in winter, tomatoes in Puglia in summer, strawberries in Campania in spring.
Agriculture and the food industry rely on caporalato to remain competitive
The caporalato system does not operate in isolation from the mainstream economy. A long history of illegal recruitment and labour exploitation tarnishes the supply chain that delivers Italian agri-food products to dining tables and market shelves worldwide.
Labour and food system analysts argue that the real causes of exploitation are the large retail chains, which pressure farmers to sell tomatoes and citrus fruit at low prices and then exploit workers. It is the big corporations that hold power in the food chain.
To maintain their market share, some Italian producers resort to the caporalato system, where workers are treated as indentured labour rather than free employees, because labour costs make up the largest part of producers' expenses in Italy. Consequently, internationally recognised Italian food brands, San Marzano tomatoes, Calabrian clementines, and Pugliese olive oil are partly produced by workers earning wages significantly below any legal standard.
Italy has not been free of legal action. In 2011, caporalato was recognised as a criminal offence, with penalties for illicit labour brokering. The most notable development occurred in 2016, when a comprehensive framework was established to combat labour exploitation, focusing on the illicit accumulation of wealth by those who exploit workers in breach of workplace safety rules and fundamental rights.
Since the law's adoption, investigations into exploitation have risen. There have also been significant judicial developments aimed at understanding migrant vulnerability to exploitation within a contextual framework.
The 2025 report by the National Labour Inspectorate recorded 895 workers officially recognised as victims of caporalato, with 227 in agriculture, marking a notable decrease from 1,226 cases in 2024 and 3,208 in 2023. These figures are considered provisional due to the time needed for criminal proceedings.
In February 2026, Italy's inter-ministerial Tavolo Caporalato approved a national information system to monitor and prevent the exploitation of migrant agricultural workers. The government has also taken steps to expand legal channels for immigration, with Italy aiming to grant 500,000 new work visas to non-EU nationals by 2028, partly to reduce the number of undocumented workers available to gangmaster networks.
Critics argue, however, that the government's restrictive immigration policies have increased the vulnerability of migrant workers by pushing more into the informal economy. As long as migrants without legal status are constrained by regulatory restrictions, many will remain exposed to criminal networks and at risk of exploitation.
Analysts describe caporalato not as an isolated criminal event but as the result of interconnected systems that maintain coercive labour practices. Current policy responses have been criticised as fragmented and too focused on individual perpetrators, making them ineffective in tackling the structural causes of exploitation. The system persists because it is useful to farmers managing unpredictable harvests, to retailers seeking stable prices, and to criminal networks that extract rent at every stage of the process.
Sources and methodology
This article draws on reports by the Associated Press, Euronews, InfoMigrants, NBC News, and Il Sole 24 Ore (June 2026); data and analyses from FLAI-CGIL's Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto (Agromafie e Caporalato, multiple editions); the Human Rights Watch report on migrant worker settlements in Italy (April 2023); the National Labour Inspectorate's annual report (2025); research published in the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (Scaturro, November 2021); and the Collective Aid NGO briefing on caporalato (February 2025). Italian legal provisions cited include Article 603-bis of the penal code, Law No. 199/2016, and the February 2026 Tavolo Caporalato decree.
Terminology
In this article, migrant worker refers to individuals working outside their country of origin, regardless of immigration status. Caporalato describes the Italian system of illegal labour intermediation, where gangmasters recruit, transport, and control agricultural workers outside any formal employment framework, extracting fees and suppressing wages. An irregular worker is one employed without a legal contract or within the shadow economy, regardless of their immigration status.
Further reading from The Immigrant Times: Italy needs immigrants || Teaching refugees in Italy || Guisi Nicolini, a defender of migrants ||
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