Moroccans pay thousands of euros to work in Italy… then fall into the clutches of the “agromafia”

Italy’s system of exploiting agricultural labor no longer necessarily begins in the fields. The networks responsible for recruiting workers now reach as far as their countries of origin, particularly Morocco.

On Bladi.net : France: Moroccan Workers Paid 10,000 Euros to Work

This is what the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) describes in a new analysis devoted to the grip of organized crime on Italian agriculture. The organization explicitly cites Morocco among the countries where intermediaries seek future workers, alongside Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

The promise made to applicants is particularly attractive: entering Italy legally to work through the “Decreto Flussi,” the scheme that allows non-European workers each year to obtain authorization within the quotas set by Rome.

But access to this promise can be very costly. According to GI-TOC, many applicants pay thousands of euros in commissions and intermediation fees. They thus begin their journey with a substantial debt, even before reaching Europe.

The promised job may never exist

The mechanism can go far beyond a simple abusive commission. In 2024, Italian authorities dismantled a network that used the “click days” system, during which work-permit applications are submitted online, to send thousands of fraudulent applications.

In this case, migrants allegedly paid up to 2,000 euros to obtain a place in the scheme. Once they had completed the procedure, some discovered that the company supposedly hiring them had disappeared, could not be found, or had never intended to give them work.

Without regular employment and with a debt to repay, workers may then find themselves dependent on the intermediaries who arranged their arrival. It is at this stage that the promised legal recruitment can shift into “caporalato,” the clandestine labor-intermediation system particularly established in Italian agriculture.

These networks do not necessarily limit themselves to finding work. Some also control transportation to farms, housing, or access to documents. Workers may pay inflated rates to be transported to isolated fields or housed in precarious facilities. When control over housing and movement genuinely prevents a worker from leaving, the situation may, according to GI-TOC, constitute forced labor.

The phenomenon now extends far beyond southern Italy. Networks of this kind have also been identified in Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Piedmont. The organization believes that “caporalato” now operates as a genuine national system of exploitation.

On Bladi.net : article 118994

It is part of an even broader criminal economy, described as the “agromafia,” which also encompasses food fraud, price manipulation, embezzlement of public funds, extortion and land appropriation. GI-TOC reports an estimate of approximately 25 billion euros in annual illicit revenues for this criminal ecosystem.