Exploitation, Abuse and Entrapment: The Bargain Life of South Asia in Italy | Workers’ Rights

Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect identities.

After a night selling roses in Tuscany, Mohamed* was riding his bike along a coastal road when someone in a passing car hit him in the back with a pole.

he fell to the ground.

It was August 2013, and Muhammad was 22 years old. He believes it was a deliberate and possibly racist attack.

“I was already broken,” he said. “But then I fell apart.”

He suffered psychologically and still suffers from back pain from the assault.

He had arrived in Italy several months earlier after a harrowing seven-month journey by land and sea.

He had no documents or money and was 9,000 euros ($9,700) in debt to the Bangladeshi agent who arranged his trip.

Muhammad said he was guided by several people along the way.

When he arrived in Tuscany, he was approached by men from his country and forced to work as a loose worker in the center of the city so that he could have a room and board with nine other foreign workers. It is said that

“I didn’t like bothering people while they were eating by asking if they wanted to buy roses,” Mohammed said. “But there was no other choice.”

Loose sales are common in Italy’s largest and most romantic cities, such as Rome, Milan, and Turin.

Every night, South Asian men approach throngs of tourists brandishing bouquets of red roses.

During high season, around 20 loose sellers can be found in the city center a night, with dozens more on Valentine’s Day weekend.

But behind the universal symbol of love lies a dark story of hardship, labor exploitation, and human trafficking.

On any given night, rose sellers of all ages may walk for miles to sell a few flowers, enduring rejection, police surveillance, and even violence.

“They’re a pain,” said a Welsh tourist at the top of Rome’s Spanish Steps on a February night.

Despite their familiarity and the dangers they encounter, there are few official records or data about these street vendors.

In recent years, several attacks on loose sellers have been reported on local news in various parts of the country. Often young Italian men do it.

In November, a 50-year-old Bangladeshi loose seller, described as a “famous face”, was brutally assaulted by three men in Ivrea, Turin.

In 2020, another Bangladeshi vendor was randomly pushed down the Naviglio Canal in Milan by two men.

A year ago, two young men reportedly beat and robbed a vendor of unknown origin in Nettuno.

It is unclear what consequences, if any, the perpetrators ultimately faced in each case.

“Everyone can see it, but there is no data. There is nothing,” says Marina Mazzini, who conducted one of the few case studies on loose selling in Italy for the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI). he said.

For this article, Al Jazeera interviewed Mr. Mohammed, as well as two other rose sellers, three former rose sellers, and four NGOs that have provided written support to dozens of rose sellers.

fear, anxiety, thankless work

South Asians who end up selling roses in Italy are primarily from Bangladesh. Almost all are deeply in debt and rely on community members to help them start life in their new country.

Muhammad said he was entertained in Tuscany by a man from Bangladesh and a man from Pakistan. On his first day selling roses, Mohammed gave him 30 euros (about $32) and told him to buy roses from a local flower vendor.

Mohammed said organizers were in constant contact with florists to keep track of how many roses each vendor had purchased.

He spends at least 12 hours a night roaming the city’s restaurants, bars, monuments, and other tourist hotspots until all the flowers are sold, then returns to his host’s home, where he and five other He said he slept in the same room with him.

Red roses do not have a fixed rate. The vendor asks for a few euros, and depending on each sale he may accept 2 to 5 euros ($2.16 to $5.40).

If you sell 200 roses on a good night and make 120 euros (about $129), you should pay 60 euros (about $65) to the flower seller and 50 euros (about $54) to the host for room, board, and food promises. dollar) must be returned. He’s a good lawyer to sort out the paperwork, Mohamed said. The remaining 10 euros (about $11) was usually spent on cigarettes and coffee.

He soon developed a sleeping disorder, suffering from panic attacks and nightmares about the trip. Some of that time was spent on a boat with 200 others heading from Egypt to Sicily.

If local police were present while on duty, Mohammed would be transferred to another area.

In between selling flowers, he worked in a Bangladeshi grocery store in Genoa, a job that was never compensated, and worked as a gardener, dishwasher and chef, selling artichokes in a market in Milan and roses again in southern Italy. I worked intermittently as an assistant.

Almost seven years later, in 2018, Mohamed was granted asylum as a victim of human trafficking with the help of local NGO Comunità Progetto Sud.

Muhammad believes his compatriots have let him down.

“The Moroccans helped me study Italian, and the Italians helped me get the documents,” Mohamed said. “I have only been exploited by my own people.”

“To the young people who are now coming to Italy, I tell them not to trust their own people,” he added.

recognize exploitation

Uddin Mofiz, 55, who came to Rome in 1987, said he was one of the country’s first loose sellers. “It was very difficult,” he said of his early years in Italy.

“I slept on trains, I slept in cars, I slept at Termini station in Rome. At first…all my money went to food and rent,” Mofiz said.

Siddique Noure Alam, president of the Bangladeshi Association in Rome, known as Doumkatu, said he worked with Mofiz and others as a loose seller 35 years ago. Alam said all the street vendors who arrive in Italy are already in debt.

But Mofiz and Alam don’t see their early hardships as exploitative.

“If you have strong arms and legs, you can work. Nothing happens right away. Things take time. You have to build your life slowly, slowly,” says Mofiz. said.

Experts say exploitation among South Asian street vendors is difficult to track because they often do not believe they are being exploited. They rarely ask for help and see their suffering as a necessary step toward a better future.

Luca Scoppetti, coordinator of the anti-trafficking unit at social cooperative Parsec in Rome, said: “When Bangladeshis talk about their exploitation, they don’t say it like that, they blame their hardships on the high cost of living.” “I will make it happen,” he said. .

UNICRI’s Mazzini said “informal work is the only means of survival” for people under pressure to pay off debts and compensate hosts.

Alessandro Arrigetti, a professor of economics in the production department at the University of Parma, says selling roses is a dead-end pursuit.

“The experience you get is [from selling roses] It doesn’t improve your professional skills,” he said.

Bulk sellers remain stuck, struggling to learn Italian and get better jobs.

“I can be there for one year, two years, or 10 years.”

Francesca Nicodemi, a lawyer specializing in human trafficking, said Italian authorities have the expertise and tools to identify typical victims of human trafficking, such as foreign women forced into prostitution, but they do not have the expertise and tools to identify typical victims of human trafficking, such as foreign women forced into prostitution. Some people say it’s not very visible.

“The number of female trafficking victims recognized as refugees is greater than the number of men trafficked for labor exploitation,” Nicodemi said.

Currently, undocumented workers like Mohammed can receive assistance only if they admit to Italian authorities that they are victims of human trafficking, Nicodemi said.

The case will then be investigated to determine whether there is a “well-founded fear of persecution” under the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

“Mainly, these people have chosen to arrive in Italy voluntarily and are therefore recognized as ‘economic migrants’, or at least as victims of smuggling,” Nicodemi said.

Carla Quinto, legal director of Be Free, an anti-trafficking cooperative in Rome, said that even if loose sellers filed a complaint with the police, authorities “lack the expertise” to recognize this type of exploitation. “There is a possibility that there is,” he said.

“[This] This will prevent the whistleblower from being recognized as a victim of human trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation,” Quint said.

In any case, he added, some loose sellers may think it’s better to make 10 euros (about $11) a day than not earn anything at all.

To effectively support them, exploited migrants must have work and a place to live.

NGOs like Liotti and Scopetti reach out to undocumented workers, helping them recognize their exploitation and seek asylum.

“Immigrants don’t just accept their culture, they offer it and share it,” Mohammed said. “When they arrive, let’s properly identify them and give them opportunities. Look at what they bring to the table and what we can offer them because immigrants don’t bring bad things. Let’s look at.”

Muhammad eventually overcame fear and depression. Now he is fluent in Italian and as a beekeeper he takes care of 300 hives.

This article was produced with support from the Journalism Fund Europe