In this paper we take up Scoones et al.’s (2018) challenge to analyse this new political momentum characterized by the emergence of various forms of authoritarian populism analysing what features it assumes in Italy. We look at the centre-left Italian governments in the 2010s (2013-2018) and at their attempt to build a new consensus based on a combination of old and new populist and neoliberal traits. In particular, we explore two issues: 1. a struggle for hegemony over the representations of Italian agriculture; 2. the “military-humanitarian” management of the “migration crisis” and its consequences on migrant farm labour. Both of these have emerged as responses to two deep “crises”: in the domain of agriculture, the crisis of Italian small and medium farming, due to their incorporation into a neoliberalizing food regime since the 1980s; in the domain of migration, the “migration/refugee crisis” started with the “Arab springs” in 2011. After a description of four “great transformations” which have characterized Italian agriculture and rural areas since the 1980s in the context of the transition towards a new, neoliberalizing regional food regime (second section), in the third section we analyse how: (1) the representation of Italian agriculture is apparently dominated by the rhetoric of the “Made in Italy” food, with its features of “quality”, “ties with the territory”, “peasantness”, “biodiversity”, and, interestingly, a growing attention to the defence of (migrant) farm labour; (2) this new discourse concerning the defence of labour rights has been developed in a new phase of migration processes, started in 2011, and managed by the Centre-Left governments through a “military-humanitarian” approach. We argue that the Centre-Left policies in the 2010s failed in tackling the structural reasons of the both small farmers’ marginality and the “migrant crisis”; these failures contributed to the defeat of the centre-left coalition in the political elections in 2018, probably paving the way towards a new era of authoritarian populism. In Section 4, we discuss a possible political alternative “from below” to both the centre-left rhetoric and centre-right authoritarian populism: new forms mutualism and peasant agriculture, animated by small-scale farmers, local and migrant precarious workers and activists, emerged in southern Italy since 2011.

(2018). Agriculture and migration in rural southern Italy in the 2010s: new populisms and a new rural mutualism . Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10446/135110

Agriculture and migration in rural southern Italy in the 2010s: new populisms and a new rural mutualism

Lo Cascio, Martina;Perrotta, Domenico
2018-01-01

Abstract

In this paper we take up Scoones et al.’s (2018) challenge to analyse this new political momentum characterized by the emergence of various forms of authoritarian populism analysing what features it assumes in Italy. We look at the centre-left Italian governments in the 2010s (2013-2018) and at their attempt to build a new consensus based on a combination of old and new populist and neoliberal traits. In particular, we explore two issues: 1. a struggle for hegemony over the representations of Italian agriculture; 2. the “military-humanitarian” management of the “migration crisis” and its consequences on migrant farm labour. Both of these have emerged as responses to two deep “crises”: in the domain of agriculture, the crisis of Italian small and medium farming, due to their incorporation into a neoliberalizing food regime since the 1980s; in the domain of migration, the “migration/refugee crisis” started with the “Arab springs” in 2011. After a description of four “great transformations” which have characterized Italian agriculture and rural areas since the 1980s in the context of the transition towards a new, neoliberalizing regional food regime (second section), in the third section we analyse how: (1) the representation of Italian agriculture is apparently dominated by the rhetoric of the “Made in Italy” food, with its features of “quality”, “ties with the territory”, “peasantness”, “biodiversity”, and, interestingly, a growing attention to the defence of (migrant) farm labour; (2) this new discourse concerning the defence of labour rights has been developed in a new phase of migration processes, started in 2011, and managed by the Centre-Left governments through a “military-humanitarian” approach. We argue that the Centre-Left policies in the 2010s failed in tackling the structural reasons of the both small farmers’ marginality and the “migrant crisis”; these failures contributed to the defeat of the centre-left coalition in the political elections in 2018, probably paving the way towards a new era of authoritarian populism. In Section 4, we discuss a possible political alternative “from below” to both the centre-left rhetoric and centre-right authoritarian populism: new forms mutualism and peasant agriculture, animated by small-scale farmers, local and migrant precarious workers and activists, emerged in southern Italy since 2011.
2018
Iocco, Giulio; LO CASCIO, Martina; Perrotta, Domenico Claudio
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