The cage and the market. Alienation and ambivalences in Italian 2024 farmers’ protests

This chapter explores the 2024 Italian farmers’ protests – known as the “tractor movement” (movimento dei trattori) – as a window into the broader dynamics of agrarian change and rural discontent under contemporary capitalism. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Northern Italy, the authors shed light on the condition experienced – and the narratives developed – by medium-scale farmers, who have been particularly affected by processes of land concentration, rising debt, market volatility and bureaucratic burdens associated with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Aiming to contribute to current debates about agrarian change, rural alienation and social stratification in Europe, the authors make the point that farmers’ protests reveal both the material pressures and the subjective contradictions experienced by a social group that occupy an ambiguous, and particularly vulnerable to ongoing transformations, structural position. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the movement’s hybrid class composition and fluid identity, while exposing the limitations of conventional political economy categories in capturing its complexity, also points to new possibilities for political recomposition, direct representation and class-based mobilisation.