Worker accommodation as battleground: migrant labour, informal brokers, public bodies and civil society in the agriculture of southern Italy

In this article, I aim to contribute to the scholarly debate on housing workers – namely, the relationship between the labour process and the accommodation provision – by analyzing the battleground around the formal and informal settlements of migrant agricultural workers on the southern Italian coastal plains, from the late 2000s onwards. First, I describe the commodity system of industrial tomato production, in which for many years the accommodation of seasonal farmworkers has almost exclusively been provided by informal – and illegalized – labour brokers in informal settlements. I propose naming this type of settlement ‘labour-broker-led accommodation provision’. Secondly, I unpack the idea that worker housing is a ‘battleground’, on two interrelated levels: a policy competition among actors who provide accommodation, and micro negotiations and conflicts within workers’ places of rest. This article is based on my own empirical qualitative study on the commodity system of processing tomatoes in the regions of Basilicata and Puglia (2010–17).