Abstract

The present paper intends contributing to the growing body of literature investigating the relationship between migrant labor exploitation and industrial agriculture, by investigating the role of the criminalization of labor intermediation, so-called caporalato, in the context of Italian agriculture. By first exploring the evolution of normative framework and public discourse regarding the criminalization of caporalato, and later offering an in-depth ethnographic account of the evolution of rural informal settlements and labor organization in the province of Foggia, the paper suggests that the adoption of a criminal justice-based approach in countering migrant labor exploitation, while allowing for some improvements, reveals the contradiction between labor and citizenship rights inherent in modern slavery approaches to labor exploitation