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2015-2018 Piana di Gioia Tauro, Calabria, Italy.
On the evening of January 7th, 2010, on the road that links Rosarno to Gioia Tauro (Calabria Region), two unknown guys fired an air gun on three African workers walking home after a day of work in the fields, picking oranges and mandarines. The assault caused a revolt in Rosarno against the mafia, which contributed to the exploitation of the migrants. The Interior Ministry forcefully transferred all the migrants from the Plain of Gioia Tauro, leaving them in cities such as Roma and Napoli without houses, assistance, documents, and future perspectives due to the critical situation. Therefore, most of them returned to Gioia Tauro without means of survival. They occupied some farmhouses that had been demolished by the Prefecture of Rosarno in 2011, leaving the workers without a place to live again. Only in January 2012, in the industrial area of San Ferdinando, a sterile environment with hardly any familiar reference point, did the government create a tent city with fifty tents to host three hundred migrants. After six months, the government stopped the funding, and the NGO Caritas left its management. It became one of the largest shanty houses in Southern Italy. The photographic project witnessed this non-place between 2015 and 2018 when over 1000 people inhabited it, as it has been at the centre of the national news for fires, murders, and evictions. The migrants were in limbo, waiting for documents and a better place to live, exploited by the 'Ndrangheta and forgotten by the government. Vita Magazine Open Migration |
