“A slice of life in the time of corona; thousands of invisible front line workers risk their health every day to bring food to your couch. They aren't just immigrants struggling to survive in New York City . . . They are the backbone of New York City, and they are the essential.” -Law Chen
I Tendopoli: The Tent Cities of Italy
Orange season brings thousands of seasonal migrant workers to the Calabrian coast during the winter months. The men live in intimidation from the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, and were the target of media attention in 2010 when riots broke out between the Italians and the Africans after two migrant workers were shot. This photo series follows Ibra, a man originally from Burkina Faso, who has lived in Italy since 2001 and was living in the tent city for six months when these photographs were taken, working towards his dream of making enough money to return home and provide for his family.
The men living in the tendopoli, which literally translates to “tent city,” pick tomatoes in Naples in the spring and oranges in Calabria during the winter. In the winter months, as many as 2000 migrants live in temporary settlements along the Calabrian coast. That number shrinks to several hundred during the off-season. Some of the men, like Ibra, first traveled to larger cities in the north of Italy and slowly made their way south as job prospects for African migrants became grim. Ibra first set foot on Italian soil in Milan, and has worked in Sicily as well as Naples and Calabria. Occasionally, Ibra takes odd jobs in surrounding towns from Italians he is friendly with. The shantytown where these migrants live lies between Gioia Tauro and Rosarno, two small towns that hug Calabria’s western coast. Residents of Rosarno and the neighboring migrants entered the national Italian spotlight following the killing of two migrants by resident Italians in January 2010. Riots ensued, stirring a national dialogue concerning the treatment of seasonal African workers living in intimidation and squalor. Ibra, a six-month resident of the tendopoli, is often sought out for advice by fellow migrant workers. Fluent in Italian and well-connected in neighboring towns, Ibra helps men living in the camp obtain legal working papers and permessi di soggiorni, “permits to stay” in the country for an allotted period of months to work. He also coordinates the local branch of Caritas, a worldwide Catholic charity aimed at mitigating poverty, serving food to the residents of the tendopoli twice a week. Italy, like all of Europe, is saturated with the same anti-immigrant rhetoric that has fueled the election of far-right leaders across a swath of nations. The future of Ibra, and seasonal migrant workers like him, will be determined by what steps these nations take in restricting their borders, and the official response to informally tolerated discrimination.
Tendopoli. | Located in the deep south of the Calabrese coast about an hour outside Reggio Calabria, this shoddy settlement housing West African migrants was never intended to last long. Hand-erected tents stand next to government-donated ones, housing West African migrants hailing primarily from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Ghana. Promises of permanent housing from local Italian governments have proved empty. Meanwhile, the encampment continues to grow in population. This particular tendopoli reached national notoriety in January 2010 following the death of two migrants at the hands of local Italians and subsequent riots.
Emergence. | This tendopoli was slated for destruction following violent attacks on the West African population by local Italians that made international headlines in 2010, in favor of more permanent housing. No progress has been made to construct these permanent homes, and Tendopoli remains active as a settlement.
Accendeva una sigaretta. | Ibra is my guide through the tendopoli. Ibra is originally from Burkina Faso, and unlike most of the men who arrived in Italy from Libya through the perilous Mediterranean sea route, he arrived by plane. He is a polyglot, speaking French, Italian, Igbu, and several bantu languages. Ibra spoke to me only in Italian, and was instrumental in helping with translations during interviews that were conducted partially in French.
La Frutta. | Ibra shares dried fruit from his native Burkina Faso.
Il lavoro del macellaio. | Assan, the butcher, leaves behind a sheep’s head after slicing up a carcass.
Materassi bagnati. | Mattresses dry out following a three-day hail and rain storm.
La tenda d’Ibra. | The blue tents were donated by the government as a temporary measure before permanent housing could be secured. However,the tendopoli encampment has been active for years. What was meant to be a short-time bandaid is currently having to function as a long-term solution.
L’uomo e figlio. | The tendopoli is home almost entirely to men, with only three women and two children recorded as residents. The men follow the seasonal fruit picking terms, Naples for tomatoes in the spring and Calabria for oranges in the summer.
Le scarpe. | Shoes dry on the top of a tent following a three-day rain and hailstorm. Because of its proximity to the ocean, the tendopoli floods consistently in the springtime rainy season.
La salvia d’Ibra. | Ibra keeps fresh sage in his tent for cooking. The electricity in the tendopoli is unreliable at its best; at its worst, it can go out for days or weeks at a time. Cooking on Ibra’s tiny stovetops requires no small measure of creativity and patience.
La bambina. | Leila is the daughter of a woman known to most as Mama Africa. The two live in an apartment in the nearby town of Rosarno, gifting residents of the shantytown supplies when they can afford it. Ibra functions as a liaison between Mama Africa and those living in the tendopoli. He brings Leila gifts when he can.
The Calabrese regional government continues to ignore the conditions of confinement they have created in the tendopoli. With no end of the occupation in sight, the men of the tendopoli are forced to continue living in these atrocious circumstances until administrative compliancy ends.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FREELY MAGAZINE.
MAGGIE ANDRESEN
Maggie Andresen is a recent graduate of the Temple University Klein College of Media and Communications, where she studied photojournalism and international reporting. She has worked for newspapers in New York, New Orleans, and Denver. Currently, she is a Princeton in Africa fellow working in communications at Gardens for Health International, a small Rwanda-based non-profit working to end childhood malnutrition.
Kyrgyz women have gradually replaced men in various tasks, at home but also as migrant labourers. Asel Murzakolova, Author provided
Kyrgyzstan: Migrant Women Workers and a ‘Lost Generation’ of Children
Dilya-eje, a secondary school teacher in the border village of Samarkandek, Kyrgyzstan, often visits the houses of her neighbourhood to record the children who should attend school the next year. She always indicates the status of their parents in her notebook. More than half of the parents are labelled as migrants.
When men migrate, women take on the usual male roles: today most agricultural labour in the villages is done by women. But in Kyrgyzstan there are also a high number of women migrants. In 2016, women accounted for about 40% of total Kyrgyz labour migrants to Russia. Some are divorced or married women and some are very young girls who begin to earn money just after graduating from high school. Women migrating to Russia are usually employed in the service sector.
Because of these trends, traditional notions of femininity and masculinity are now often in conflict. Despite the fact that these women are sometimes the main source of income in their families, they have to face misogynistic behaviour – and violence.
‘A real woman is willing do housekeeping’
Labour migration is always accompanied by a dichotomy between economic benefits and social consequences.
According to a 2016 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) survey in Kyrgyzstan, migrant women face deep contempt when returning home.
Among 6,000 households interviewed, it was found that more than half of respondents (51% of women and 61% of men) believe that a “wife’s career is less important than the career of her husband”. Meanwhile, 43% of men and 38% of women felt that a “woman’s work has negative impact on family and children”. Most respondents agreed that “a real woman is willing do housekeeping - it is a pleasure for her”.
Women returning from labour migration also face problems of reintegration into the family and alienation of children. At the same time, studies have shown that remittances home are mostly spent on regular consumption, such as food, medicines and clothes. Large amounts of savings go towards buying the likes of homes or cars.
It is difficult to trace what part of the remittances are made by migrant women, but it should be noted that migrants from Kyrgyzstan transferred an average annual amount of a third of the country’s GDPbetween 2012 and 2014.
Independence and experience
Despite the negative public attitude to women’s labour migration, it helps many women to gain financial independence and gain experience of making their own choices of partner, budget, and investments which they could not do in traditional rural patriarchal communities from which they mostly come. Labour migration also remains the most accessible way of socialisation for them.
Migration transforms gender relations in modern Kyrgyz society, in which the Soviet emancipation of women, the renaissance of Islam and capitalism compete in forming a new national identity.
Today, such changes are perceived as a threat by many Kyrgyz men, some of whom turn to violence. This new environment has allowed the emergence of nationalistic Kyrgyz male groups called “Patriots”, who form “moral police” to pursue Kyrgyz women who lead what they regard as an immoral lifestyle in Russia.
According to the UNFPA survey, such actions are supported by a majority of the Kyrgyz population:
over half of the respondents support the work of nationalist organisations … stripping, raping them [the migrant women] and uploading their photos and ‘punishment’ videos for bad behaviour. At the same time, 22% of women and 26% of men do not consider it immoral for a man to create a new family in migration, if he continuously takes care of the first family left behind in his country of origin.
Criticism was only concentrated in the circle of the liberal minority.
“What the girls are blamed for is the result of poverty and marginalisation. But no one has the right to give a moral assessment of their behaviour. If these guys were real patriots, then they would … help them find jobs, look for housing”, claimed Nurgul Asylbekova, an United Nations Development Programme representative.
Beyond attacks, the underlining issue is a public conflict about what a Kyrgyz woman should be, and what it means to be a Kyrgyz man. It reveals a deep fracture in Kyrzgyz society.
Hostages of a patriarchal culture
The country as a whole has a high level of violence against women: nearly one-third of women and girls, age 15-49 face violence. In this context, violence against migrant women does not seem to be anything outrageous.
Husbands of migrant women are also hostages of patriarchal Kyrgyz culture. Childcare and household management lowers their social status in society. They also, experience pressure in their communities. As a result, public condemnation mixed with physical separation often leads to the disintegration of the women’s families.
Despite the fact that there are more than 15,000 registered NGOs in a country of six million people, none specifically addresses the problems faced by migrant women. Most migrant women who return home need employment, psychological aid and medical care.
It is obvious that female migration in Kyrgyzstan is not a temporary phenomenon. The teacher, Dilya-eje, uses her own definition for migrant children: “a lost generation”. Such a definition does not exist in the language of the government, international organisations and NGOs in Kyrgyzstan. Women’s migration is still an invisible phenomena. Yet an open public debate is needed to address the new gender order and the deep societal changes that are fostered by migration.
This article was originally published by The Conversation.
ASEL MURZAKULOVA
Asel Murzakulova is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mountain Societies Research Institute of the University of Central Asia.