Racist immigration policies
At the end of October, three NGO boats carrying approximately 900 migrants were stuck at sea for more than a week, demanding a safe harbour to dock on the Italian coast. The newly- installed right-wing government of Giorgia Meloni faced a dilemma: forbidding the disembarkation of the migrants had already been attempted in 2018, but backfired against the then – and current – Secretary of State Matteo Salvini; on the other hand, Meloni could not risk appearing moderate on what had been a key issue of her campaign – a harsher implementation of Italy’s existing hostility to migrants. As a result, she took the unprecedented decision to have a ‘selective disembarkation’ with only children, women and ‘vulnerable’ people allowed to get off two of the boats in the Sicilian port of Catania. The rest were initially prevented from leaving the ship, and the third vessel, the Ocean Viking, was turned away. This brutal decision accompanied the now canonical denunciation of NGO boats as ‘migrant taxis’, with the prime minister instructing them to stay away from the Italian coast and instead to transport their human cargo to the country whose flag they were flying – in this case, Norway and Germany.
A legal and political tug-of-war followed: the NGOs refused to leave Catania with migrants still on board and sued the Italian government for not complying with International Maritime Law; the German Chancellor Scholz asked the Italian government to let all the migrants disembark – which eventually happened under pressure from the medical authorities. Finally, French President Emmanuel Macron allowed the Ocean Viking to dock in Toulon, with 231 migrants on board. The French foreign minister described this as an ‘exceptional decision’ and in a vicious quid pro quo said France would now ‘put on hold’ an earlier pledge to take a further 3,500 migrants from Italy over the coming year. This has opened a diplomatic crisis between Italy and the EU.
Italian capitalism and migration
Italy is on the frontline of immigration from Africa. The number of migrants arriving via boat to its southern coasts has risen from 11,000 in 2019 to 89,000 in only the first ten months of 2022. This is despite the fact that since 2017 Italy has paid more than €100m to the notorious Libyan coastguard, who are accused of violating migrants’ rights and illegally detaining, torturing and abusing them. In the last five years, almost 100,000 migrants were blocked and taken back to Libya, where around 600,000 are now held. Far from being an innovation of the Meloni government, the last 30 years of centre-left and centre-right governments have equally shaped this policy, criminalising migration with the aim of better profiting from it. In this sense, Italy is no different from France and Germany, despite their fake outrage at Italy’s position. They are some of the world’s wealthiest countries, which benefit from both their imperialist plunder that causes the migration of people and from receiving a reserve army of labour to use to lower wages and rights at home. However, Italy’s specific geographic location in the middle of the Mediterranean has been weaponised to present the migration from Africa and Asia to Europe as an exclusively Italian issue, caused by NGOs and ignored by other EU countries. None of that is true, as NGOs are responsible only for 10% of rescues while Italy is at the bottom for refugees and economic migrants in EU countries – respectively, 0.2% and 0.8% of its population. On this matter, Italian capitalism pretends to be divided. The petty bourgeoisie tends to want to limit migration to cut competition from above and below. In contrast, the big capitalists, who are represented by the powerful Federation of Italian Employers, demand the ‘full integration into our economy of all migrants’ to provide labour in the country’s extensive agricultural and industrial sectors. This division is in reality nothing but an electoral farce, as no section of the Italian ruling class could survive a single day without exploiting migrant workers and the lands from which they arrive.
Workers’ opposition to the war
The unity of the capitalist and imperialist interests can be challenged only by the unity of the working class they oppress. This is why it was significant that on 5 November, a 20,000-strong march took place in Naples, gathering unemployed, delocalised and oppressed Italian and migrant workers to demand the end of the Ukrainian war. Only 27% of the population wants to continue to support Italy’s role in the conflict – in Britain the figure is 60%; all Italy’s parties are mobilising to undermine this opposition. So on the same day, centre-left parties including Action, the Democratic Party and the Five-Star Movement organised their own demonstrations in Rome and Milan, ostensibly against the war but in fact waving blue-and-yellow flags and invoking more weapon shipments to Zelensky. On this question, however, the new right-wing government is more divided than the social democrats. Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party heads the governing far-right coalition, immediately pledged full support to NATO on taking power; but leaks from her minor partners Salvini (Northern League) and Silvio Berlusconi (Forward Italy) have revealed stringent criticism of the Ukrainian president and opposition to sanctions on Russia.
Some of the forces involved in the Naples march however are continuing to mobilise against opportunism and reaction. Among them, particularly significant are two class-conflict unions, Si Cobas and USB, that also represent migrant workers employed with starvation wages and no rights as warehouse porters or fruit harvesters. Organising within the most oppressed sections of the working class allows migrant workers not only to demand safer routes for future migrants; it also puts them at the forefront of the fight for better working and living conditions, and against the Italian support of NATO in the Ukrainian war. SI Cobas, USB and other radical left-wing unions and organisations have jointly called a two-day struggle, with a general strike planned for 2 December and a national demonstration the following day. While much still has to be done to radicalise the strike demands and to organise this coalition of forces into one coherent class front, one thing is certain: a meaningful opposition against war and racist immigration laws will only be possible if a strong class movement of migrant and Italian workers leads it.
Alexander Trome
