Italy’s migrant fruit pickers

In Italy, Georgia Meloni’s coalition government gained power on an anti-immigration political platform. But faced with low birth-rates and a dwindling workforce, the prime minister has had to be pragmatic. Over the next two years, hundreds of thousands of temporary visas are being offered to migrant workers, mainly from Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, to help fill the gaps.

In the far south of Italy, one of the country’s poorest regions, Calabria, is famous for its citrus fruit, and thousands of farms need workers to pick their produce. Some of the migrant workers live in terrible conditions. Lizzy McNeill reports on what the reality is on the ground.

Producer: John Murphy
Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
Sound engineer: Rod Farquhar
Editor: Penny Murphy

(Photo: A worker empties the basket of clementines in the fields of Calabria, southern Italy. Credit: Alfonso Di Vincenzo/Getty Images)