Italian institutions have recently acknowledged the importance of a comprehensive and long-term approach to labour exploitation. In June, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies adopted a ministerial decree extending the strategy on illegal gang mastering - ‘caporalato’: employment of a large number of workers, often illegally and for very little money. The strategy is extended for three years, and in October the Council of Ministers adopted a new tri-annual national plan on trafficking and exploitation.

The fight against labour exploitation in agriculture has been tackled in recent years with a multi-actor strategy involving several projects, such as the AMIF-funded SUPREME and PIU SUPREME programmes. These were developed to address forms of severe labour exploitation and serious marginalisation and vulnerability of migrant workers in the toughest areas of the five Southern Italian regions, where (TCN) migrants are at least 3 times more likely to experience forced labour than non-migrant workers.

At its recent final conference, the SUPREME project strengthened governance strategies tackling the illegal gangmastering phenomenon at regional and inter-regional levels. Several actions - related to housing, access to work and health services, and referral of exploited migrants - took place during the three years of the project and reached 47 000 beneficiaries.

The PIU SUPREME project similarly focused on the prevention of gangmastering through the provision of support to individuals. A key project outcome was the establishment of a tailored helpdesk, developed with the aim of informing people exposed to labour exploitation of their rights and of the services they can access via the SUPREME and PIU SUPREME projects. The helpdesk operates via a dedicated telephone line and a multilingual app, and will continue after the closure of the projects.

The programmes were led by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies - DG Immigration, assisted by the Puglia Region and in partnership with Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, and Sicilia Regions, the National Labour Inspectorate, IOM, and the NOVA national consortium for social innovation.