Migrants in Italy appeal for MayDay 2004: Go out and participate in the manifestations of precarious workers on the May Day in Milan and elsewhere. May Day, they argue, is the occasion to make clear and evident the central and undeniable role of migrant labour within the more general processes that are summed up as precarization. The appeal is signed by the Migrant Board of Italian Social Forums and other migrant and antiracist organizations. The communication is reported by Global Project ("Appello per l’adesione alla Mayday").
Appeal in Support of MayDay
Global Project Milano - Saturday, 03/27/2004
Since years we say that migrant labour anticipates the conditions in which today all kind of labour is about to be exerted. Precariousness, flexibility, insecurity of wage nowadays characterize in general the working conditions, be it in the private or in the public sectors. The political centrality of migrant labour, or, to put it in other words, the emblematic character of the conditions of existence and of labour that migrants a coerced into, thus turns out to be obvious. Indeed migrants do not represent a marginal segment of society, but a multitude of women and men who are forced to live as the first ones the conditions of life and of labour that spread also in Europe and that touch progressively all those who are forced to sell themselves as labour force.
The process of increasing precariousness today is even more obvious, as the consequences of the Bossi-Fini-Act [that ties a residence permit to a work contract] are topped with those of the so-called Legge 30 [that "normalizes" precariousness under the flag of integration to the labour market]: the process reaches from industries of most different dimensions to the families that employ domestic servants, from the "green industries" of the south of Italy to chains of stores, and to the different forms of small services that appear as self-employed work. And yet one kann see the consequences of that scary legislation: limited contracts - signed with temporary work agencies - turn the whole life to precariousness, regularized workers today become clandestine tomorrow, under the permanent risk of being expelled, being today in a production process may mean tomorrow to lose those "concessions" that never commute into citizenship. It means that it is difficult to find a dignified home, to think about future projects, even to think about a reunion with one's family. The migrant worker is, in her and his precariousness, the sum of all contradictions: The migrant gets a pay only insofar as s/he is necessary, but s/he has the right to exist only insofar as s/he is useful to the labour market.
Today we have the possibility to build forms of discourse and action that go beyond the precariousness of labour together with those who lived precariousness as the fist ones for the first time and still continue living it. We therefore invite all migrants, their associations and networks to participate in the preparation and in the manifestation of next May Day, in Milan. May Day gives the opportunity to make clear and evident the central and undeniable role of migrant labour within the more general processes of the precarization of labour.
Tavolo Migranti dei Social Forum Italiani, Mobital/azione Verona, Sportelli degli Invisibili e Rete del Precariato Sociale, Razzismo Stop nord est, M21 Treviso, Co/scienze Migranti Bologna, Gruppo Migranti Torino Social Forum, Tavolo Migranti dei Social Forum Vicentini, Movimento Migranti Caserta, Sincobas Migranti Livorno, Coordinamento Immigrati Bergamo, Forum Associazioni Immigrati Brescia, Immigrati in Lotta Brescia, Gruppo Immigrazione del Brescia Social Forum
