Book Presentation: Vite provvisorie (“Provisional lives”) – with Marco Buttino (autore) Gabriele Proglio (discussant)

Thousands of migrants who have come to Europe from Africa as refugees or asylum seekers work to pick fruit and vegetables, moving from north to south Italy and elsewhere in Europe depending on the season. They have temporary residence permits and short-term contracts, are often paid off the books and end up dumped in the street when no longer needed. Farms linked to global mass distribution use them to keep production costs as low as possible. The book looks at this practice in the countryside around Saluzzo, in the Piedmontese province of Cuneo, often held up as a positive model for how to welcome migrants. Unlike other studies, the attention here is focused on the migrants’ capacity for initiative, highlighting their actions to negotiate less dismal living conditions, to create forms of community, to construct transnational networks of relationships and solidarity and to maintain links with their far-off families.