29 mafia, therefore revealing an inability to govern the territory. Then, in the intercepts, we discover that, for example, some members of the mafia gangs do not even have the money to pay the car instalments to the dealer, and are obliged to return it. This shows that they are weak – not always, not in all respects, but if we as researchers do not also point out their weaknesses, and when they are weak why they are so, we do great harm to the research. Returning to migrants, I would like to ask you what do you think about the issue of cheap labour – not only in the South, and not only in Italy, if the UN reports tell us about conditions of exploitation in the cultivation of certain types of fruit in Vietnam, in which civil rights are trampled on. Can this type of exploitation be considered as organized crime? Of course, because the mafias are involved in labor racketeering. Is this the English term? Yes, in England it is called labor racketeering, and it distinguishes a system in which entrepreneurs who use not-so-legal means meet a workforce willing to accept conditions of illegality, with the mafia mediating between these interests. We must never forget the responsibility of entrepreneurs, which is very serious. In this case, the agricultural ones, but also in construction we can easily find the same exploitation logics. I studied the case of Bardonecchia, in Piedmont, the first municipality outside the traditional geography, whose city council was dissolved due to mafia infiltration: the local mobster – Lo Presti, belonging to the 'ndrangheta – was just doing that kind of job, in construction in that case, exercising his control over the workforce of southern immigrants. Therefore, the mafia undoubtedly operates on these markets, and what we must understand is that it produces a service for both of these two entities, for both of these two interests. The entrepreneur gets cheap labor, threatened and controlled by the mafia, and the unemployed immigrant is unquestionably exploited, but he prefers to work rather than not doing it at all. Here is the trap. But we also know that, sometimes, the workers rise up. When I was about to complete my book Mafias on the move, I was in Rosarno immediately after the revolt that took place in 2010-11. The mafia is able to exploit immigrants only if they do not organize and protect themselves – as, for example, some groups of Bangladeshi immigrants do in Palermo. Per se, the immigrant is not always able to refuse mafia exploitation, but this depends primarily on his ability to organize himself in a group. And from the point of view of the company? The company is, in my opinion, the other side of the problem. Businesses asking for mafia’s protection benefit from its presence. Mafia’s problem is, it is a phenomenon that has lived since before Italy’s unification, repressed in history even quite heavily - by Falcone, by Borsellino, by the maxi-trial in Palermo. Yet it's still there, isn't it? In this sense, Giovanni Falcone's phrase comes to mind: «Mafia is a human phenomenon, and like all human phenomena it has its beginning, its evolution and therefore it will also come to an end». Do you agree? I agree, but in Italy we can’t see the end yet. And it gets worse, because what we have witnessed is the expansion to the North of traditional mafias – in Piedmont, in Veneto, in Lombardy and in Emilia too, as we know from the investigations in Reggio Emilia and Brescello. So, the situation is serious and it persists. Mafias expand. The reason why it has existed for more than a hundred years is because people outside the mafia benefit from its presence. In my study of Bardonecchia, I conclude that, in that case, the function of the 'ndrangheta, during the boom period of second mountain houses' demand, was to reduce competition in favour of some entrepreneurs, excluding others. And by procuring cheap labor. Therefore, it was entrepreneurs included in the economic cartel protected by the mafia who gained. Others were expelled, threatened, some others even murdered. Only one heroic mayor at the time, Mario Corino (mayor of Bardonecchia from 1973 to 1978, Ed.’s Note), reported its presence. An Italian anti-mafia hero who, however, no one remembers. Nonetheless, in my opinion, a solution cannot come only from entrepreneurs. It must come from the State, that is called upon to protect the markets, making sure that access to them is free and not closed – which is what mafias do: they do close the markets – and thus allowing the market to work fairly. What mafias produce is a violent regulation of the markets. And we cannot hope that a solution might come from entrepreneurs, who may be victims or accomplices, but in my opinion the solution lies outside. It lies in the State. In its rules and in its ability to govern the markets. If this is not the case, it means that the State is implicitly accepting this sort of neo-liberal ideology arguing that the markets can regulate themselves, and that therefore there is no need for its strong regulation on the matter. Well, this is a proposal that came vehemently back during the Covid emergency, and which mostly
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