Fill 2019: The Italian Job

(This is a past event and is no longer running)

In Southern Italy, migrant labourers are economically and socially abused, and often forced into forms of modern slavery. The fight for their rights is crucial, but this is not just “their” fight. Behind the appalling conditions for migrant workers and the racism that is instrumental in their exploitation, there is a bigger picture: the general decline in rights and wages that is affecting all workers, regardless of their nationality. This fight affects the rights of us all.

In this panel discussion, Italian-Ivorian trade unionist Aboubakar Soumahoro is joined by journalist Daniel Trilling, who will add a perspective on the lives of migrants and migrant workers arriving in Europe and in the UK.

Aboubakar Soumahoro is the national executive of the USB union, and is engaged in the trade union organisation of Italian and migrant labourers in the agricultural supply chain. After the assassination of his friend and colleague, trade unionist Sacko Soumayla, Soumahoro’s lucid reaction made him a leading public figure in Italy. His book Umanità in rivolta. La nostra lotta per il lavoro e il diritto alla felicità was published in Italy in 2019.

Daniel Trilling is a British journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Statesman, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books. He is the author of Bloody Nasty People: the rise of Britain’s far right (2013) and Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe (2018).

Chair: Angelo Boccato is a London-based journalist. His work has been published in The Independent, Equal Times, Open Migration, and Italian magazine Internazionale.

This event is in English and partly in Italian with English translation provided.