Along the main road bordering the beaches of Catania and its faded seaside resorts, the old-fashioned decor of Caffé Désirée blends in perfectly with the surroundings. Truck drivers stop there for a brioche filled with granita, a traditional Sicilian breakfast, after filling up at the nearby gas station. In the parking lot, a handful of soldiers in fatigues puff on cigarettes, leaning against the dusty hoods of their vehicles.

Wearing a camouflage shirt, Mamadou Sowe walks past the uniformed men and continues to the far end of the parking lot. Barely visible through the tall grass, a wire-mesh gate leads to the former grounds of a school: the disused Agricultural Technical Institute, now reclaimed by Mamadou and his colleagues from Dokulaa, which means "workers" in Mandinka.

Officially launched in 2022, this social cooperative finally obtained the right to occupy these seven hectares of land at the end of last year, for a period of five years. Raised beds have been set up in the former schoolyard to grow hibiscus and okra. At the back of the property, the tomato, eggplant, and pepper seedlings planted a few weeks ago are beginning to bear fruit in this early May, which feels more like summer.

The young cooperative's income comes primarily from the resale of various agricultural products, harvested by its members from local landowners who are not interested in farming. Hundreds of liters of olive oil are stored in a former classroom, alongside kilos of hazelnuts, awaiting sale in local markets or shipment to individual customers in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Pooling the produce ensures a fair redistribution of profits to those who harvested it, without them being cheated by intermediaries.

This initiative was designed to help seasonal migrant workers escape the system of exploitation that victimizes the most vulnerable among them —namely, caporalato, a system of illegal labor recruitment through informal recruiters, which many observers consider a form of modern slavery.

Escaping exploitation

Ten years have passed since Mamadou left The Gambia, leaving behind a "good life," earned by racking up the miles behind the wheel of a taxi. Before being rescued at sea off the coast of Catania, he had "never heard of Sicily," he admits, looking back fondly on his naiveté at the time. Now married to an Italian woman, the father of three recalls the panicked calls from his brother, who stayed behind, anxiously watching the activity of Mount Etna. Neither of them suspected that the activities of the iconic volcano were the least of the worries of the migrants stranded in Sicily.

Sitting in the shade of a tree, Mamadou and Saikou Ceesay, the vice-president of Dokulaa, recount in unison the long years spent in the fields, subjected to deplorable working conditions. Saikou, who is undocumented, sometimes worked up to 18 consecutive hours. "No Italian would agree to work in these conditions," he asserts. Especially since, for equivalent work, foreigners are paid less: the young Gambian earns a mere 20 euros a day before returning to the squat he uses, for lack of permanent housing, to get in a bare few hours of sleep.

"That’s why we don’t want to work for anyone anymore. We want to be free," Saikou sums up, his gaze expressionless behind the tinted lenses of his glasses. "This is my story — but it’s shared by many migrants." A quarter of Italy’s agricultural workforce is foreign, of which approximately 200,000 are estimated to be undocumented.

In fertile ground

Some 30 kilometers away, in the Ciappe Bianche camp, Aziz’s solitude resonates particularly strongly. The vacant lot, located below Paternò, was transformed into an informal settlement by migrant farm workers some 30 years ago. Every year, its roughly 200 inhabitants leave with the end of the citrus season—the seasonal workers head to Syracuse for the cherry harvest, or even further afield around Sicily, formerly known as the "breadbasket" of Italy.

The man in his thirties took advantage of the exodus to settle in one of the makeshift shacks left abandoned a few days earlier. Evicted from his home without notice, Aziz ended up in the camp. "No choice," he repeats, echoing his migratory journey: employed in tomato greenhouses in Agadir, Morocco, he left his relative stability with the certainty of finding a better life in Europe. The rest of his story is etched on his face, drawing shades over it even under the midday sun.

Ciappe Bianche is a prime hunting ground for the caporali, informal recruiters who connect vulnerable migrants seeking employment with agricultural businesses in need of labor, explains Mariana Niccolisi, an activist and legal advisor with the anti-exploitation program Break Free! (“Free Yourself!”), which is currently suspended due to lack of funding.

The lawyer is categoric: "If [the migrants] are undocumented, they are lured here to become slaves to the caporalato." She considers the Decreto flussi — a decree regulating, among other things, seasonal work permits and the regularization of undocumented immigrants — insufficient in the face of the scale of the phenomenon.

A 'Sicilian problem'

Mariana Niccolisi describes a vicious cycle, with systemic roots: "It's a social issue: young [local] people no longer want to work in agriculture; they want to emigrate." The impacts of climate change in Sicily, where approximately 70 percent of the territory is at risk of desertification, could accelerate the rural exodus. The largest island in the Mediterranean has lost 4 percent of its population since 2011, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT).

In the Simeto Valley, around Paternò, the word "dignity" is on everyone's lips. Each of the farmers of Sicilian origin we met spoke wistfully of their father or grandfather’s time, when agricultural work was enough to provide for even a large family.

The responsibility for ending the caporalato system lies not with the farmers, but with the authorities, asserts Father Salvatore Mazzamuto. According to him, "politicians are taking political advantage of the situation," playing on the "fear" of some residents regarding the three halal kebab shops that have opened in downtown Paternò. On a piece of white paper, he draws a small dot with a pencil. "Now, what do you see? That's exactly what they're doing: focusing our attention on one point, so we don't see the rest," he says, before launching into a tirade about climate change.

Opposing solidarity to inequality

Through The Pilgrim's Bag (Bisaccia del Pellegrino), a community kitchen funded by the Catholic charity Caritas, Father Salvatore champions solidarity. Every day, about 10 volunteers come to prepare and serve meals to migrant farm workers, settled in Ciappe Bianche or scattered throughout the city, living in various forms of housing. In 2025, more than 14,700 meals were distributed, rising to 22,000 in 2021. These figures highlight the number of precarious migrant farm workers in the Paternò region alone, laments the deacon, without giving in to resignation.

Kamel, for his part, has finally accepted his situation: working without documentation, at the risk of "drinking seawater" if he gets sick or injured. His salary has quadrupled, he says, since he left Agadir, Morocco, to work seasonally in Sicily. The same is true for Moustafa, a native of Meknes who has become the man of the family.

"My sisters and my mother don't work, I had to find a solution," he explains, in fluent Italian. So, they took to the road. A flight from Casablanca to Istanbul, the rest on foot. Others, like Mamadou and Saikou, crossed the sea, risking their lives.

"They leave their lands destroyed by Western multinationals to come here, to be exploited in our fields. The only difference with colonialism is that today, they pay for the boat themselves," comments cynically Emanuel Sammartino of the Immigration division of the CGIL, Italy's main trade union.