With Hsiao-Hung Pai and Liz Fekete.
Italy's migrant workers are the dehumanised Other—the people hidden behind foods and goods branded 'Made in Italy'. Ciao Ousmane is the story of this subordinated class. In 2013 Ousmane Diallo, a 26-year-old Senegalese olive harvester, lost his life when a gas canister exploded in a Sicilian field. Neither the events of Ousmane's life nor his tragic death are uncommon.
Author and journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai and Liz Fekete, director of the Institute of Race Relations, will be online at Housmans to discuss Hsiao-Hung's new book Ciao Ousmane: The Hidden Exploitation of Italy's Migrant Workers, a searing exposé of the netherworld of exploited migrant labour that holds Europe aloft.
Having fled home countries devastated by colonialism and global capitalism, those who survive the journey across the Mediterranean find themselves systematically segregated and exploited. They have been subject to anti-migrant policies over decades, from administrations across the political spectrum.
Through the lives and stories of Italy's migrant workers, Hsiao-Hung Pai exposes the open secret of how state and society create 'necessary outcasts'. This is a bitter, frank and moving tale of racial capitalism, against which workers constantly find new ways to organise and fight back.
