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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
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    11.00 - 13.00
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    19.00 - 20.15
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Fri 6 April
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    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
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    16.00 - 17.00

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Wednesday 4 April 2018 14.00 - 16.00
A-3 AFR02 Coerced Labour in Africa: between Past and Present. Analysing Forms of Free and Unfree Labour through the Lenses of Social Sciences
LAN/OG/049 Lanyon Building
Network: Africa Chair: Carlos Fallas Santamaria
Organizer: Marta Scaglioni Discussant: Carlos Fallas Santamaria
Valerio Colosio : From Slave-reservoir to Labour Reservoir. Trajectories of Exploitation in Central Chad
The abolition of slavery in Sahel did not emancipate former slaves, rather rearranged in various ways local hierarchies. In French Sahel, older elites of slave-holders tried to use their social networks to start new kinds of trades, while former slaves developed different strategies to broke their dependences ties toward them. ... (Show more)
The abolition of slavery in Sahel did not emancipate former slaves, rather rearranged in various ways local hierarchies. In French Sahel, older elites of slave-holders tried to use their social networks to start new kinds of trades, while former slaves developed different strategies to broke their dependences ties toward them. In Chad, Claude Arditi described the transformation of the former slave raiders in a new, powerful class of traders, who managed to kept a powerful position in the newly created colonial state. A crucial dynamic on this process was the capacity of those traders to took the control of the agriculture production, exploiting the farming labour of those groups they used to raid before abolition. The Guéra region of Chad has been for centuries the main “slave-reservoir” for the neighboring sultanates. The colonial government tried to boost a market-oriented agriculture in this region, forcing local group to farming activities. However, taking advantage of their broader social networks and resources, the traders were quickly capable to put most of farmers in the debt toward them, imposing shark-loan interest rated and harshly exploiting their production. Local people and activist denounce this practice as a new form of slavery, while humanitarian organizations are creating a network of communitarian cereal banks, aiming to break the debt trap and “liberate” local farmers. This paper aims to explore this practice putting this form of exploitation in both an historical and political perspective. Is the category of slavery relevant in such a case or this form of exploitation is more related to geographical factor, as well as to the political structures created by the colonial government? Is the category of slavery used to describe this kind of exploitation an imposition of Western activists or is it something rooted in local history? The paper will deal with these questions, assessing the concepts of slavery and exploitation as they are used in the local context. (Show less)

Emilia Melossi : "Caporalato": Ethnicity and Exploitation in Southern Italy
My research project is an analysis of the Sub-Saharan African migrant labour contracting system in the agricultural sector in the South of Italy. In my research, I focus on the “caporalato”, which is a hierarchical self-managed informal migrant labour contracting system based on ethnic and kinship ties.
The “caporalato” labour ... (Show more)
My research project is an analysis of the Sub-Saharan African migrant labour contracting system in the agricultural sector in the South of Italy. In my research, I focus on the “caporalato”, which is a hierarchical self-managed informal migrant labour contracting system based on ethnic and kinship ties.
The “caporalato” labour contracting system originated in the 1950s and spread throughout the Southern part of Italy among local Italian workers until it was fought back and disappeared. Since the 1970s though there has been an increase of migrant flows from Sub-Saharan Africa toward Italy, changing Italy’s role in the migration realm from solely departure to destination country. This migrant flow has triggered the recurrence of the “caporalato” phenomenon which took hold again in the 1980s with undocumented Sub-Saharan African migrants as its main target labour force.
The African job contractors are always employed by Italian caporali in a fixed hierarchical labour and power structure, where the higher informal labour positions are occupied by local white male pugliesi. Since the employment of Sub-Saharan African migrants in the agricultural sector in the South of Italy, the Italian caporalato system has been revitalized and reconstructed by the Sub-Saharan African migrants. The new reconstructed labour ties among the members of the migrant community are based on ethnic and kinship ties. In fact the Sub-Saharan African caporali and their employees are usually from the same town or region originally and most of the time share with them the same ethnic background, religion or culture. (Show less)

María José Pont Cháfer : A Changing Landscape of Roads and People in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast
The opening up of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast was, according to the British colonial administration, dependent on developing a network of roads to deliver agricultural produce towards the growing southern towns or export markets. Almost without internally generated revenue, the only means that the colonial administration found ... (Show more)
The opening up of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast was, according to the British colonial administration, dependent on developing a network of roads to deliver agricultural produce towards the growing southern towns or export markets. Almost without internally generated revenue, the only means that the colonial administration found to develop this network was the use of local unpaid labour. But being the area less populated of the colony, to obtain this labour was a source of constant tension for local populations and colonial officers on the spot, and labour on roads has been usually listed as one of the main sources of coerced labour in this area by the colonial administration.
This paper argues that how these roads were constructed and by whom was not only the result of a development agenda by the colonial administration, and the meaning of unpaid road labour for local people was highly dependent on different factors, among them, the density of population, their economic activities, the markets that the people were targeting or the technical difficulty of the road. On the other hand, at the local level, not all the population shared the same attitude towards roads, and some roads were the result of the personal initiative of some individuals who were able or unable to involve more people in their pursuits. Roads attracted people, but people also attracted roads and the meaning of the unpaid labour changed along with the landscape (Show less)

Marta Scaglioni : The Legacy of Slavery in Tunisia: Blacks' Post-abolitionist Emancipatory Trajectories
In spite of the early abolition of slavery (1846), slavery in rural Tunisia continued covertly up to the Second World War in the form of its legacy, mainly disguised as post-abolitionist Islamic institutions, such as forms of patronage which created a fictive familiar tie between former slaves and former masters. ... (Show more)
In spite of the early abolition of slavery (1846), slavery in rural Tunisia continued covertly up to the Second World War in the form of its legacy, mainly disguised as post-abolitionist Islamic institutions, such as forms of patronage which created a fictive familiar tie between former slaves and former masters. Black freed slaves adopted the name of their masters' lineage, sometimes adding "'abid" or "shwashin" to it (arabic terms semantically connected to slavery), and were required to perform certain tasks for free, such as agricultural jobs, domestic work, and socially inferior jobs, like musical performances at weddings. This paper analyses the trajectories of black slaves' descendants communities in the rural South of Tunisia after abolition, unravelling the post-abolitionist emancipatory paths they have followed up to now, which often bear the bitter legacy of slavery. Attempting at de-constructing the ideology behind slavery and freedom, I will argue that free labour in the Southern Tunisian coutnryside entailed a certain degree of heritage of slavery, which is still visible nowadays in some musical practices. On the other side, however, the commitment of slave descendants to certain menial jobs, considered socially inferior, allowed black individuals to pursue strategies of empowerment, gaining economic and social capital to be re-invested within their communities. (Show less)



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