Conflict, Displacement, and Irregular Migration: A Structural Approach to Caporalato and Labour Exploitation in Italy’s Agricultural Sector

Abstract

This article examines the systemic nature of caporalato, Italy’s exploitative agricultural labour system, within the broader interconnected dynamics of conflict, forced displacement, irregular migration, and transnational organised crime, including migrant smuggling and human trafficking. It explores how labour exploitation in Italy’s agri-food sector is embedded in a complex nexus shaped by restrictive migration policies, inadequate legal protections, global market pressures, and the underlying dynamics of violence. The paper presents caporalato as the outcome of overlapping systems that sustain coercive labour practices, rather than an isolated criminal phenomenon, characterising current policy responses as fragmented, overly focused on individual perpetrators, and inadequate to address the structural roots of exploitation. In response, it proposes a comprehensive policy framework grounded in multi-level institutional coordination, the expansion of legal migration pathways, holistic victim reintegration, and stronger supply chain accountability. Ultimately, the paper calls for a paradigm shift, reframing migrant labour exploitation as a systemic, multilevel issue requiring reforms rooted in the principles of human dignity, justice, and global responsibility.

Introduction

In 2024, an Indian farmworker died in Italy after a workplace accident in which his arm was severed, and his legs were crushed. He was allegedly left by the roadside by his employer, Antonello Lovato, who reportedly placed both the injured worker and his wife into a van and left them near their residence (Gozzi, 2024). This tragic event underscores the broader systemic issue of agromafia and labour exploitation among undocumented workers in Italy. Operated through illegal gangmaster networks, this system relies on intermediaries known as caporali who recruit labourers informally and subject them to exploitative conditions, including extremely low wages and unsafe working environments. These intermediaries typically extract a portion of workers’ earnings and impose additional fees for transportation, food, and water. According to Istat, nearly 20% of the agricultural labour force in Italy in 2021 was involved in such informal and exploitative arrangements (European Commission).

The Italian food chain

Italy is a renowned world leader in the agri-food industry. Italian agri-food products reach dining tables all over the world after going through a long supply chain involving multiple highly interconnected stakeholders (Italian Trade Agency, n.d.). Historically, this sector has been deeply affected by the phenomenon known as agromafia, involving the participation of criminal organisations in various stages of agricultural production, processing, and distribution. The Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto (2023) reported that inspections under Law 199/2016 addressing caporalato more than doubled in 2023 compared to the previous year. Data from the National Labour Inspectorate reveal that, in the same year, the irregularity rate in the agricultural labour market was 59.2%. Mafia operate enterprises engaged in a wide range of illicit activities, including extortion, theft of public water resources, human trafficking for agricultural labour, illegal waste disposal, and fraudulent appropriation of public funds, such as those provided through the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The illegal recruitment of labour in the agromafia environment relies on the caporalato system and it disproportionately affects migrant workers and results in inhumane labour conditions (Di Martino, 2015). The International Labour Organization (ILO, 2009) classifies caporalato practices as forced labour, particularly when workers are compelled to repay inflated costs related to recruitment, accommodation, transportation, or meals. In some instances, wages of migrant workers in the rural sector have been reported as low as one euro per hour (Osservatorio P. Rizzotto, 2020, 60).  

Restrictive immigration regimes in Europe, as discussed by Basso and Perocco (2003), create conditions where migrants lack legal protections and are highly vulnerable to blackmail and coercion. Ambrosini (2017) emphasises the role of intermediaries in enabling migrant integration into informal labour markets. Increasingly securitised migration policies have placed migrant workers in precarious legal positions, as the state has retreated from its role in mediating rural labour markets. Bureaucratic hurdles exacerbate these challenges: securing legal employment or residency status in Italy is a process that can take several years. Consequently, many migrants end up in a position of irregular stay and become dependent on informal intermediaries, who exploit their legal precarity. This dependence is driven by the need to survive while avoiding detection and allows organised crime to use violence and intimidation to suppress demands for decent working conditions. These dynamics reflect the entrenchment of a structured criminal model across multiple economic and social sectors.

Caporalato functions as a vertically integrated criminal enterprise, controlling labour supply, transportation, housing, and wages. It is both localised and national, affecting regions from Apulia to Emilia-Romagna. Notably, migrants originating from communities undergoing conflict may be regarded as particularly vulnerable as they typically lack legal status, access to social services, or viable alternatives (Caritas, 2015; Galos et al., 2017). Many workers trapped in the Italian caporalato systems come precisely from such contexts, where mass population displacement heightens their susceptibility to  labour exploitation (UNODC, 2015; UNODC, 2024). Such exploitative systems are often marked by poor working conditions, as well as lack of legal protection and widespread violations of labour rights, thereby sustaining and reinforcing the cycle of dependency and marginalization of exploited migrant workers (Galos et al., 2017; ILO, 2021). In such circumstances, smugglers take advantage of the existing systemic vulnerabilities, pushing migrant workers into the system with false promises of employment and subsequently passing them onto the trafficking networks upon arrival by means of coercion and forced labour arrangements (Caritas, 2015). Although smuggling generally involves migrants’ initial consent, it frequently transitions into trafficking, particularly in situations where migrants face limited choices and are manipulated into exploitative conditions. The issue is further complicated by the persistent fear for their already precarious position, experienced by migrants from conflict-affected regions and communities, which prevents them from reporting violence and abuse to avoid deportation (Caritas, 2015; UNODC, 2015).The exploitative and hazardous working conditions have been identified as “modern slavery” within the European Union territory (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2015). Reports indicate that labourers often work shifts ranging from 12 to 14 hours without formal employment contracts (Guidi & Berti, 2023), receive wages below the legal minimum, and are routinely exposed to harmful pesticides without adequate protective equipment (Open Society Foundations, 2018). Efforts to protest or resist these conditions are commonly met with intimidation, threats, and, in some cases, physical violence. These systemic abuses not only violate national labour laws and EU standards but also exemplify the normalisation of coercive labour practices in the agricultural sector.

Overall, it is crucial to recognise the structural nature of factors underpinning migrants’ vulnerability. Issues such as armed conflict, restrictive migration governance, and the political economy of global agricultural supply chains, along with other systemic factors of organised crime, interact and reinforce each other within a complex network of local, national, regional, and global dynamics. Conflicts frequently compel individuals to rely on illegal migration routes due to the absence of viable alternatives. In this context, displaced persons become prime targets for smugglers, who often serve as initial facilitators in their escape from conflict zones. Upon arrival in the receiving countries, however, the boundaries between consented smuggling and human trafficking quickly dissipate, with migrants finding themselves trapped in the chain of labour exploitation. In turn, their predominantly undocumented status, coupled with desperation, lack of means of recourse, as well as fear of reporting violence to avoid deportation and return to conflict zones, only serves to reproduce the system of labour exploitation and abuse. In Italy’s agricultural sector, this results in the creation and reinforcement of a deeply entrenched exploitation system, rooted in the systemic inequalities, organised crime, and coercive practices, with caporalato serving as a prime example of this phenomenon. Therefore, it is essential to understand and conceptualise caporalato as the outcome of a complex, interconnected web of structural patterns and factors operating at multiple levels, rather than as a mere  product of isolated criminal behaviour at the local level.

Gaps and challenges

To deal with the phenomenon of agromafia, the Italian government developed several strategies over the years, mainly focusing on the phenomenon of caporalato, like the Triennial Plan against caporalato (2020-2022).

The focus of national policies on the criminalisation of informal labour mediation in rural areas has fostered a collusive environment between local administrators and agricultural entrepreneurs that benefit from a system of flexible labour exploitation (Sacchetto et al., 2014). 

The caporali force migrant labourers to reside in baraccopoli: informal settlements characterised by shelters constructed from metal sheets, where they are also required to pay rent. From these encampments, workers are transported to and from the agricultural fields at dawn and late at night. This leads to a cycle of exploitation and segregation, making it impossible for migrant workers to build a network and find ways to emancipate (Sacchetto et al., 2014). Furthermore, the situation has severe implications in terms of human rights: over 70% of exploited labourers reported suffering from illnesses acquired during seasonal work (Osservatorio P. Rizzotto, 2020, 65). 

Although legal frameworks addressing trafficking and labour exploitation are in place, what characterizes their present state of implementation is the persistent lack of structured coordination between various institutional actors, including national governments, international intergovernmental bodies, as well as non-governmental institutions, which therefore substantially undermines the effectiveness of existing interventions (UNODC, 2015; Galos et al., 2017; ILO, 2021). 

Importantly, failure to acknowledge the systemic interlinkages between armed conflict, displacement and irregular migration, human trafficking and smuggling, and labour exploitation underlies this fragmentation. This issue is further exacerbated by gaps in understanding and interpreting the specific pathways through which these phenomena sustain, reproduce, and reinforce each other. The outcome of these analytical failures at the policy level is the tendency to address the abovementioned issues in isolation, with anti-trafficking policies often decoupled from conflict prevention and labour rights enforcement, including in agriculture (Childress et al., 2023). As a consequence, policy responses may be predominantly described as patchy and disconnected from one another, failing to tackle the reinforcing cycles of violence, displacement, trafficking, and labour exploitation. 

Furthermore, current policy approaches tend to focus on individual perpetrators, such as the migrant who is offered the role of steering a boat, rather than addressing the broader transnational structures that underpin organized criminal networks operating between countries of departure and destination (Martini et al., 2023). This narrow focus obscures the systemic nature of trafficking and smuggling, which is often orchestrated by sophisticated mafia organisations with extensive international reach. Rather than framing irregular migration and exploitation as solely external challenges, Italian authorities must critically examine the internal networks that enable and profit from these systems. In particular, the collusion between mafia groups, local entrepreneurs, and political actors warrants greater scrutiny, as it plays a central role in sustaining exploitative practices within national borders.

Finally, support for victims is typically fragmented and inadequate, failing to provide holistic services that respond to both immediate protection needs and the broader structural conditions that facilitate exploitation (UNODC, 2015; Galos et al., 2017). The policies implemented are often connected to the political discourses around migration and they are short-term. 

Enforcement mechanisms also remain weak; while legal instruments exist, their implementation is frequently obstructed by corruption, limited institutional capacity, and deep mistrust among migrant communities. In many cases, prevention measures fall short by neglecting the long-term impacts of conflict and displacement, thereby allowing cycles of exploitation to persist unchallenged.

Policy Recommendations

Based on the gaps and challenges identified in the implementation of strategies to combat caporalato in Italy, a set of policy recommendations can be formulated. These recommendations aim to prioritise a systemic understanding of the caporalato phenomenon, endorsed by this paper, and to promote the adoption of integrated, cross-sectoral responses.

More specifically, the recommendations could be grouped into several thematic areas, reflecting the earlier established gaps and challenges in tackling the systemic nexus between caporalato, armed conflict, forced displacement and migration, as well as human trafficking and smuggling: 

1. Structural reform and interinstitutional coordination

• Establish a permanent national multi-agency task force on labour exploitation

This recommendation envisions the establishment of a permanent multi-agency task force under the authority of the Italian Ministry of Interior, bringing together labour inspectorates, antimafia units, law enforcement agencies, local municipalities, and migrant-support NGOs operating at the local and national levels.

The task force would serve as an operational hub to facilitate intelligence sharing, conduct joint field inspections, and coordinate victim identification and referral procedures, thereby directly addressing the issue of fragmented and poorly coordinated institutional responses, identified earlier in this paper. In particular, the implementation of such a measure would serve as an effective response towards the urgent need for enhanced institutional cooperation, primarily at the local and national levels. 

A key strength of the proposed framework lies in its multistakeholder composition, which should be placed at the centre of the initiative. In particular, both state and non-state, community-based actors must be granted agency and operational capacity to contribute meaningfully within the suggested structure, with the government retaining a neutral coordinating role. Here, a critical condition for the effectiveness and credibility of the proposed task force is for it to operate as a knowledge-based, collaborative platform rather than being driven by partisan or ideological agendas. This is because, as mentioned earlier in this paper and established in broader academic literature, migration and, by extension, labour exploitation, is often subject to high levels of politicization, particularly in countries such as Italy, which are directly exposed to the issues surrounding migration, and where right-wing political forces tend to frame it in securitized or exclusionary terms (Triandafyllidou, Marchetti, 2015; UNODC, 2024). In this context, ensuring the technical and depoliticised character of the task force, whose work is grounded in empirical knowledge, legal expertise, and community-level experience, is essential to guaranteeing long-term policy impact. 

Still, while local and national actors, such as the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Labour, regional labour inspectorates, municipal administrations, and community-based NGOs, would form the foundation and the core of such network, global institutions such as the UNODC and the ILO could serve as consulting agencies, whose primary function would consist in sharing international best practices and providing technical guidance based on comparable experiences in other national contexts.

• Foster multilevel interinstitutional coordination: local-national-global 

As previously established in the paper, caporalato cannot be treated as an exclusively local or national issue. It should rather be perceived as an outcome of the systemic interplay of factors at the global, regional, national, and local levels, pertaining to the dynamics of violence and conflict, migration paths and trafficking systems, as well as the logic of the global supply chains in agriculture. Therefore, to effectively dismantle caporalato and its underlying systems, it is recommended that Italy establish a formalised multi-level coordination and consultation framework involving actors across several key levels:

• Local (e.g., municipal authorities, regional labour inspectorates, civil society organisations) 
• National (e.g., Ministries of Interior, Labour, and Agriculture)
• Regional (e.g., the European Commission, EUROPOL, and Frontex)
• Global (e.g., UN system agencies such as the UNODC, ILO, IOM, UNHCR, and FAO)

To ensure effective implementation and policy coherence across various institutional levels, structured platforms such as thematic working groups and periodic multistakeholder consultations could be established and institutionalised. These could take place under the auspices of the Italian Ministry of Labour, in collaboration with the EU Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, and with technical facilitation from dedicated UN agencies. 

Importantly, the establishment of such permanent interinstitutional frameworks can be carried out based on the existing mechanisms and successful examples of cooperation:

• The UNODC Civil Society Unit, which has coordinated with local NGOs and governments on human trafficking prevention, e.g., in West Africa (UNODC, 2022), East Africa (UNODC, 2023) and the Balkans (UNODC, 2016), could reproduce these models in Italy to support anti-caporalato advocacy, capacity-building, and victim support and integration services. 
• The ILO Office for the Mediterranean has already played a central role in implementing A.L.T. Caporalato! (IOM Italy (a)) and A.L.T. Caporalato D.U.E! (IOM Italy (b)), which offers best practices in coordinated intervention and monitoring. These initiatives could be further expanded and institutionalised into recurring, permanent frameworks or standing bodies. 

• At the regional level, Italy’s collaboration with the European Commission through the Caporalato Action Plan (Piano Triennale) and funding under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) can be scaled up to cover longer-term labour governance reforms with joint monitoring by EU and UN partners. 

• IOM Italy and UNHCR have previously cooperated with local municipalities in regions most prone to the issue of caporalato, such as Apulia and Calabria (IOM, 2017; IOM, 2023), on migrant integration programs. Their role could be formalised in a broader platform that links migrant protection with anti-exploitation interventions. 

This multidimensional, expanded cooperation framework would help break institutional silos between humanitarian, migration, labour, and criminal justice systems, creating the necessary foundation for integrated, cross-sectoral responses necessary to address the root causes of caporalato. 

• Leverage the potential of institutional reform to adopt integrated, systemic policy frameworks on migration, conflict, and labour exploitation at the global level

The proposed UN80 reform agenda (United Nations, 2025) offers a strategic opportunity to address systemic links between conflict, displacement, and labour exploitation. Current fragmentation across UN agencies hinders coherent, long-term responses. Structural realignment could improve operational efficiency, strengthen coordination, and integrate the issue of labour exploitation into the humanitarian cooperation pillar within the UN system.  

To this end, some of the currently discussed UN80 proposals could be considered as potentially contributing positively to addressing the root causes of forced migration and displacement underpinning the cycle of caporalato: 

• Streamlining humanitarian architecture: this proposal envisions the integration of the operational mandates of OCHA, UNHCR, and IOM into a unified UN framework for humanitarian response and protection, bringing together humanitarian coordination, migration management, and refugee protection functions (Health Policy Watch, 2025). A key condition for the success of such a structure would be the preservation of each agency’s core expertise, while enhancing coherence in strategic planning, inter-agency coordination, and operational delivery.  
• Promoting integrated, systemic frameworks: this recommendation advocates leveraging institutional reform to overcome sectoral silos by embedding One Health principles, labour protection, and human rights safeguards into humanitarian programming (Health Policy Watch, 2025). This can be operationalised through the development of cross-cutting policy instruments that link conflict response, migration governance, and labour market regulation, enabling more coherent and holistic approaches across policy domains.  
• Ensuring inclusive and accountable reform: this recommendation calls for a deliberate effort by the UN, as the global coordination actor, to systematically engage local stakeholders, civil society organisations, and affected communities in both the design and implementation of institutional reforms (Health Policy Watch, 2025). Achieving this objective would require a decentralised operational approach that ensures responsiveness to local needs and contexts, while maintaining the UN’s role in overarching coordination and strategic leadership. 

2. Legal migration and status regularisation 

• Expand legal and safe migration pathways 

This recommendation entails the introduction of flexible and expanded regularisation programs, with a particular focus on undocumented agricultural workers. Such measures would help address the earlier identified challenges posed by restrictive migration governance, while reducing migrants’ reliance on informal intermediaries and caporali. While the primary responsibility lies with national authorities, especially the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international organisations, such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and particularly its Italian office, could provide technical support in the design of regularisation mechanisms and the development of safe mobility frameworks.

• Embed labour protection in bilateral and EU policy frameworks 

This measure calls for the integration of labour rights safeguards and ethical recruitment standards into bilateral agreements with migrants’ countries of origin, including mobility partnerships. By addressing the structural drivers of irregular migration, this approach would help mitigate vulnerabilities that lead to labour exploitation, while also fostering a more active engagement of sending countries in broader efforts to disrupt coercive labour cycles and promote rights-based migration governance. 

3. Victim protection and reintegration 

• Strengthen holistic victim support services nationwide 

This recommendation calls for the establishment of amply resourced support hubs providing comprehensive services for victims of trafficking and labour exploitation, including legal assistance, psychosocial care, safe housing, medical services, and employment support. As previously identified, existing victim services in Italy remain fragmented, short-term, and limited in scale. In contrast, a holistic, multidimensional reintegration model could significantly enhance victims’ prospects for social inclusion while reducing the risk of re-victimisation.

The implementation of such a model would require coordinated engagement from national and regional health and welfare departments, municipal authorities, particularly in regions most affected by caporalato, such as Campania, Calabria, and Apulia, and a broad network of civil society organisations such as, for example:

• Caritas Italiana, ARCI, and CGIL-FLAI, providing shelter, legal aid, and reintegration pathways through training and employment programs; 
• BeFree, specialising in assistance to victims of gender-based violence and trafficking;
• and others;

Together, these actors can ensure that victim support is sensitive to the local context and needs, sustainable, and rights-based, while simultaneously being integrated into a long-term protection and social inclusion strategy at the national level. 

4. Accountability and supply chain oversight 

• Reinforce monitoring and accountability in the agricultural supply chain

This recommendation calls for the introduction of mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence obligations for large agricultural producers, distributors, and retailers, which could be enforced through a combination of national oversight mechanisms and EU-wide regulatory frameworks. Measures could include third-party audits, annual transparency reporting, and sanctions for non-compliance. Notably, such measures could be aimed at directly addressing the persistent lack of transparency in the supply chains, which could be characterised as one of the main systemic enablers of labour exploitation of migrant workers in the Italian agricultural sector. 

At the national level, the enforcement of the proposed measures would require coordinated action by the following actors:

• The Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests, which would be tasked with overseeing regulatory standards in agricultural supply chains;
• The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM), which would be tasked with investigating anti-competitive pricing practices that underpin and exacerbate exploitative cost pressures;
• The National Labour Inspectorate (INL), which would be tasked with ensuring compliance with labour protections and reporting requirements.

At the EU level, existing regulatory instruments could offer critical support. Notably, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive of 2024 mandates companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for human rights and environmental abuses across their supply chains (European Parliament and Council, 2024). Additionally, the EU Platform on Undeclared Work facilitates cross-border enforcement cooperation and information exchange, strengthening collective monitoring capacity across member states (European Labour Authority, n.d.).

Together, these efforts can help disincentivise abusive labour practices by increasing transparency, raising compliance costs for exploitative actors, and promoting corporate accountability in the agri-food sector. 

5. Criminal justice and financial disruption 

• Disrupt Criminal Infrastructure through Financial and Legal Tools

This recommendation focuses on strengthening national and local prosecutorial capacity to dismantle the financial and logistical networks underpinning caporalato. It calls for the systematic use of anti-mafia legislation, forensic financial investigations, and strategic asset seizure, treating labour exploitation not as an isolated labour law violation but as a component of broader organised criminal economies. 

Key measures under this strategy may include: 

• Expanded use of anti-mafia provisions under the Italian Penal Code, including preventive asset confiscation and extended confiscation based on unexplained wealth accumulation; 
• Financial profiling of employers, labour contractors, and agribusiness entities suspected of collusion or complicity;
• Forensic accounting investigations to trace financial flows from exploitative intermediaries to corporate actors, especially those involving false cooperatives or shell companies used for wage laundering; 
• Integrated use of labour inspection and tax data, such as linking irregular contracts and unexplained cash flows to potential fraud and money laundering.

From this point of view, shifting from reactive labour inspections to proactive criminal dismantling can help disrupt profit chains that sustain systemic exploitation, increase deterrence through high-profile prosecutions, and underline the systemic nature of caporalato, embedded in mafia structures and agricultural capitalism. 

Interinstitutional coordination is critical to implementing this approach effectively. At the national level, bodies such as the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (Antimafia Investigative Directorate – DIA), Guardia di Finanza (Italian Law Enforcement Agency for Financial and Economic Crimes), and the Agenzia Nazionale per i Beni Sequestrati e Confiscati alla Criminalità Organizzata (National Agency for the Administration and Destination of Assets Seized or Confiscated from Organised Crime) should collabourate systematically, both with each other and, where appropriate and within their respective mandates, with civil society organizations, such as Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto, Avviso Pubblico, and others engaged in anti-exploitation monitoring. 

Moreover, international and regional institutions can provide critical technical support: 

• UNODC for expertise in anti-trafficking and international judicial cooperation; 
• EUROPOL and EUROJUST for support in cross-border criminal investigations;
• Council of Europe’s GRETA (Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings) for compliance monitoring and policy guidance under the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. 

Such a comprehensive strategy could represent a shift from reactive enforcement toward a structural dismantling of criminal economies, reinforcing accountability and systemic deterrence. 

Conclusion

Italy’s caporalato system exemplifies the dangerous convergence of food insecurity, labour exploitation, and organised crime, operating at the intersection of local vulnerabilities and transnational dynamics. Its persistence is not simply the product of localised criminality but a reflection of global agricultural pressures, restrictive and fragmented migration policy, and institutional neglect at multiple levels of governance. 

Crucially, caporalato is embedded within a broader systemic nexus linking armed conflict, forced displacement, and irregular migration to exploitative labour practices in destination countries. Armed conflicts continue to displace millions, forcing individuals into precarious migration routes often facilitated by smuggling networks. Upon arrival, the lack of legal pathways, inadequate protection systems, and informal labour markets channel migrants into exploitative working conditions in sectors such as agriculture. This phenomenon must therefore be understood not as an isolated labour law violation but as a manifestation of intersecting structural failures across humanitarian, migration, labour, and economic systems.

Effectively addressing caporalato requires a paradigm shift – one that treats migrant labour exploitation as a structural and transnational issue embedded in both domestic power relations and global systems of production and displacement. 

As established in this paper, such policies must include reinforcing prosecutorial capacity, strengthening victim protection and reintegration, embedding labour protection in bilateral agreements and external policies, improving supply chain accountability, expanding legal and safe migration channels, as well as promoting integrated systemic frameworks through institutional reform. 

Central to all these efforts must be multi-level, interinstitutional cooperation. Here, responses must be coordinated not only within national systems, involving ministries, labour inspectorates, municipalities, and civil society, but also across borders and governance levels. International organisations must be engaged as active partners in technical support and capacity-building, playing a critical role in regulatory alignment and funding mechanisms. 

Ultimately, dismantling caporalato requires reimagining the agricultural economy as part of a rights-based, globally responsible system. Only through systemic, coordinated reform can Europe ensure that its food systems are built on principles of dignity, justice, and sustainability.

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