On the one hand, the management of the mobility of the labour force (and thus of migration flows) is strictly connected to various forms of capitalist domination favouring exploitation, blackmail and control. On the other hand, the demand for mobility without borders and without exploitation is increasingly fundamental to all precarious subjects. Migrants are at the forefront of this, showing defiant resistance on multiple fronts: at the internal and external borders of Europe, where even their bodies throw into crisis the very construction and representation of ‘Fortress Europe’; in the hotspots and in the reception centres, when they refuse identification, control and criminalisation/victimization; in squatted houses and at their workplaces, such as in the warehouses and the farms where they have been practicing self-organised forms of struggle capable of blocking the mechanisms of the big production chains of exploitation.

Mobility is increasingly an object of rigid control, through multiple mechanisms which are repressive in different ways: through the militarisation of internal and external borders; and through torture, deportations and detention in the institutions where migrants are sorted, relocated, identified and expelled. But also, with the expansion of administrative control, this burden isn’t only carried by those born outside the EU. The control of migration, which always created fragmentation and fragility in the working class, is part of a broader system of the regulation of mobility that involves disciplining work and access to welfare. Documents and their accessibility therefore constitute a border in themselves, and, what’s more, a battlefield.

Today, in line with housing and labour struggles, it is necessary to focus on struggles against those laws and administrative practices that favour discrimination and exploitation. A fight for residence permits and residenze, which is an issue affecting everybody – including Italians – especially after the latest restrictions introduced by the housing plan. We are therefore proposing a national mobilisation on November 11th , a necessity expressed by the movement of the farm-workers, those held in the reception centres and the migrants in transit – people who experience the impossibility of free movement. It will be a mobilisation grounded in different local issues and directly confronting the central government about the tens of thousands of people who today live and work in Italy without basic recognition and protection and who are caught in the bureaucratic mechanisms of asylum requests, renewals of residence permits and entitlements to residenza.

We call on all those individuals and political subjects who are in different ways under the pressure of the administrative and government machine, to set up a common platform for the abolition of this apparatus of discrimination. It is the time to set out on a political route which will lead to the dismantling of the judicial-administrative forms of selective inclusion which increase the fragmentation, precariousness and conflict within the working class. Drawing on already existing struggles, we offer a number of propositions to begin this discussion.

As a step towards the abolition of the regime of government of mobility, we demand:

The creation of a single European residence permit not dependent in any way on work contracts, and the guarantee of the right to asylum through the establishment of efficient humanitarian corridors, the abolition of the Dublin accords and of internal and external deportation, raids, tortures in hotspots and detention centres. These measures should also serve to radically rethink the ‘reception’ system, which currently functions to facilitate the emergence of ghettos based on race and ethnicity and a pool of extremely cheap labour for the agro-industry and other industries.

Access to the institution of residenza as a requisite for accessing fundamental rights and services.
With a precise reference to the issue of migrant farm-workers who have been mobilizing for the past year in the province of Foggia for documents and contracts, we demand an amnesty for all of the workers employed in this sector, from those who have been in Italy for a long time to those who have just arrived.

To discuss these questions, share experiences and practices and build the national protest of November 11th, we invite all militants and migrants to the organisational assembly, which will take place on October 23rd in Viale delle Province 198, Rome.

WE ONLY WIN WHEN WE ARE UNITED!