Devi Sacchetto

• PhD
• Professor at University of Padua

Based on ethnographic research and interviews conducted over 2 years (2021–2023), mainly with Bangladeshi workers, community leaders, local NGO staff and trade union representatives in two Italian shipyards in Fincantieri, this paper focuses on the interrelations of labour process, social reproduction and migration regime. Our study analyses how th...

At a time when worker shortages have emerged as a global challenge, this highly original book bridges migration and labour studies to examine worker mobility and its management. This will be a valuable resource for both scholars and practitioners.

This report analyses the shipbuilding industry in Italy. Based on 65 interviews (see List of interviews) with workers, managers and key witnesses collected from 2020 to 2024, we highlight how the transformation of shipbuilding in Italy has been based on: (i) increasing internationalisation of production; (ii) strong outsourcing of operations within...

Since the 1990s, the number of Bangladeshi migrant workers (BMWs) in Italy has increased. They are employed in various sectors, such as tourism, agriculture, and construction, including Fincantieri shipyards. Fincantieri is a relevant case study for BMWs as they mostly work in subcontracting firms on lower value-added tasks. The study involves 63 i...

In view of the growing onward migration and multi-sited transnationalism among naturalized EU citizens, this article seeks to advance the current understanding of transnational social fields, cataloguing the complex interplays of migrants’ ways of being, belonging, and in-betweenness across different places and spaces. Drawing on multi-sited qualit...

Il volume presenta i risultati della ricerca “Servizio Civile e Universale in Veneto”, commissionata e finanziata dalla Regione Veneto, condotta tra gennaio-maggio 2023 dal Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata dell’Università degli Studi di Padova1. La ricerca ha avuto come obiettivo generale l’indagine delle rica...

While there are normally positive expectations concerning job quality in cooperatives, many studies have described a more complex picture. The extant literature has, however, found it difficult to deal with evidence of poor working conditions in these organisations. Some contributions downplay the relevance of this issue, arguing that poor extrinsi...

Posted work is often framed as a business model based on social dumping. Widespread regulatory evasion is imputed to regulation’s opacity, firms’ predatory practices and trade unions’ inability to organise posted workers. Isolation and precariousness channel posted workers’ agency into individualised reworking or exit strategies. These perspectives...

The following article aims to provide a conceptually rooted introduction to the articles in the internationally coordinated themed collection on Labour Conflict, Class and Collective Organization, an initiative which has involved four journals focusing on labour studies from different geographical angles and academic traditions: Economic and Labour...

By focusing on transnational corporations (TNCs) and suggesting that transnational mobility of capital is developing a global labor migration regime, we studied the case of Foxconn in China and Europe. Moving beyond the labor market perspective, we focus on the production sphere, which is engrained in global production networks, and we disclose TNC...

L'outsourcing ha conosciuto una forte espansione negli ul-timi decenni, diffonden-dosi trasversalmente in diverse aree, imprese e settori. La sua capacità di adattarsi a mutevoli situazioni sociali e nor-mative lo ha reso lo strumento principale dei processi di ristrutturazio-ne produttiva, finendo per essere considerato una forma paradigmatica del...

Bangladesh is one of the main labour source countries for the Gulf Cooperation Council. Since the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, a large number of Bangladeshis have returned home while many others are about to be repatriated. Drawing on qualitative research conducted with Bangladeshi migrants who returned from the Gulf Cooperation Council countrie...

Recensione di Massimiliano Mollona, Cristina Papa, Veronica Redini, Valeria Siniscalchi, Antropologia delle imprese: Lavoro, reti, merci, Roma, Carocci, 2021, pp. 220.

The aim of this paper is to extend discussion on subcontracted labour by focussing on the labour process and on the role of race and racialization within it. The existing literature has so far analysed the factors that have encouraged employer decisions to outsource labour, together with its effects on labour conditions and on industrial relations....

Drawing on multi-sited qualitative research in Italy and the UK, this paper documents the dark side of onward migration and the experiences faced by Italian-Bangladeshis in the UK after the Brexit referendum. The findings show that compared to their position in Italy, Italian-Bangladeshis experienced a downgrading in symbolic, identity-related, and...

This article traces the trajectory of theory and praxis around nocività or noxiousness – i.e., health damage and environmental degradation – drawn by the workerist group rooted in the petrochemical complex of Porto Marghera, Venice. While Porto Maghera was an important setting for the early activism of influential theorists such as the post-workeri...

Based on qualitative data collected for broader research on the transformation of hotel labour in Venice, Italy, this study explores how workers and unions have experienced outsourcing carried out through cooperatives of convenience (COC). The authors examine the impact of outsourcing on work processes, highlighting its link with growing standardis...

In this study, we analyse the reasons for the onward migration of Bangladeshis in Italy to the UK after they obtain Italian citizenship. The findings of 51 in-depth interviews and participant observation with Bangladeshi migrants with Italian citizenship in three cities of north-eastern Italy and two cities of the UK indicate that Italian Banglades...

L'iper-industrializzazione insita nel funzionamento della macchina digitale tende a indirizzare in senso prestazionale non più solo la forza-lavoro di marxiana memoria, ma l'intera capacità umana attiva puntando a performare la soggettività in tutti i campi dell'agire sociale. In un tale contesto, in che modo la conricerca può, o non può, dirsi anc...

We investigate migrant construction workers’ experiences in the Former Soviet Union, examining their attitudes to other ethno‐national groups, unions and collective action. Industrial relations and migration studies view migrant workers’ hypermobility and diversity, under conditions of low union coverage and rising nationalism, as potentially obstr...

This article analyzes previous multiple migratory trajectories of Bangladeshi first generation migrants before arriving in Italy and within Italy. It also uncovers the role of social networks and transnational ties in their multiple migrations. The findings show that their first international migration was mainly shaped by their family’s socio-econ...

This article aims to provide insight into the employment relations in China-based multinational companies internationalising to Europe, a still relatively unexplored topic. We investigate the transfer of work and employment practices from Foxconn’s manufacturing headquarters in mainland China to its subsidiaries in Czechia and the factors that infl...

This chapter presents to the generalist HRM reader a background to migration studies in order to understand the challenges and opportunities that labour mobility creates for organisations. Theoretical, empirical and historical tools are provided to interpret the context of contemporary labour migration from a critical perspective. Despite the growt...

Scholars, mainly focusing on Asia, consistently describe the im/mobility of workers living at work as orchestrated from above. This article bring to the forefront forms of workers’ mobility that take place outside of the established and often policed tracks. Focusing on Europe, the article shows that the mobility of workers is the outcome of the in...

Scholars, mainly focusing on Asia, consistently describe the im/mobility of workers living at work as orchestrated from above. This article bring to the forefront forms of workers’ mobility that take place outside of the established and often policed tracks. Focusing on Europe, the article shows that the mobility of workers is the outcome of the in...

Based on ethnographic research carried out between March and September 2014 in Foxconn's factories and in the working-class district of Ciudad Juárez (Mexico), this paper analyzes some aspects of the role of gender in globalized industrial production for export. In particular, the ethnographic analysis suggests that the symbolic and discursive prac...

Based on long‐term fieldwork in multiple locations, our article questions the approach that posits a Chinese model of work and employment relations as increasingly exporting its form of labour management and dominating worldwide. It does so by focusing on Europe and discussing two labour regimes considered as typically Chinese: the Chinese fashion...

In Europe, as elsewhere in the global North, the label “Made in China” has become synonymous with low wages, excessive overtime, and exploitative working conditions. Conventional literature on the international division of labor reifies the North–South divide in particular with respect to class formation and labor agency. Contrasting the working co...

This article explores ethical dilemmas in researching the world of work. Recent contributions to WES have highlighted challenges for engaged research. Based on the emancipatory epistemologies of Bourdieu, Gramsci and Burawoy, the authors examine moral challenges in workplace fieldwork, question the assumptions of mainstream ethics discourses and se...

The PROMO project¹ is based around a series of policy workshops and conferences from 2017 and 2018. The project aims to make recommendations to improve: • national labour protection systems for posted workers; • institutions, practices and channels for promoting industrial democracy for posted workers; • the collection of data relevant to making in...

Parlare di cittadini cinesi e soprattutto di coloro che sono immigrati in Italia, ed evocare al contempo il concetto di movimento non è certo strano se pensiamo alla distanza che separa il loro luogo d'origine da quello d'arrivo, ma è opportuno anche richiamarsi alla nostra quotidianità che là dove non è fatta di relazioni tra persone è certamente...

Based on an empirical research on Foxconn plants in the Czech Republic, the aim of this article is to analyze how global production networks enable a time and space compression of the production process. In this way Foxconn is able to respond to the just-in-time requests of the market, while at the same time keeping the conflicts with the plant at...

Un libro «inattuale» che studia quali siano, nel quadro di processi produttivi dispiegati su scala internazionale, le condizioni di lavoro della manodopera occupata in Italia nella produzione di beni di lusso all'interno del settore della moda. L'analisi si sviluppa a partire dagli investimenti di grandi gruppi industriali in alcuni distretti itali...

This article analyzes the transformations in tourism sector and in the workforce composition. Based on a research carried out in the hotel and tourism sector in Rimini through in-depth and semi-structured interviews, we argue that the forms of severe exploitation are related to both the recruitment and the reproduction process that occur mainly in...

Il paradigma della catena globale del valore o delle merci (Global Value Chain o GVC e Global Commodity Chain o GCC) sviluppata da Gary Gereffi et al. (1994) mira a spiegare le trasformazioni nella gestione delle nuove strutture produttive che si sono sviluppate nel corso degli ultimi trent’anni. Alcuni autori hanno criticato questo approccio poich...

This article highlights the recent spontaneous transposition in China of the studies and research path of scholar Romano Alquati. It is very interesting to note how certain aspects of Alquati's analysis are emphasised from the translation of an article on the subject. The article can easily be appreciated by scholars familiar with the Chinese langu...

Starting from the 2000s Foxconn invested in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Russia and Turkey, implementing a territorial diversification strategy aimed at getting nearer to its end markets. This chapter investigates the development of Foxconn in Turkey where the multinational owns a plant with about 400 workers. A few kilometres from the city of Çorlu...

This edited volume investigates restructuring in the electronics industry and in particular the impact of a ‘Chinese’ labour regime on work and employment practices in the electronics assembly in Europe. It studies Foxconn, the world largest electronics manufacturing service provider and the main assember of Apple's iPhone and iPad. The authors ex...

There is currently a large knowledge gap about intra-European labour migration. Commentators are caught up in a debate over whether such movement is best understood in terms of social dumping and hence a race to the bottom, or in terms of business opportunities and benefits for firms, states and mobile workers. The argument put forward in this arti...

This article investigates the role of temporary work agencies (TWAs) at Foxconn’s assembly plants in the Czech Republic. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it shows TWAs’ comprehensive management of migrant labour: recruitment and selection in the countries of origin; cross-border transportation, work and living arrangements in the country of desti...

Drawing on a longitudinal research we conducted over five years (2010-2015) with 40 documented migrant workers who lost their job at the beginning of the recession, this article analyses their routes to the informal economy in Northern Italy. Moving away from the expulsion and exit dichotomous theories on participation in underground work, we argue...

The current economic crisis is worsening migrants’ living conditions and thus their social and economic integration into EU countries. However, recent literature has not sufficiently considered the strategies that unemployed migrants adopt to cope with this transformation. This article explores the economic and social impact of the recession on mig...

This article shows that global production networks rely on a specific combination of economic and political elements and that labor composition in each production node is specific to the location and contingent on state regulations. The assembly and management of a differentiated labor force are keys to understanding how these networks are construc...

Next to its 32 factories in mainland China, Foxconn has another 200 factories and subsidiaries around the world on which there is little or no data. This article focuses on plants in the Czech Republic, Foxconn's most important European site and the hub for export-oriented electronics industry. It asks whether there are similarities between Foxconn...

The construction industry historically is characterised by high levels of labour mobility favouring the recruitment of migrant labour. In the EU migrant workers make up around 25% of overall employment in the sector and similar if not higher figures exist for the sector in Russia. The geo-political changes of the 1990s have had a substantial impact...

In its long development the Italian cooperative movement went through slow and steady transformations, that have generally sheltered it from radical discontinuities. The different trends and political traditions that have become intertwined with the history of the cooperative movement highlight the flexibility of the cooperative principles which ha...

The role of TWAs, whether formal or informal, has been commonly seen as connected to the demand for temporary and flexible labor determined especially by seasonal aspects of production. While this is certainly true and we could observe the fluctuation of migrant workers depending on production needs, what we would like to suggest is that the role o...

Can migrant workers gain recognition as fully fledged and multifaceted social agents rather than being classified as mere economic factors or diasporic beings? This chapter looks at labour migrants’ strategies reviewing the experience of construction workers moving across the EU and the former Soviet Union. The study unveils their aspirations and e...

This article discusses the condition of agricultural migrant workers in southern Italy. After a brief description of the general background, we will analyse two key features regarding the current situation: the state of segregation in which the workers live, and the organization of recruitment and work through the caporalato (gang-master system). T...

This article focuses on migrant workers’ agency through exploring the relationship between working and employment conditions, on one side, and labour mobility, on the other. The study is based on qualitative research involving workers from Moldova and Ukraine working in the Russian and Italian construction sector. Fieldwork has been carried out in...

The stages in Romano Alquati’s research can be periodized within the Italian workerist thought of the Sixties and Seventies; more generally, they are inscribed in the furrows of the phenomenological approach developed by Enzo Paci and Guido Davide Neri, which questioned the philosophical presuppositions of the Marxist orthodoxy, starting with its m...

Questo scritto analizza i principali studi sociologici italiani sui lavoratori stranieri in Italia. In particolare, lo studio si sofferma sul periodo che va dai primi anni Settanta fino alla fine degli anni Novanta. Si tratta di pubblicazioni che in parte seguono, in parte accompagnano, in parte addirittura anticipano lo svolgersi dei processi migr...

Nonostante la lunga crisi economica, rimangono limitate le ricerche che ne indagano le implicazioni per le prospettive di vita e di lavoro degli individui. La ricerca presentata in questo volume si propone di contribuire a ridurre tale carenza conoscitiva a partire da un archivio di 170 interviste in profondità e 435 brevi interviste telefoniche a...

Dans les provinces du Mezzogiorno, au sud de l'Italie, les travailleurs agricoles saisonniers etrangers, notamment les Africains, sont rigoureusement encadres. Victimes d'une relegation spatiale et sociale, ils vivent a l'interieur de ghettos, dans des mas abandonnes ou des constructions precaires. Dans ces lieux ou les migrants reconstruisent un e...

Oggetto di questo articolo sono i lavoratori migranti nell'agricoltura dell'Italia meridionale. Dopo una descrizione del contesto, l'articolo affronta in particolare due questioni: la seclusione in cui vivono questi lavoratori e l'organizzazione del reclutamento e del lavoro attraverso il caporalato. Due studi di caso sono messi a confronto: il vil...

Il paper analizza in modo comparativo le ricadute economiche e sociali della crisi economica iniziata nel 2008 su due gruppi di immigrati presenti in Veneto. Esso si basa su una ricerca sul campo nel corso della quale sono state raccolte 171 interviste in profondità a migranti marocchini e rumeni disoccupati. Il saggio è composto di quattro sezioni...

L’agricoltura dell’Italia meridionale, in particolare delle pianure costiere, ha vissuto negli ultimi tre decenni importanti mutamenti, in gran parte poco studiati da economisti e sociologi. In questi territori, seppur in forme differenti, si è sviluppata un’agricoltura che possiamo definire intensiva, per volume di investimenti e impatto sulle ris...

Nell'estate del 2011 le campagne del basso Salento sono state scenario del più importante e lungo sciopero auto-organizzato di braccianti stranieri, tutti africani, impiegati nel settore agricolo. Nel cuore dell'estate salentina tra spiagge, concerti e notti tarantolate, alcune centinaia di braccianti occupati nella raccolta delle angurie e del pom...

È raro che un ricercatore si trovi nel luogo di un evento mentre questo accade. Anche quei ricercatori sociali – e non sono molti in Italia – abituati ad “andare sul campo”, cioè a servirsi di metodologie come l’intervista, l’osservazione, l’inchiesta etnografica, e a incontrare di persona gli “oggetti” delle loro ricerche, solitamente osservano le...

Scholarship on international migration has shown how structural features of the global capitalist economy contribute to labour mobility. This paper looks into labour migrants’ recruitment and employment systems to identify their forms of resistance. The study is based on qualitative research involving workers from Moldova and Ukraine working in the...

Nel corso dell’ultimo ventennio le scienze sociali si sono interrogate in modo diffuso sulle forme di convivenza e sulle trasformazioni provocate dalla presenza dei migranti nella società italiana. Minore attenzione è stata invece prestata ai cambiamenti che hanno attraversato i paesi di origine di tali migranti. I saggi qui presentati indagano, a...

Il Veneto è stato caratterizzato nel corso degli ultimi dieci anni da consistenti flussi migratori interni e internazionali. Si tratta di una forza lavoro che si è inserita in vari settori produttivi sovente in mansioni a bassa qualificazione e assunta con maggiore frequenza, rispetto ai locali, attraverso contratti non standard. Se i lavoratori me...

Della globalizzazione parecchio si è scritto, molto meno dei trasporti che la rendono possibile. I trasporti marittimi contano per circa il 95% in termini di tonnellaggio e per il 66% in termini di valore del commercio mondiale. Essi sono garantiti da 1,2 milioni di marittimi, di cui circa 750.000 sono in qualsiasi momento a bordo, mentre i rimanen...

La riorganizzazione produttiva in Europa centrale e orientale è avvenuta in tempi rapidi, provocando notevoli modificazioni nelle articolazioni internazionali della produzione. All’estensione di reti produttive in questi paesi si sono affiancati consistenti flussi migratori che si dirigono principalmente verso l’Europa occidentale. Altrove abbiamo...

Nell’ultimo ventennio sono emersi alla ribalta del sistema produttivo europeo nuovi soggetti, genericamente definiti piccoli e medi imprenditori, che hanno colto le opportunità di investimento offerte dai cambiamenti politici degli stati dell’Europa centrale e orientale. Queste figure sociali costituiscono componenti importanti della mobilitazione...

Migrazioni e investimenti diretti all'estero legano l'Italia alla Romania fin dai primi anni Novanta. Si tratta di aree discontinue in forma di arcipelago, segnate da movimenti di migranti romeni e da flussi di rimesse e di capitali industriali italiani. I saggi di Pietro Cingolani, Mimmo Perrotta, Veronica Redini, Francesca Alice Vianello e dei cu...

Le scienze sociali hanno a lungo considerato la dissoluzione della comunità come un processo traumatico anche in condizioni pacificate. Quando poi la causa della dissoluzione è la guerra, il panorama sociale si frantuma e appaiono nuove recinzioni. Questo volume indaga sul campo le vicende del Kosovo e della Romania e le loro conseguenze nel Veneto...