Critical Notes on Mapping the Mobility of Agricultural Workers in the Province of Ferrara: the (Ethical) Importance of Opacity

Elena Dorato; Richard Lee Peragine

doi:10.60923/issn.2612-0496/20418

Authors

Elena Dorato Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Ferrara https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7981-6760

Architect, PhD in Urban Planning, Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture UNIFE. 2016-2021 she was a Research Fellow in Urban Planning and visiting scholar at INEFC Barcelona and KADK Copenaghen. Since 2014, she has been involved in teaching activities related to urban planning and design; she was visiting professor at TU Crete, IATU-UBM, ENSAP Bordeaux, and ETSA Madrid. Dorato is an active member of scientific committees and national/international research groups focusing on urban design, sustainable mobility, the intersection of urban planning and public health. She has authored over 70 scientific publications, and is a member of several editorial boards.
Richard Lee Peragine Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Ferrara https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0739-8643

Richard Lee Peragine is an architect and PhD in Urban and Regional Development at the Politecnico di Torino. His doctoral work, awarded summa cum laude, looked at the relationship between sovereignty and emptiness in the northwesternmost corner of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a way to address the ethics of the project of architecture. He is currently a scholarship holder at the Department of Archietcture, Università degli Studi di Ferrara and member of the research project CAMP-FORM(S), at DIST, Politecnico di Torino. Prior to research, he worked in architectural studios in London, Bologna, Berlin and Brussels.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2612-0496/20418

Keywords:

critical mapping, survey, rural mobility, agro-industrial production, caporalato

Abstract

This article presents an on-going research project developed by the Department of Architecture of the University of Ferrara and AMI Ferrara regarding home-work mobility patterns in local agro-industrial production. By combining quantitative and qualitative research tools (i.e. literature review, surveys, interviews, GIS-mapping), this research originally aimed to research habits, needs, and propensity to change of agricultural workers in the area in relation to home-work mobility. The investigation therefore necessarily has to confront “caporalato”. Bearing in mind existing power relations and the inherent opacity of dynamics in agricultural work, we highlight the difficulties encountered by the mapping campaign, as well as the dangers of its instrumentalization when addressing such work relations. By emphasizing the tendency of agricultural day-labourers to defy localization, we aim at departing from this lack (or absence) of information to suggest the relevance of a critical approach to mapping in contemporary racial capitalism. The paper finally proposes substantial theoretical frameworks, extensive field research and investigative campaigns on-the-ground in contrast to the strictly vertical, top-down and technocratic approach of traditional mapping, in order to answer to mobility habits and needs of agricultural workers.

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Critical Notes on Mapping the Mobility of Agricultural Workers in the Province of Ferrara: the (Ethical) Importance of Opacity

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