Borders Inc: the migration control industry

A preview of the interactive story published by El Confidencial

At the end of 2020, the Canary Islands experienced a record number of irregular migrant arrivals. In total, that year more than 23,000 people arrived in cayuco and patera boats, most of them from Western Sahara under the control of Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal. The authorities could not cope. The images of migrants crammed together and sleeping rough on the quay at Arguineguín made all the front pages and went round the world. The migratory upsurge was repeated in 2021, consolidating the so-called ‘Canary Islands route’, one of the deadliest on the planet.

What few know is that, almost 2,000 kilometres away, in the Madrid city of Alcorcón, this migration crisis became a great business opportunity for one entrepreneur. Juan Benigno Alonso Alarcón, owner of Alonso Hipercas, turned over at least 2.3 million euros by supplying “emergency” food to migrants sheltered in temporary stay centres in the Canary Islands. Local newspapers reported on the poor quality of the food supplied to the migrants at that time.

Spain is already one of Europe’s main sea and land gateways for irregular immigration. The reinforcement of border controls on the Turkish and Libyan routes, as well as instability in the Sahel countries and problems with Morocco, which uses migrants as an instrument of pressure against the Spanish government, have increased migratory flows towards the Canary Islands and, to a lesser extent, the mainland. Proof of this is that the most numerous nationality in the last migration crisis at the gates of Melilla – which resulted in 23 deaths, according to Morocco, and 37 according to NGOs – was Sudanese. At the same time, migration control is becoming a growing market, financed with public money and hidden behind a cloak of secrecy.

Who wins with migration control? El Confidencial and Fundación porCausa have analysed all published central government contracts related to migration, from January 2014 to April 2022. This investigation covers 2,795 public contracts totalling 981.8 million euros. This is just the visible tip of the iceberg. This is what we have found.

1. Border business: always the winners

In recent years, the government has reinforced its entire migration control deployment, from the Guardia Civil’s maritime action vessels to the network of external surveillance radars, including the modernisation of the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, equipped with the latest technology. The ‘ranking’ of the companies that have benefited most from government contracts in the area of migration includes some of the main Spanish and Ibex 35 companies. The ACS Group (Clece, Cobra and Retevisión, among others), owned by Florentino Pérez and second in the ranking, has a diversified portfolio that ranges from the organisation of awareness-raising campaigns in refugee centres to the deployment of private security guards in the Aliens offices, including the security lights surrounding the port of Melilla or the provision of meals and the cleaning of centres where undocumented migrants are held.

Indra, one of the first to take advantage of the emerging migration control market, also occupies a prominent position. Indra not only operates Renfe’s website or designs applications such as Covid radar, but also maintains the radar network used by the Guardia Civil to intercept small boats, manages the video cameras at border crossings and supplies fingerprint and passport scanners for Barcelona and Madrid airports. Of the 58 contracts awarded to Indra in the field of migration, 45 were exempted from public tender. The Indra group has more than 52,000 employees, but, in several of these public contracts, it is listed as a ‘small and medium-sized enterprise’, a condition that can favour the award of a contract. In response to questions from porCausa and El Confidencial, Indra explains that it does not apply as an SME in the tenders and refers to the responsible contracting body: “We understand that this is an error”.

Another company that stands out in the ranking is Eulen, which focuses on the management of detention centres for foreigners. Also appearing are Air Europa and Air Nostrum, which handle deportation flights, and El Corte Inglés, which sells computers, air conditioners, mattresses, furniture and other products for migrant detention centres, immigration offices and other state agencies. This company also participates in the management of the ‘anti-immigration radars’ scattered along the Spanish coast and even supplies the visa printers used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

2. An opaque and unknown industry

The control and management of migration in Spain moves hundreds of millions of public funds every year, but it is still an unknown issue for the general public. This is largely due to the opacity that is commonplace in the field of migration on the part of the public administration: six out of every 10 contracts analysed were awarded without a public tender, and the specifications and other details are often not published. The figure includes minor contracts, which by default are not put out to tender, but among which it is common for them to be awarded for the maximum amount allowed to go this way. Journalists are allowed to enter prisons, military barracks, hospitals and other critical infrastructure, but not alien detention centres and other parts of the migration control system.

With the information available, based on the data analysed, it can be affirmed that the Ministry of the Interior is the one that allocates the most money for migration control (five out of every 10 euros). But we know that not everything is there, so this analysis cannot be exhaustive. Often, the Interior Ministry imposes a ‘confidential’ stamp on these contracts, citing national security reasons. The ministry does not provide estimated figures on its spending on border control. Moreover, in recent years, the government has awarded contracts worth millions to private companies or entities that then subcontract to other companies, adding another layer of opacity. The transparency law recognises the right to request information from any public institution, but not from private organisations. For example, the latest renovations of the fences in Ceuta and Melilla fell to Transformación Agraria S.A. (32 million euros), which in turn works with subcontractors. Transformación Agraria S.A. (Tragsa) does not provide information on these works, nor is it obliged to do so. This is the same logic applied by the Ministry of Migration when it signed an agreement with the Red Cross to take charge of the humanitarian and emergency reception system at the Arguineguín wharf. Neither the Interior, nor Migration, nor the Red Cross provide the specifications of these contracts.

3. Spain, a laboratory for migration control

The migration control business is going international. Spain functions as a laboratory in which new technologies are tested, from drones to crossing detectors, which are subsequently acquired by foreign states. When Zapatero’s government decided to install concertinas on the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, the manufacturer of these steel razor wire fences, the Malaga-based Mora Salazar, was barely a provincial company. Today, Mora Salazar is a multinational with offices in Berlin and exports concertina to some 30 countries, including Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Sudan. Another ‘made in Spain’ migration control product with wide international projection is the Integrated External Surveillance System (SIVE), designed by Indra and operated by the Guardia Civil. This system has already been acquired by a large number of countries, from Portugal and Romania to Hong Kong. The Interior does not provide the SIVE contract specifications and assures that “it has not carried out any contracting with the company Indra in the migratory field”.

What started as a domestic business has grown into a major industry attracting numerous foreign companies. There are already three foreign companies in the top 10 of this market. The first is Babcock, a British company that operates the Maritime Rescue air service for 271 million euros. Babcock maintains a ‘low-cost’ business model that results in regular conflicts with its workforce, according to complaints by the CGT union.

In 2019, an investigation published in ‘elDiario.es’ revealed that the three planes used by Babcock to carry out rescues in the Mediterranean were flying with broken radars. For at least five months, the professionals of Salvamento Marítimo only had their eyes to locate drifting pateras. Radar has a range of 30 nautical miles, while human eyesight only has a range of two miles in maximum visibility. That year, at least 552 people died trying to reach the Spanish coast via the Mediterranean, according to IOM data.

Security sources who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity express their concern and argue that France is Morocco’s best ally. The same sources agree that there is a risk that these French companies, which are closely linked to the political power in their country (a common occurrence in the defence sector), could use the information they have in favour of third countries, contrary to Spain’s interests. Thales, ATOS, Inetum and Eiffage did not respond to questions asked by this newspaper.

4. Africa, the outsourced frontier

From the beaches of Senegal it is possible to glimpse the extensive deployment of the Spanish Guardia Civil in that country. The Guardia Civil’s boats and helicopters sweep the Senegalese coastline day and night to prevent canoes from setting sail for the Canary Islands. The same dynamic also extends to Mauritania. At the airport in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, it is a National Police officer, not a Senegalese gendarme, who checks passengers’ documents before boarding.

The government’s efforts to prevent the arrival of migrants are not limited to Spain’s physical borders, but also extend to the countries of origin and transit. Spain deploys agents and military troops to combat migration from Africa. In addition, each year, the Spanish government spends large sums of money to subcontract a long list of African governments and rewards those that do the most to repress migration flows. This investigation was able to locate and analyse 236 contracts related to the outsourcing of border control for more than 93 million euros. This expenditure is mainly made through the International and Ibero-American Foundation (FIIAPP), which is attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although the Ministries of the Interior and Defence are also involved. In return, these African governments, including several authoritarian regimes, act as border guards. The externalisation of migration control is deepening.

Defence responds that it does not allocate resources to “projects and contracts directly related to migration”, but acknowledges that, “in certain situations”, the Armed Forces provide “operational and logistical support” in emergencies “of a migratory nature”. For its part, the Foreign Ministry does not provide the specifications for the 28 contracts requested and explains that the FIIAPP’s migration projects in Morocco and other African countries are financed by European Union funds. Furthermore, it does not detail whether Spain has mechanisms in place to prevent these products from being used to violate the fundamental rights of migrants, but assures that the country “ensures the guarantee and respect for fundamental rights in the exercise of its external action”.

The Spanish government’s perks and aid to countries that cooperate in the fight against irregular migration include everything: all-terrain vehicles, trucks, motorbikes, night vision goggles, drones, balaclavas, computers, equipment for intercepting communications, biometric recognition programmes, radars, video cameras, military helmets, bulletproof vests, detachable hangars, generators and even socks. Spain also provides training, education and other services to enable the security forces of these countries in the use of these technologies.

The 236 outsourcing contracts analysed by El Confidencial and porCausa show that Morocco is one of the main recipients of these products and services. Some of Madrid’s most expensive donations to Rabat coincide with moments of crisis when the Moroccan authorities relaxed migration control.

Spain employs a similar logic with a long list of African countries, including Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Niger, a country located at the crossroads of the migratory routes crossed by 90 per cent of migrants of sub-Saharan origin trying to reach Europe. Since 2015, Niger has been criminally prosecuting anyone directly or indirectly linked to migrants and restricting the movement of people within the country, a measure applauded by the European Union.

In the late 1990s, José María Aznar’s government instructed the CNI to create a network of spies and informants in Africa to monitor the movement of irregular migrants and trafficking networks. One of the CNI agents involved in the design of this spy network, mainly in Sahelian and sub-Saharan African countries, acknowledges that local authorities often use the technology supplied by Spain to persecute and repress opposition groups, activists and citizens critical of the government. The same source, who led several cells of informants for more than 15 years, claims that the Spanish authorities are aware of the dual use by some African governments of such devices and products supposedly intended to combat irregular immigration. A Guardia Civil agent with several years of experience in Senegal and Mauritania corroborates the CNI agent’s information. Both sources request anonymity to speak in the context of this investigation.

Among the companies contracted by Spain to supply these products to African countries, Fieldsports Ltd., a hunting and sporting goods shop located in a town in northern Malta, stands out. Since 2020, this SME has invoiced more than four million euros to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through 21 contracts to supply vehicles, military uniforms, night vision goggles, drones, repeaters and telecommunications technology.

Fieldsports is one of the companies that appear in the Paradise Papers. Its director, James Fenech, is under investigation in Malta for allegedly violating the international embargo on Libya at the height of the war. According to the newspapers ‘Malta Today’ and ‘Times of Malta’, Fenech allegedly supplied, among other things, semi-rigid boats that were used by pro-Gaddafi foreign mercenaries to flee Libya. In response to this investigation, Fieldsports denies favourable treatment by the Spanish government and clarifies that its director, James Fenech, is being investigated for his role in the company Sovereign Charterers Limited. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that it “carries out the relevant checks” before awarding contracts and stresses that Fieldsports “is not included in any of the databases” for the prevention of money laundering, the financing of terrorism and tax havens.

5. Obsessed with the southern border

Spain has a ministry for migration, but migration management is practically a monopoly of the interior ministry. Like his predecessors, Minister Marlaska and his team see migration as a problem that endangers Spain’s security. The division of functions and competences frequently leads to friction between Escrivá and Marlaska, both of whom are Socialist ministers.

The government, led by the Interior Ministry, strives to reinforce the border perimeter at any cost – especially on the southern border – which consumes 8 out of every 10 euros allocated by the central government for migration control. The figure contrasts with another reality: in Spain, 8 out of every 10 undocumented migrants come from Latin Americaand work in essential jobs, especially in the care sector, looking after the elderly and children. These people – most of them women – enter the country on tourist visas, mainly through Madrid and Barcelona airports. Asked about this, the Interior responded that “the idea of surrounding international airports with a land border is foolish”.

At midnight on 18 May, the borders of Ceuta and Melilla reopened after being closed for more than two years. Those who queued up to be reunited with their families were able to see some glimpses of the so-called “smart border”, one of the most promising businesses for the migration control industry. The border of the future is taking shape in these two Spanish enclaves. Spain is the vanguard of the European Union, which in mid-2020, in the midst of the pandemic, approved an expenditure of more than 300 million euros to implement these “smart borders” on Europe’s external perimeter.

The Interior Ministry has been allocating resources for several years and keeps a close eye on the details. This system incorporates cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology, with biometric readers, state-of-the-art cameras and even drones with which the Guardia Civil already locates and pursues migrants trying to enter irregularly. Those who attended the reopening of the Ceuta border could hear the drone of the Matrice 300 RTK drones used by the Guardia Civil in the two autonomous cities. More than 50 groups warn of the risks that the “smart border” entails for the fundamental rights of migrants and cross-border people. The Ministry of the Interior assures that the implementation of the “smart border” is a decision of the European Union, which works to “combine respect for individual rights with improved protection of European territory in the face of current threats”.

6. A business for all

The business that emerges from Spain’s migration policies does not only involve large infrastructures and advanced technology. It is in the most trivial and unsuspected details that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs gain their biggest market share, sometimes with questionable practices.

Albie, a company “specialising in school meals”, supplies food to several detention centres for foreigners. It is the same company that provided maintenance, cleaning and food for the Fuerteventura CIE for several years, until an investigation by porCausa and El Confidencial revealed that the centre had been empty for five years. Albie billed more than half a million euros in that time without providing any kind of service.

Following the publication of this information, the Ministry of Interior closed the Fuerteventura CIE. Since then, this same company has invoiced the National Police more than 13 million for the supply of food to other CIE, mainly in the Canary Islands. The company Alonso Hipercas, mentioned at the beginning of this special, sells to the State the food served in the CATE of Cartagena. The Guardia Civil claims that this CATE is closed and does not even have a planned opening date. Last year, Alonso Hipercas invoiced more than 35,000 euros to the Ministry of Interior for “various supplies and services” for the CATE in Cartagena. Interior awarded him this contract without a public tender. The ministry headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska does not provide the specifications, but assures that this CATE is “completed and ready, but pending an administrative procedure by the Ministry of Defence” and affirms that these contracts “are being used in the provisional facilities set up in the port of Cartagena”.

7. A broken model?

“We are a country that has always defended regular and orderly migration,” Pedro Sánchez recently responded to questions about the latest tragedy at the Melilla border. On paper, Spanish migration policy aims to prevent unauthorised entries, facilitate the safe arrival of those who have permission to work and safeguard the defence of migrants’ fundamental rights. An analysis of migration management contracts reveals a model far removed from these interests, in which the management of Spanish borders is sometimes left in the hands of non-democratic governments and a small number of private actors. A group of 20 companies receives six out of every 10 euros of public funds allocated to border sealing, according to research carried out by El Confidencial and Causa based on publicly available information at the national level [see methodology].

United Nations projections indicate that in the next 30 years the working-age population in Spain will fall to 50%. Various economists, researchers, employers’ organisations and NGOs warn of the need to implement migration management policies in order, among other things, to tackle the low birth rate and the progressive ageing of Spanish society. There are currently some 500,000 undocumented non-EU nationals living in Spain, 147,000 of whom are minors. The number of migrants arriving in Spain illegally – and the number of people who die trying – continues to grow. At the same time, the government is increasing public spending on migration control, thus favouring the consolidation of the anti-immigration industry.

The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (Fomento), ACS Group, Tragsa, Red Cross, Babcock, Thales, ATOS, Inetum, Eiffage, Alonso Hipercas and Albie did not respond to any of the questions asked by Fundación porCausa and El Confidencial.

Methodology

Who wins with Spain’s migration policies? This is the starting question of ‘Fronteras SA: la industria del control migratorio’ (Borders SA: the migration control industry). To approximate an answer, Fundación porCausa has extracted all the central government’s public procurement (Public Sector Procurement Platform and Official State Gazette) from January 2014 to April 2022. Among the contracts obtained, we filtered those that contained any of the more than 400 keywords related to the field of migration, from which we selected the 2,795 contracts obtained that make up our database. We decided to keep contracts for multiple-use products and services. For example, border scanners are used to combat irregular immigration, but also to detect smuggling or drug trafficking. We then structured the information, analysed it and created categories to get an overall picture.

The database is composed only of central government public contracts that have been published. Public contracts with a ‘confidential’ seal, as well as those that the government does not make public, are not included in this special section. Also excluded from this investigation are contracts awarded by European Union bodies, Autonomous Communities -with competences mainly in the area of reception- and city councils, as well as funds processed as subsidies -mainly used to finance services for the initial reception and integration of migrants and refugees-. Also excluded from this investigation are public budgets intended to cover fixed costs related to migration control, such as the salaries of Guardia Civil agents deployed in Ceuta and Melilla. Click here to learn more about the methodology and download the research database.

Sacrificed lives: on Romanian women looking after elderly people in Italy

Imagine what it’s like living the life of someone old and ill before you are old and ill yourself. Canceling your own identity and conforming to the rhythms of their lives. Waking up in the morning when they wake up, washing them, making them breakfast, keeping them company 24 hours a day.

Cooking, playing cards if asked, cleaning around the house, sometimes being criticised by them and their family, watching the TV shows they want to watch, getting them ready for bed, going to bed at the same hour as them, waking up at night if they need you or shout out because of hallucinations – some patients have dementia or Alzheimer. Day after day, year after year, for 15, 16, 20 years of your life. Years you have not lived, because there was no more room for your own life, for walks, love, music, parties, family or friends.

You only have two hours off, but not every day and only if you’re lucky enough for the Italian family that employs you to at least observe this one right you have.

You live every day in the house of strangers, some of whom treat you kindly, while others don’t. Some count the biscuits you eat and ask you why you use so much of the coffee, others keep you in the cold in winter, asking you to do the laundry by hand and treating you like a servant for the whole family, though that was not your initial agreement.

You might be doing undeclared or semi-declared work in Italy, in other words either without a contract, or with one that only declares five or six hours a day, though you work 24/7. Of course, 24/7 work is illegal in Italy, but the families are unwilling or can’t afford to pay more tax or hire two badanti,* as necessary.

You accept it all, because you are forced by the debt and poverty back in Romania. You need this job, and your family in the country needs the money you earn.

Your pension will be small, so you can expect an old age with no safety net. You can only hope your sacrifice will not be forgotten by the children you helped.

You are far from your family. Your children have grown up without you and you feel guilty for it. Sometimes, relatives in the country treat you like an ATM. You are foreign to the life you left behind. You never feel “at home” with the elderly people you look after, no matter how kind your employer family is.

You grow attached to the elderly, because you spend two, five or ten years with them. You are the only person who is by their side every day, who knows their sufferings and their habits. You take care of them as they sink deeper into their illness, you are next to them when they start to agonise. You think of the life you never had a chance to live, because you’ve lived the life and death of these old people.

If you are lucky, the Italian family will let you stay with them for a few more days or a week, until you find another job, taking care of another elderly person. If you are not lucky and have no labour contract either, the family can throw you out from one day to the next. There is no guarantee in this line of work.

You take your suitcase and move into the house of another old person, to learn their habits and get acquainted with their suffering.

You read press articles that blame you for leaving your children home alone, with offensive comments. You don’t know who these people are, those who judge your life and decisions without knowing them.

You don’t know for how long you will continue to work in Italy, because your family always needs your help. Sometimes you return home years later, after falling ill yourself, away from your children, doing the hardest job in the world.

“If I had stayed in my country, I’d be long dead”

This spring I spent a few weeks in the southern Italian region of Puglia, where I met several Romanian women working as badanti. I spoke with them in the parks in the small towns of Lecce province where they go during the two hours off which they should have each day, but which they don’t always get.

City of Cursi, Province of Lecce, Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

The reasons they left the country have been known for years and have to do with day-to-day life in Romania: unemployment, poverty, marginalisation of the vulnerable. Many Romanian women sacrificed themselves for their families when their husbands lost their jobs following the closure of factories or mines. Some are single mothers who have had to leave their children to afford raising them. Others were left without a workplace when textile workshops or various factories in Romania closed down.

In the weeks spent in Puglia, I discovered a phenomenon that should have started to worry us years ago, when a whole wave of Romanian women first left to look after elderly people in Italy: many of them fled the violence of their husbands. In the absence of programmes for survivors of domestic violence and shelters for women, migration was their solution for saving their lives.

After I published one of my articles on badante on our Facebook page, Teleleu, it gathered hundreds of comments, most of them from Romanian women looking after elderly people in Italy. Many of them said they ran away from the country because of domestic violence, but I was particularly impressed by this comment*:

“If it wasn’t for Italy, there’d be another little place in the world for me to hide from an abuser who, instead of rebuilding his life, is still looking for me to kill me for not putting up with his maltrato. I chose to live for my four children, even running away and doing honest work in this tough world, putting my life back together with someone else, because I wanted my children to be proud and happy. And today I am pleased with what I decided. If I had stayed in my country, I’d be long dead. This way I disfruto and am proud of my children, because they still have me and always had me to support them when they needed me.”

This is not the only woman who wrote to me saying she saved her life when she went to work in Italy. A. shared with me a similar story: “I was 25 when I was left to raise my child alone, after my mother told me she’d help me with her. So I left my daughter in Romania with her (biggest mistake of my life). The child’s father took drugs, beat me, was very jealous, once he wanted to drive his car off a bridge with me. He wanted to kill me. I was pregnant then, I miscarried because of the stress – and he said it wasn’t his baby. I called the police and left to work as a badante through an agency. I had no home, I had no one. I had no other choice.”

Leverano, Province of Lecce, Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

The Romanian state’s failure to build shelters, improve legislation and implement programmes supporting survivors of domestic violence has led to migration over the last few decades.

Migration is a consequence of the social problems faced by Romania, and when politicians speak of this phenomenon, they should also speak of solutions for survivors of domestic violence. 26.809 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2020, and 72 people were killed as a consequence, most of them women and children.

There is a direct link between migration and domestic violence, underage motherhood, racism, corruption, unemployment, the malfunctioning of the health and education system, as I have written before.

The number of Romanians living abroad is enormous: in Italy alone there are now 156.855 Romanian badante. The real number could be double, because DOMINA, an association for families, estimates that 57% of them do undeclared work. On the 1^st of January 2021, there were 1.076.412 Romanians living in Italy.

She lost years of her life in exchange for the over 100.000 euro she earned in Italy

Eugenia was 43 in 2011, when she ran away from home because of domestic violence; she, too, saved herself by going to work in Italy. She used to live in Tulcea, in her parents’ old house, with her husband and 17-year-old daughter.

She borrowed 100 euro from a friend, packed some summer clothes and took the bus to Lecce, in southern Italy, where she had heard there was work to be found. She only had a pack of biscuits and some bagels – her food for the two-and-a-half-day ride. You can read her whole story here.

Eugenia, 54, cares for a 94-year-old woman from Leverano, Lecce province. The photo was taken in front of the house, on the street where he lives. Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

Ileana [a pseudonym] left Romania at 41 because of domestic violence: she was afraid she’d lose her life. Still, she continued sending money to her husband, because they have two children together and they built houses for them on the land they own.

Ileana often only kept 10 euro for herself, in case she fell ill and needed medicine. She did undeclared work, with no contract, because when you need money and don’t want to go back home to your violent husband, you’ll accept anything.

She was humiliated, offended and kept in the cold by the Italian families she worked for. She was treated as a servant, lost years of her life in exchange for the over 100.000 euro she sent to her family in Romania during her 16 years of work in Italy.

Now Ileana has nothing. Her husband won’t let her return to the house he has renovated with the money she earned in Italy. She has no legal recourse against him, because the land under their house and those they built for their children belongs to him, as inheritance from his parents. She wouldn’t dare take him to court anyway, because she is afraid of her violent husband.

She has no savings, because she has sent home almost all her earnings, and in a few years she will reach retirement age. This is just a manner of speaking, since Ileana will have no pension, considering she’s done almost all her work without a contract. So I reformulate: in a few years, when Ileana becomes unable to keep up with this hard work, she will have no home and no income to rely on.

She is not the only citizen in this situation, and the Romanian state is not ready for their return. Dozens of thousands of Romanian women, now badante in Italy, will return to the country in their old age. Some will come back to their violent husbands, because they have nowhere else to go. Others won’t be able to support themselves, because their work in Italy was undeclared.

How will we support these women? What is the Romanian state’s strategy for the social problems they will face – the lack of income in old age, violence from their partners, or situations like Ileana’s, in which families don’t let them come back after they sent them all the money they earned in Italy?

Their life is a series of sacrifices

Romanian women are used to sacrificing themselves, because local society has this expectation of them. And a badante’s destiny involves sacrifice, because living 15, 16, 20 years of the lives of elderly ill people whom you look after day after day until their death is no life.

Their sacrifice goes so far that some Romanian women even find extra work cleaning during the two hours off they should have every day, like Ionela told us. “Working as a badante is like being on house arrest,” a Romanian woman commented on our Facebook page.

Mioara (left) and Neta (right), both from Craiova, work as maids in the town of Cursi, province of Lecce. Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

Priest Ioan Grancea of the Eastern Orthodox church “Sfântul Cuvios Irodion de la Lainici” in Lecce, Italy, says Romanian women don’t consider underclared work and unpaid holiday overtime a breach of their rights, because they come to Italy with the thought that they must sacrifice themselves for their families.

Many of them, apart from the difficulties they face in Italy, are subject to pressure from back home: debt they need to pay off, domestic violence, relationship problems, children who don’t understand their mothers’ sacrifices.

One of the stories that stayed with priest Ioan Grancea was the case of a Romanian badante diagnosed with fast-growing cancer while she was looking after an elderly man. The priest and a few members of the Romanian community helped her file a request for financial aid from the Italian state.

The woman didn’t wait for the documents to be processed; she found work with another family, who didn’t know she was ill. She took time off once a month to go to chemotherapy. Though the priest and the Romanian community around the church tried to convince her to change her mind, she wouldn’t hear of it – she told them she had to help her son, who was having trouble back in the country.

“To ask for your rights, first you need to afford it”

When people discuss the rights of Romanian badante and the abuse they suffer, some voices continue to blame the victims: Why do they accept to work in those conditions? Why don’t they ask for their rights?

Their vulnerability begins in Romania, the first country where their rights haven’t been observed. Romanians put up with abuse abroad because no one in their own country has taught them they have rights.

Many of the women were already badly paid and exploited in Romania. Eugenia worked at a bread factory in Tulcea, where she broke a leg going down stairs holding a crate with products. Though she limps to this day because of that work accident, the factory never paid her any damages.

Marcela grew up in a community in Curtea de Argeș where many women were beaten by their husbands, as she was. There are 30 families on Marcela’s street, and 10 women there have left to work abroad. For many Romanian women, Italy was a way out, because the Romanian state never held out a helping hand in the form of proximity bracelets for aggressors or sufficient beds in shelters.

Because they have always been on their own, these women don’t know how to ask for support from institutions when they are sexually abused. They are afraid, because in Romania domestic violence has crushed their courage.

Poverty makes you vulnerable, as one of the women who left a comment on our Facebook page put it best: “Is there any stronger force that can keep you there [in poor labour conditions] than debt and the wish to give your children a better life?”

“When you have children to raise, you work and that’s that. To ask for your rights, first you need to afford it,” another Romanian woman wrote to us.

“No one’s keeping you there by force, except for the need,” someone else said.

And a Romanian woman quoted “a saying” among badante: “Their shit [the Italian patients’] is our bread.”

The stories I learned in these last weeks are heartbreaking: single mothers, abused women, a widow who lost her job when the tailoring workshop that hired her closed, a young woman who remembers she was 14 when her mother went to Italy for work and she felt abandoned.

You can’t speak of migration without speaking of all these social problems generating it. You can’t cut out a slice of Romanian reality and ignore the whole context around it.

In the last few years, Italy has seen an influx of women from the Republic of Moldova, who come from even greater, more traumatising poverty than that in Romania – if, that is, poverty and its trauma bear any ranking.

Romanian badante blame the Moldovans for “ruining the market” because they accept undeclared work in poor conditions and for less money.

Others have complained that Romanian women don’t support each other, that they steal each other’s jobs, gossip and envy each other, ask their fellow badanti for money in exchange for finding them jobs. In the community in Lecce, a few badanti wanted to rent a one-room apartment together, to have it available for emergency situations – if one of them was thrown out by the family she works for, or is exploited by her employer, she would have this safe space to spend a week or two in, until she found a solution. They would have paid 10 or 15 euro a month each (rent is low in southern Italy), but the plan eventually fell through because of arguments between them.

Lecce, Italy, May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

I was not surprised by the story, because solidarity is a value you learn when you have the privilege of a financially comfortable life. Poverty is ugly and humiliating, it mutilates many people, and its trauma remains and changes behaviours.

Victims blame each other, but the responsibility shouldn’t rest on their shoulders. The responsible parties are the Romanian and Italian state, but so far they have been accomplices to the abuse suffered by badante.

“The Italian state is an accomplice to this situation”

Silvia Dumitrache, the founder of Associazione Donne Romene in Italia, an association defending the rights of Romanian workers, says both the Romanian and the Italian state take advantage of the badante’s sacrifices: the Romanian economy grows with the money they send home, while Italy saves on expenses.

According to the DOMINA report, the overall cost of elderly care work paid by families amounts to 11,6 billion euro – which the Italian state saves, by no longer providing such care through its public assistance service.

Moreover, the Italian state gains money from the taxes paid by the families who sign employment contracts with their badante. Silvia Dumitrache says institutions turn a blind eye to many badante  working 24/7 and to breaches of their rights: “The Italian state is an accomplice to the situation.”

Mirela Videa, employment and social affairs attaché at the Romanian Embassy in Italy, believes the Italian state should implement two solutions: providing tax rebates to families caring for elderly members and creating an institution to manage “the confluence between demand and offer”, allocating jobs and eliminating black market brokers, who exploit workers.

Silvia Dumitrache says Romania has the responsibility of informing Romanian workers, who should know their rights when they go work abroad.

Ionela and Bogdan Potcovariu work as nurses in Italy. In 2011, they bought a house in installments in Neviano. May 2022. ©Cosmin Bumbuț

While I was doing interviews with Romanian badanti, I received two recurrent answers to the question “Why did you come work in Italy?” Many women told me they had debts from buying house appliances or from loans they took out when a family member died unexpectedly and they couldn’t afford the funeral.

Migration is only a slice of Romanian reality, in which women leave their children to be able to pay the installments for their washing machine.

***

Close to Easter, I published a material describing the atmosphere among Romanians spending the holiday in Lecce province. It included a few paragraphs about badanti who can’t make it to the Romanian store for their groceries nor to the Easter Vigil in the Romanian church, because they can’t leave their elderly people alone.

The material gathered many comments on Facebook – some from badanti, some from people who understand their suffering and sacrifice. Others were offensive and stunned me with their meanness and lack of empathy.

I will end with a few of these latter comments, so we can read them and feel ashamed. Because it is not just the institutions, but also us, common Romanians, who have a responsibility to see these women, to understand their suffering and to fight for their rights – rights that should be demanded not only by them, the victims, but also by us, who have the privilege of knowing solidarity.

They’re actually the Italians’ women..it’s just their citizenship that’s Romanian..😁 I know their likes 🤣

What a Bitter life better a svervant in my own country than for foreigners

Stay wherever you can make a good living but, you expats stop deciding the fate of those of us who stayed home.

Well stay there then, but stop moaning about how you miss your country ,your family.

Italian pensioners can afford “badante” while Romanian pensioners live on 5 lei a day .

We know their kind,no poso di parlare romena..🤣 Cheap women for the italians..🤣

In that case, if you’re doing so well there, they should withdraw your right to vote in the presidential and parliament elections, you’re the reason we were stuck with Basescu and Iohannis who ruined our country

You’re all sex slaves for the Italians 

Anyway, you’d better give up Romanian citizenship, so we know who’s on our side and who isn’t .

well thats because back in the country you were an illiterate bum, there at least you wash some ass and can afford panetone from lidl. fucking illiterate scum, the moment you step outside the border you start badmouthing this country like it’s the country’s fault that you didn’t finish 8 years of school and lived your whole life in rubber boots, fuck your life in italy

Yes, they look after old people, while our own old people are left to die in misury.

no one’s asking you to come back slaaves

i … on you you’re their slaves and when you come to the country you act all big and forget romanian

Stay there, since you sold yourself for a ,,paneton,,

*I have decided to use the term badante in this text; it became commonplace in Romania in the early 2000s, when căpșunari (strawberry pickers) and badante (live-in carers) were the most important waves of migrations in our country yet. I find its social and cultural semantics crucial for the story of the Romanian diaspora. In Italy, the word badante is still used informally, though in public communication terms like “domestic worker” or “family assistant” are preferred.