Italy’s dynamics of labour exploitation in agriculture have recently attracted intense scrutiny, nationally and internationally. Legislative reform and multiple policy initiatives have been introduced since 2016 to address some of the factors driving exploitation within and beyond traditional mafia areas. While much scholarship has examined the effectiveness of legislation and enforcement, little attention has been paid to the policies’ more innovative dimensions. Indeed, recognising that repression is not enough to deter criminal exploitation of workers, Italy has devised a model of governance-with-civil-society, seeking to mobilise and empower grassroots actors to tackle the causes of these crimes. This article assesses whether this collaborative governance approach is proving able to achieve its goals. It draws on grey literature and semi-structured interviews with civil society actors tasked with fighting exploitation from ‘below’: unionists, activists, NGOs, independent observers, and alternative food producers. Borrowing from collaborative governance studies, it identifies strengths and weakness, and discusses whether the model offers a viable approach for fighting organised and white-collar crime in Italy beyond traditional ‘anti-mafia’ systems.

The introductory article sets out the background and the content of the Symposium on ‘Law and the Production of Precarious Work in Europe’. The analysis builds on the premise that European (EU) law, together with international and national law, is constitutive of precarious forms of work and work relations in different national and local contexts. The Symposium takes issue with the specific legal frameworks and regimes that are related to structuring various forms of precarious and exploitable labour, by exploring how (EU) law orders the world of work through legal regimes and regulatory frameworks governing specific forms of labour mobility across borders, as well as by looking at the other components of the structures and institutional interactions underlying the broader political economy where precarious forms of work materialise.

This article unpacks some severe forms of exploitation of workers, resulting from the use of free provision of services for purposes that it was not intended to fulfil, under internal market law. It explores how this evolution of posting relates to the existence of a market resting only on the international assignment of workers, and proposes that the European Union (EU) takes steps to limit or prohibit assignment of labour, especially in the sectors (agriculture, meat sector, construction) where posting of workers, as some recent cases show, leads to extreme forms of exploitation that can be tagged as slavery.

Established in war, embedded in communities and operational in every major natural and man-made disaster, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (the Movement) – including 191 National Societies – is uniquely positioned to address the humanitarian needs of migrants at all points of their journey. With migration on the rise and an area of intense debate, this article examines the work of Australian Red Cross and the collective efforts of the International Federation of Red Cross Red and Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Asia Pacific Migration Network, particularly across 2015-17, to support the Movement in the region in providing assistance and protection to those who are most vulnerable. It considers the progress made so far, and the potential of the Movement to engage more effectively and collaboratively on opportunities and challenges into the future.