<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBorgo Mezzanone is made of people, animals, homes and shops, water containers, uncollected waste, cars, bikes, mopeds, roads, and shacks. It is not a static place but one in continuous transformation. People come and go, mostly following seasonal work demands. Some stay, and for them, Borgo Mezzanone becomes home,\u201d<\/em> explains Francesca Rubiolo, a<\/strong> doctor<\/strong> who has worked with the INTERSOS team in Foggia for the past year and a half.<\/p>\n A first encounter with this Apulian “ghetto”\u2014one of Italy’s largest informal migrant settlements\u2014leaves a vivid impression of accumulated waste and the strong smell of burnt plastic. But Borgo Mezzanone is much more than that: it is a place full of contradictions, hard to define even for those of us who work there every day. It is a dead-end in the migratory journey, a stark reflection of thirty years of failed immigration policy, a ticking time bomb.<\/p>\n The informal settlement of Borgo Mezzanone lies in the Apulian countryside, between the municipalities of Manfredonia and Foggia. Located on the grounds of a former military airfield, repurposed in 2005 into an asylum seeker reception center (CARA), a vast informal settlement has since sprung up just outside the center\u2019s perimeter. During the peak summer season, it becomes home to approximately 3,000 people<\/strong>\u2014mostly migrant farmworkers drawn to Puglia for the tomato harvest.<\/p>\n Despite existing for over twenty years, this \u201cnon-city\u201d is relatively unknown. When it does make the news, it is often due to fires or accidents in the shacks\u2014events that have sometimes taken lives.<\/p>\n \u201cAlong the notional boundary between the two municipalities, hundreds of makeshift shelters rise\u2014containers, shacks built from sheet metal, plastic, wood, or concrete. They have been here for years, constantly evolving, growing, and multiplying. Some are bought or rented, some burn down with their inhabitants, only to be rebuilt. They fill up and empty out depending on the season, in a continuous cycle,\u201d<\/em> says Daniela Campo, an INTERSOS nurse<\/strong> who brings our mobile clinic daily to the former airstrip. \u201cIt\u2019s a neighborhood with a population larger than the adjacent village but without essential services: electricity is supplied by generators or improvised wiring, creating chaotic black webs of cables that snake above the entire settlement. There is no sewage system; most shelters lack any bathroom facilities. Waste collection is non-existent, so garbage piles up, reshaping the landscape. At night, trucks unload unknown waste here. The black smoke often seen rising from different parts of the area is a \u2018solution\u2019 to the waste problem. It is a place of exclusion and isolation, where segregation and poverty limit any path to a better future, a place where basic rights do not reach. Yet for many, this is still home.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n But Borgo Mezzanone is also a place where necessity has led to resilience.<\/p>\n \u201cThe former airstrip is a functional gathering point,\u201d<\/em> Daniela continues, \u201cone of the few in an otherwise inhospitable environment. It fosters social networks and intercommunity solidarity, a microcosm where diverse cultures stay alive through dialects, food, prayers, music, traditional medicine, and survival skills formed in places where prosperity is a very different concept. Among the narrow paths of the settlement, life is vibrant: grocery shops, garages, barbers, restaurants, butcher shops, and secondhand clothing vendors. There are also places to gather, talk, dance, and enjoy life together.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhen you first arrive here, it seems like a place where dignity couldn\u2019t exist,\u201d<\/em> says Francesca Palazzo, a social worker<\/strong> who joined INTERSOS in Foggia in 2022.<\/p>\n “Then, you meet the people\u2014men and women (the latter only about 10% of the population) who return from work exhausted and dirty, sharing laughter and conversation. As you walk among the shacks, you find the dignity of people who have built a home here despite the lack of sanitation and the makeshift materials available to them. These are welcoming homes where people invite you in to have a drink and rest. You find dignity in the small businesses they have created, in the restaurants, markets, and bars, and in the proud gazes of men and women who walk with heads held high along dirty, foul-smelling streets, greeting you with a smile. The hardships remain, along with all forms of exploitation. But you begin to understand why many choose to stay, struggle to leave, or eventually return. The airstrip represents a community, a point of reference, a place that welcomes you regardless of your past or nationality.”<\/em><\/p>\n Borgo Mezzanone has nearly all the services one might need, adapted to the context. Yet, it remains a place of deprivation.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd because deprivation often leads to abuse, alienation and oppression become ways of escaping poverty. Here, everything is consumed cheaply\u2014alcohol, drugs, and sex,\u201d<\/em> says Daniela Campo, our nurse. \u201cThis place often becomes one of hardship and violence. If there is a support network here, there are also those who become trapped within it. And as always, the first victims are those who already face discrimination in mainstream society: women, LGBTQI+ people, and those with disabilities or mental health issues.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In this setting, INTERSOS\u2019 mobile unit has been working since 2018 to provide assistance to the many people who, for various reasons, live here, either temporarily or permanently. These are people who work in the fields under extreme conditions each summer, ensuring that low-cost tomato sauce reaches our supermarkets.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t see them at work, but we meet them at the end of the day as they return from long hours in the fields, walking in lines along the dirt road that leads from the main highway to the settlement,\u201d<\/em> says our mobile clinic staff. \u201cSome arrive by car, others jump out of white vans that quickly drive off. Often, they stop by our mobile clinic, still wearing their raincoats, rubber boots, and work uniforms. They have open wounds from work tools, swollen eyes due to allergies, and body, back, or leg pain. Without us, just steps from their homes, few would seek medical help or go to the hospital for their injuries; instead, they might try to treat themselves. The clinic, in these cases, provides the fastest way to find temporary relief.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Foggia, we asked our colleagues on the ground to shed light on this vast informal settlement\u2014a makeshift city, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":108287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[693],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-italy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n