“We are suffering here” – Dead End Rosarno


  • Photographer
    Jan Lieske
  • Prize
    2nd Place / Editorial/Photo Essay
  • Company/Studios
    University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hanover
  • Date of Photograph
    February
  • Technical Info
    Canon 5D

Rosarno is a small town in the province of Reggio Calabria at the Italian Mediterranean coast, well known for the production of citrus fruits, olive oil, and wines. However, on the 7th of January 2010, Rosarno also gained notoriety for racist motivated riots against African migrant workers. Thereupon, 2000 Africans were evacuated almost over night to other areas of the country. Once asylum is granted, refugees are completely left alone, without any public support. But recently evacuated refugees from Rosarno did not have any other choice than coming back and once again seeking employment, ironically from those people, who chased them out some weeks earlier. Living conditions are unspeakable. At the periphery, they live in abject poverty - no electricity, no drinking water, no medical care. Being entirely on their own, they try to survive in an environment, which has absolutely nothing in common with their European Dream but strongly reminds them of those situations they actually fled from. Every morning at 7 o’clock, they are standing at the arterial roads for hours and hours, desperately waiting and hoping for a job to be offered - a one-day job at the plantations, paying no more than 25 Euros. Whether or when they get paid is up to the planter’s arbitrariness. The dream of a better life in Europe’s prosperity has disappeared long ago and gave way to despair and helplessness. Rosarnos migrant workers are facing dead end Europe, being neither able to go forward nor willing to turn back.

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