Italy’s migrant fruit pickers

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Italy, Georgia Meloni’s coalition government gained power on an anti-immigration political platform. But faced with low birth-rates and a dwindling workforce, the prime minister has had to be pragmatic. Over the next two years, hundreds of thousands of temporary visas are being offered to migrant workers, mainly from Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, to help fill the gaps. In the far south of Italy, one of the country’s poorest regions, Calabria, is famous for its citrus fruit, and thousands of farms need workers to pick their produce. Some of the migrant workers live in terrible conditions. Lizzy McNeill reports on what the reality is on the ground.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:07.2	Things just swirling around my head.
0:09.6	Am I really the product of this?
0:12.1	Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests.
0:17.0	Little did I know what more was to come.
0:19.5	I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift,
0:23.6	we'll hear more stories emerging out of the ever-expanding global DNA database.
0:28.8	They did know that I was different.
0:31.7	You had kids together.
0:33.0	Yeah.
0:33.5	Then you met.
0:34.3	Then we met.
0:35.2	The Gift.
0:36.1	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:42.0	Oh, it's got pretty flowers.
0:43.4	I didn't know oranges had flowers like that.
0:45.2	I mean, obviously they do because it means to be pollinated.
0:47.9	But wow.
0:49.8	That's a really nice scent.
0:51.8	You should smell that, John.
0:54.0	It's not citrusy. It's very sweet, very floral, but I can also smell the oranges.
1:02.8	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Lizzie McNeil in the far south of Italy, in the toe of the country.
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