Essential but Exploitable: Migrant Agri-Food Workers in Italy and Spain

The Covid-19 pandemic crisis has shown that migrant workers are essential for the agri-food system, especially in Spain and Italy. The development of fruit and vegetable production in both countries has importantly relied on migrant labour due to integration in verticalized value chains and competition in neoliberal globalization. Migration and asylum policies as well as mobility policies and recruitment mechanisms have made labour differentiated, precarious, cheap, flexible and constantly renewed to match the specific demand in the sector. In both countries, the national governments have promoted different interventions to address labour exploitation, migrant workers' vulnerabilities, and also labour shortage risks, following internal socio-political confrontation and pressures from different actors. Having pointed out the interplay of dynamics and mechanisms causing labour exploitation in the agri-food system, this contribution will analyse the political interventions in the two countries showing how they shape specific migration and labour regimes. © 2022 Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Can Social Media Replace a Suspended Rite? An Example from Central Italy

In 2020 and 2021, the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic suspended or limited important rites and the web became the place to fill the void. In March 2020, I started to conduct virtual fieldwork on this development from the perspective of what happened to the pilgrimage to the Holy Trinity of Vallepietra (Central Italy). © 2022, Znanstvena zalozba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani. All rights reserved.

Mild-to-moderate COVID-19 impact on the cardiorespiratory fitness in young and middle-aged populations.

The goal of the present study was to compare pulmonary function test (PFT) and cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) performance in COVID-19 survivors with a control group (CG). This was a cross-sectional study. Patients diagnosed with COVID-19, without severe signs and symptoms, were evaluated one month after the infection. Healthy volunteers matched for sex and age constituted the control group. All volunteers underwent the following assessments: i) clinical evaluation, ii) PTF; and iii) CPET on a cycle ergometer. Metabolic variables were measured by the CareFusion Oxycon Mobile device. In addition, heart rate responses, peak systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and perceived exertion were recorded. Twenty-nine patients with COVID-19 and 18 healthy control subjects were evaluated. Surviving patients of COVID-19 had a mean age of 40 years and had higher body mass index and persistent symptoms compared to the CG (P<0.05), but patients with COVID-19 had more comorbidities, number of medications, and greater impairment of lung function (P<0.05). Regarding CPET, patients surviving COVID-19 had reduced peak workload, oxygen uptake (V̇O2), carbon dioxide output (V̇CO2), circulatory power (CP), and end-tidal pressure for carbon dioxide (PETCO2) (P<0.05). Additionally, survivors had depressed chronotropic and ventilatory responses, low peak oxygen saturation, and greater muscle fatigue (P<0.05) compared to CG. Despite not showing signs and symptoms of severe disease during infection, adult survivors had losses of lung function and cardiorespiratory capacity one month after recovery from COVID-19. In addition, cardiovascular, ventilatory, and lower limb fatigue responses were the main exercise limitations.