Four migrant farm workers were killed when they were locked inside a van and set on fire near Amendolara, in Calabria (a rural region in southern Italy), on 1 June, after reportedly demanding unpaid wages from their supervisors. The victims, Afghan and Pakistani nationals aged 19 to 29, had been working as strawberry pickers under Italy's notorious "caporalato" system — an illegal labour-brokering arrangement, banned since 2016, in which intermediaries recruit and control migrant workers, skimming their wages and charging fees for transport and housing. The case has renewed scrutiny of a vast agricultural shadow economy that Italian research institute Eurispes estimates generates around €25 billion annually for criminal networks, with ripple effects reaching supermarket shelves across Switzerland and Germany, where cheaply produced Italian strawberries are widely sold in early spring.