This article critically assesses the criminal law approach to labour exploitation and challenges the assumption that its limited effectiveness depends on the hesitation and unwillingness of migrant workers to collaborate with competent authorities. It adopts a legal mobilisation approach to explore how law and litigation can effectively play a role in fighting labour exploitation. It does so by focusing on the experience of collective mobilisation of migrant farmworkers in the Agro Pontino in Italy. In accordance with the findings emerging from the case study, the article makes an attempt at rethinking strategies for fighting labour exploitation in Europe, based on the needs and expectations of exploited workers as described in the 2019 FRA Report on labour exploitation. It proposes therefore an exercise of “legal imagination” that aims to identify under EU law the provisions that would allow to translate these needs and expectations into legal claims.

本文批判性地评估了刑法对劳动剥削的处理方法，并对以下假设提出质疑，即其有效性有限取决于农民工犹豫不决和不愿与主管当局合作。它采用法律动员的方式，探讨法律和诉讼如何有效发挥打击劳动剥削的作用。它通过关注意大利 Agro Pontino 农民工集体动员的经验来做到这一点。根据案例研究的发现，本文试图根据 2019 年 FRA 中描述的被剥削工人的需求和期望，重新思考欧洲打击劳工剥削的战略关于劳动剥削的报告。因此，它建议运用“法律想象力”，旨在根据欧盟法律确定允许将这些需求和期望转化为法律主张的条款。