Heat finds those with nowhere to hide

The heatwave gripping Europe has become a story of numbers: 40 degrees in France, record June temperatures in the UK, red alerts across 72 French departments. Italy's press has dutifully reported the spectacle. But the international coverage tells a quieter, more troubling story running beneath the headlines. According to reports from the field, migrant farm workers in Puglia are wilting in corrugated iron shanties while tending the crops that feed the continent. The heat has no mercy for those without air conditioning, without shade, without choice about where they work or sleep.

What the world's wires are beginning to trace is a pattern: extreme weather does not strike evenly. Rome's Bioparco can afford frozen treats and climate-controlled shelters for its animals. The Uffizi in Florence has air conditioning—when it works. But in the sprawling shanty towns of southern Italy's agricultural heartland, there is only corrugated iron and the sun. The Guardian and other outlets have documented this disparity in other European crises; here it is again, rendered visible by heat.

The heatwave is also straining the systems meant to manage normal life. Rome's airports are threatening to suspend the EU's new digital border system to avoid summer chaos. Power cuts are rippling across Italian cities as demand for cooling surges. These are the failures of infrastructure under stress. But they affect the tourist and the commuter. The migrant worker in a field has no such infrastructure to fail him. He simply endures.

We are told that climate change is 'unequivocally' human-caused, that the intensity of this heatwave marks a shift. If so, Italy's margin—the undocumented, the seasonal, the desperate—will feel it first and worst. The world's press is beginning to notice. The question is whether anyone will act on what they see.