This sequence of rhetorical questions about an intrepid labour force capable of sustaining modern urban life appears in A Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr’s remarkable portrait of Mediterranean migrant workers in the cities of northern and central Europe in the early 1970s. Combining photography, ethnography, statistics, poetry and Marxist political economy, Berger and Mohr trace the migrants’ evolving relationship with the tentacular metropolis: from the seductive images of consumer goods relayed to their home villages to the apprehension as they transit through regional cities on the way to expatriation; from the bewilderment on arrival at their destination, through the physical and mental strains of their labour, to their eventual return home to flaunt the trappings of modern life and to entice the next in line to leave. Along this journey we encounter teams of Yugoslavian, Italian and Spanish workers deep beneath Geneva as they dig a new drainage system to allow the city to expand.