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The Family and the ‘Economic Miracle’: Social Transformation, Work, Leisure and Development at Bovisa and Comasina (Milan), 1950–70

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

John Foot
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Traditional histories of the Italian ‘Economic Miracle’ have concentrated on two phenomena: the factory and migration. The family has occupied a position of secondary importance, being treated as of lesser interest than ‘other’ arenas of everyday life, in particular the workplace. Those who have eulogised the miracle have underlined the massive effort and sacrifice of millions of workers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Those who oppose the ‘ideology’ behind the boom have looked to the latent conflicts (and problems) produced by unplanned economic development – frictions which were to explode in 1968. The reality was a complicated combination of both these interpretations. Some took the road of opposition to the system, many millions lapped up the values of the boom, most were affected in some way by both ‘world-views’. The relationship between the family and the boom was a two-way one. The Italian family had as much effect on the ‘miracle’ as the ‘miracle’ did on the family (in much the same way that mass internal migration was both a cause and a consequence of the boom). Each shaped and moulded the other in various and crucial ways. The family was Janus-faced, ‘both a custodian of tradition and an agent of change’.2

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Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , November 1995 , pp. 315 - 338
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 ‘Mutamenti e istituzioni nell'Italia tra il 1960 e il 1970’, in Graziano, L. and Tarrow, S., eds, La crisi Italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), i. 252.Google Scholar

2 Hareven, T.K., ‘Recent Research on the History of the Family’ (thereafter Hareven, ‘Recent Research’), in Drake, M., ed., Time, Family and Community. Perspectives on Family and Community History (thereafter Drake, Time) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 30.Google Scholar

3 ‘Operosità milanese’.

4 Ecco la grande Milano (Milan: Nuova Mercurio, 1970).

5 The film director Luchino Visconti spent part of his childhood near Bovisa and shot scenes from Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and his Brothers, 1960) in the zone. His great uncle was Carlo Erba, whose chemical factory still stands there. Giovanni Testori wrote about the area in his most famous Milanese novel, II ponte della Ghisolfa (Milan: Garzanti, 1958). The film director Ermanno Olmi was brought up in Bovisa and writes warmly about the neighbourhood, ‘Milano, la solitaria. Olmi ricorda la città che non c'è più’, La Repubblica, 10 Sept.1993. In 1992, when Osvaldo Bagnoli was made manager of the football team Inter Milan, much was made of his return to his Milanese roots. Bagnoli was born in Bovisa and his mother still lives there. La Gazzetta dello Sport, a paper renowned for its accuracy, sent a reporter to the zone to investigate Bagnoli's humble origins. They found friends ready to pay homage to Bagnoli's ‘simplicity’. One story was emblematic. On finding his mother asleep, Bagnoli, instead of going to a five-star hotel in the city centre, spent the night in Bovisa's local hotel. ‘We from Bovisa’, said another friend, ‘are like that’. S. Vernazza, ‘Tra la gente dell'Osvaldo’, La Gazzetta dello Sport, 22 Sept.1992. Of course, much of this has the air of self-fulfilling myth about it. Bovisa was never as ‘red’ as it has been painted – over 25 per cent have always voted for the Christian Democrats – but the neighbourhood was seen in the city as the typical example of a ‘red’ zone caught up in the boom. For the concentration of industrial work at Bovisa see Table 1.

6 M. Grandi and A. Pracchi, Milano: Guida all‘architettura moderna (Bologna: Zaninchelli, 1980), 260. The estate was made up of 83 buildings and 11,000 rooms.

7 Pellicciari, G., Strutture di relazione e vita sociale nei quartieri della periferia di Milan. Monografie di quartiere: Comasina-Baggio (thereafter Pellicciari, Strutture) (Milan: ILSES, 1964), 1.Google Scholar

8 See V. Castronovo, ‘L'IACP di Milano dal 1908 al 1970 nel quadro della politica edilizia nazionale’, in Case popolari: urbanistica e legislazione, Milano, 1900–1970 (Milan: Edilizia Popolare, 1974), 78; Bai, G., ed., Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari Milano 1908–1983: dal lavatoio al ‘solare’ (Milan: Rizzoli, 1984).Google Scholar

9 Villa, C., L'autosufficienza dei Quartieri Residenziali’, Edilizia Populare, Vol. 21, no. 2 (1958), 18.Google Scholar

10 It would have been very difficult for the most recent immigrants to obtain public housing. The IACP usually required evidence of three years'y’ residence before accepting any applications for housing and there was a long waiting list. T. Amadei, ‘Il sud a Milano’, Il Ponte, Vol. 19, no. 7 (1963), 921.

11 La cittàPetrillo, G., La capitale del miracolo. Sviluppo lavoro potere a Milano, 1953–1962 (thereafter Petrillo, La capitale) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1992), 81.Google Scholar By 1963 only 3,000 out of a possible 60,000 children were attending the thirty nurseries (for under-threes) in Milan. ibid., 429. When Alfa Romeo workers were asked in the early 1970s about the greatest needs in their area, nurseries came top of the list. V. Tavolato and L. Zanuso, ‘Le condizioni di vita nella società’ (thereafter Tavolato and Zanuso, ‘Le condizioni’), Classe, no. 8 (1974), 167. It can be assumed that children were cared for by a combination of the mother, relatives and friends. The latter type of exchange was more common in the Piano Romita blocks at Comasina.

36 For these networks see Il quartiere, 53.

37 For the tiredness of commuting workers during the boom see the survey of Alfa Romeo workers, Tavolato and Zanuso, ‘Le condizioni’, (33 per cent spent their free time at ‘rest’, 172). For a description of the ‘workers’ trains during the boom see L. Bianciardi, La vita agra (Milan: Garzanti, 1962), 59–60; Bocca, G., Miracolo all'Italiana, 3rd ed. (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980), 84–90Google Scholar; and Petrillo, La capitale, 58–9.

38 The attendance at the three social centres on the estate reflected the social divisions at Comasina, ILSES (i.e. one centre was mainly for Piano Romita families, another for those from the Piano Tupini blocks and a third for those in the INA-Casa flats). Pellicciari, Strutture, 36.

39 For the genesis and the activities of Church organisations at Comasina see II quartiere, 15–18, 27 and 29.

40 Other statistics for television watching can be found in ibid., 60. Only 3.4 per cent of the 450 men interviewed never watched television.

41 I have not included the figure of the ‘working mother’ here, but at Milan in 1959, 41 per cent of women of working age had an extra-domestic job. Petrillo, La capitale, 50–1. Just over 30 per cent of Milanese families had more than one member at work. Ibid., 54.

42 See, for example, the blanket judgement of Iosa, A. and Nascimbene, A., Dall’ accentramento al decentramento amministrativo. L'esperienza di Milano (Milan: Centro Culturale Perini, 1976), 222.Google Scholar

43 On visiting the estate in 1994, I noticed that wire fences had been constructed around the gardens of the (ex-) Piano Tupini homes, a logical outcome of the tensions present thirty years earlier.

44 Una vita operaia (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 130. This is an oral history of a working-class family who lived in the Falck Village close by the Falck metalwork factory at Sesto San Giovanni on the periphery of Milan.

45 Cited in Grasso, A., Storia della televisione italiana (Milan, Garzanti, 1992), 23.Google Scholar The immigrant's payments for his television amounted to more than his rent.

46 535 families out of 600 had a television set. The figures for the other Milanese quarters surveyed were lower – Perrucchetti, 76.5%; Barona 72.5%; Baggio 66.8%; Forlanini 82.5% – Il quartiere, 80n., as were those for Italy in general. In 1965 only 49 per cent of Italian families had a television. Ginsborg, P., Storia d'Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi. Società e politica 1943–1988 (thereafter Ginsborg, Storia) (Turin, Einaudi, 1989), 326Google Scholar; the comparable figure for the UK in 1963 (for private homes) was 82 per cent, Burnett, Social History, 274.

47 Il quartiere, 90.

48 In this particular bar, seventeen people were watching a film, Il quartiere, 73. In another bar, of the three ‘watchers’, one was the son of the bar-owner and another a solitary 20-year old. ibid., 83, and see also 86.

49 Pellicciari, Strutture, 32.

50 ibid.

51 The Alfa survey found that 85 per cent of workers had a television set and only 20 per cent a telephone. Tavolato and Zanuso, ‘Le condizioni’, 168.

52 See P. Pavolini, ‘I coreani di Milano’ (thereafter Pavolini, ‘I coreani’), Il Mondo, 29 Jan. 1963 (and the accompanying photo), F. Di Bella, ‘Il televisione in soffitta’, in Perroni, A., ed., Cronache della immigrazione siciliana a Milano (Milan: COI, 1965), 48–9Google Scholar, and ‘Per comprarsi il televisore il primo debito degli immigrati’, Corriere della Sera, 18 April 1962, which described a family at Turin with a television and L137,000 of debts with local food shops.

53 Cited in Grasso, Storia, 23.

54 ‘cip’, ‘Qui Parlate Voi’., (Sig. Benati),Collaborazione, Vol. 13, no. 10 (1962), 3.Google Scholar

55 Majorino, G., ‘Il tempo libero e gli immigrati. I rapporti tra i vari gruppi’, in, Pellicciari, G., ed., L'immigrazione nel triangolo industriale (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1970), 314.Google Scholar

56 ibid.

57 There seems little evidence for the ILSES claim that television's appeal was far stronger among the working classes. Il quartiere, 107.

58 O. Calabrese, ‘I mass media tra sviluppo dell'informazione e organizzazione del consenso’ in Tranfaglia, N. and Firpo, M., eds, L'età contemporanea, 7, 2, La cultura (Turin: UTET, 1988), 634–6.Google Scholar The idea that the city of Milan was at the vanguard of this transformation is reinforced by the sections on television in Pizzorno's, A.Comunità e razionalizzazione. Ricerca sociologia su un caso di sviluppo industriale (thereafter Pizzorno, Comunità) (Turin: Einaudi, 1960).Google Scholar At Rho (just outside Milan) in the late 1950s only very small numbers of families possessed a television (42 and 193–4) and the time spent watching the television was far lower than that at Milan in 1962. ibid., 279–80.

59 For the debates and the literature concerning sociability and isolation see McQuail, D., Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 1992), 228–9.Google Scholar

60 Il quartiere, 51–2.

61 ibid., 104.

62 Banfield, E., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: The Free Press, 1958).Google Scholar For the extended discussion (and bibliography) around the issue of ‘amoral familism’ see De Masi, D., ed., Le basi morali di una società arretrata (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1976).Google Scholar

63 ‘Familism’ in Ginsborg, P., ed., Stato dell' Italia (Milan: Il Saggiatore Bruno Mondadori, 1994), 79Google Scholar; see also idem, ‘La famiglia italiana oltre il privato per superare l'isolamento’, in ibid., 284–90.

64 See the classic work of Willmott and Young, Family, and the analysis in C Saraceno, ‘La famiglia: i paradossi della costruzione del privato’ (thereafter Saraceno, ‘Famiglia’), in Airès, , Duby, G., eds, La vita privata, V: Il Novecento (Bari: Laterza, 1988), 185–227Google Scholar (Eng. trans., ‘The Italian Family: Paradoxes of Privacy’, in A. Prost and Vincent, G., eds, A History of Private Life, V: Riddles of Identity in Modern Times (Harvard University Press: XX, 1991), 451–501Google Scholar (thereafter Saraceno, ‘Italian Family’).

65 P. Werbner, ‘Avoiding the Ghetto: Pakistani Migrants and Settlement Shifts in Manchester’, in Drake, Time, 255. See also Pizzorno, Comunità, 184, and Ginsborg, Storia, 330–331.

66 We should also be careful in using statistics and surveys to indicate ‘isolation’. Even in situations of extreme poverty and anarchy, such as a Brazilian slum, researchers have discovered extensive networks of kinship and solidarity. J. Jackson jnr and L. P. Moch, ‘Migration and the Social History of Modern Europe’, in Drake, Time, 183 (citing the work of Perlman, J. E., The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).Google Scholar

67 The Fall of Public Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 311.Google Scholar

68 Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 2nd ed., Williams, E., ed. (London: Routledge, 1990), 27.Google Scholar

69 Saraceno, ‘Italian Family’, 474–6.

70 I can find no mention of Comasina in A. Daolio's study of housing struggles at Milan, ‘Le lotte per la casa a Milano’, in ibid., Le lotte per la casa in Italia. Milano, Torino, Roma, Napoli (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1974), 35–65.Google Scholar

71 Due più Due. Periodico mensile di vita aziendale e di cultura, Vol. 11, no. 1 (1960).Google Scholar

72 In this section I will be concentrating on the FACE-Standard factory at Bovisa. In 1962 the factory employed 4,213 people (of whom 1,405 were administrative staff), more than 30 per cent of them women. See ‘Tutti noi in cifre’, Collaborazione, Vol. 13, no. 5, (1962), 4. We also have precise figures for the number of children of these employees in 1961 – 707 under seven and 405 aged between eight and twelve, for a total of 1,112. ‘E.S.’, ‘La distribuzione dei premi ai figli dei dipendenti’, ibid., Vol. 12, no. 1 (1961), 11–12. I will not be looking at another crucial area of family-work contacts, the family business, but for a survey see G. De Rita, ‘L'kimpresa famiglia’, in Melograni, La famiglia, 383–416.

73 ‘Mensa’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 1 (1961), 6. Without doubt, the subject which took up the greatest time of the Internal Committee at FACE during this period was that of the mensa, Archivio Fiom, passim. There were mense in most big Milanese factories. See Petrillo, La capitale, 146–50.

74 ‘I nostri Anzianissimi’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 12 (1961), 4. The club ‘Un quarto del secolo’ awarded medals to those who had been with the company for twenty-five years.

75 For the anniversaries of deaths see ibid., Vol. 12, no. 2 (1961), 6. For births, marriages, and deaths in workers’ families, ibid., Vol. 13, no. 6 (1962), 16.

76 Here the two separate ‘families’ – not for the first time – came into contact, ‘ E.S. ’, ‘La distribuzione dei premi ai figli dei dipendenti’, ibid., Vol. 12, no. 1 (1961), 11–12.

77 Petrillo, La capitale, 146.

78 See ‘Servizio sociale di fabbrica’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 6 (1961), 2. Many factories also organised pension schemes, discount shops for their workers, study grants, study courses and insurance schemes against illness. Petrillo, La capitale, 146–50.

79 In 1961, for example, FACE organised two Colonie for children (aged six to twelve years) of its employees, one in the mountains and one at the seaside. Children with health problems were given priority for the holidays, which were at a very low cost (L3,000 for a month). ‘Colonie Marine e Montane’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 2 (1961), 2. Colonie were also organised by companies such as Ercole Marelli, Franco Tosi, Falck and Borletti. Petrillo, La capitale, 146–148.

80 ‘cip’, , Qui Parlate Voi, (J. Ganassini), Collaborazione, Vol. 13, no. 5 (1962), 2.Google Scholar Often the trips were on Sundays. See ‘Gite domenicali’, ibid., Vol. 14, no. 5 (1963).

81 ‘Ancora sulla “povera Milano”’, ibid., Vol. 14, no. 2 (1963), 8–9.

82 ‘Qui Parlate voi’, ibid., Vol. 12, no. 1 (1961), 3.

83 Petrillo, La capitale, 148–9.

84 Almost all the big Milanese companies used similar magazines during the 1950s and 1960s. Some, like La Ferriera produced by Falck, were sent to the workers’ homes and aimed more at the family at home than the Falck employee. Petrillo, La capitale, 148.

85 For an essentially negative study of ‘human relations’ propaganda in Italy see L. Guiotto, ‘Ideologia e impresa nei giornali aziendali dal dopoguerra agli anni Sessanta’, Classe, no. 21 (1982), 213–34, and for a more sophisticated approach, Petrillo, La capitale, 146–50.

86 ‘Qui Parlate voi’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 1 (1961), 3. Giuseppe Mottadelli was the oldest worker interviewed; he had been at FACE for twenty-three years.

87 ‘cip’, ‘Qui Parlate Voi’., (Sig. Benati), ibid., Vol. 13, no. 10 (1962), 3.

88 ‘Scorci di vita aziendale’, ibid., Vol. 13, no. 5 (1962), 12–13.

89 ibid., Vol. 14, no. 1 (1963), 8–9.

90 ibid., Vol. 14, no. 6 (1963).

91 ‘Scorci di vita aziendale. Filtri a Cristallo’, ibid., Vol. 14, no. 5 (1963).

92 ‘Qui Parlate voi’, ibid., Vol. 12, no. 1 (1961), 3. However, Basini drew a contrast between the factory and the ‘peace and quiet of my home’. ibid., Vol. 13, no. 6 (1962), 2.

93 Angelo Rossignoli's twenty-four-year-old son was also employed at FACE, ibid., Vol. 12, no. 5 (1961).

94 Petrillo, La capitale, 69.

95 ‘La nostra copertina’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 11 (1961), 2.

96 Petrillo, La capitale, 148.

97 23.9 per cent of specialised workers and 31.5 per cent of manual workers indicated their main friends as coming from the ‘old’ Alfa working class. For the ‘new’ working class the percentages were 10.8 and 16.3. 12.2 per cent confessed to having no friends at all. Tavolato and Zanuso, ‘Le condizioni’, 173–5.

98 ‘F.F.’, ‘Un saluto agli Anziani’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 2 (1961).

99 ibid. In fact, organisations for retired workers reinforced the family–work connection. Retired Falck workers became falcketti, those from Alfa alfisti and so on. Petrillo, La capitale.

100 ‘cip’, ‘Qui Parlate Voi’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 7–8 (1961), 3.

101 ‘Scorci di vita aziendale: Ancora il Reparto Complessi’, ibid., 8–9.

102 Archivio Fiom, FACE, F.2, B.29.

103 ‘Qui Parlate Voi’, (Giuseppe Pettinari), Collaborazione, Vol. 13, no. 1 (1962), 3.

104 ‘cip’, ‘Qui Parlate Voi’, ibid., Vol. 13, no. 4 (1962), 3.

105 Petrillo, La capitale, 54.

106 ‘cip’, ‘Qui Parlate Voi’, Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 9 (1961), 3. ‘I haven't even got time to take my jacket off,’ added Filoseta.

107 Interview with P.R. di Cuneo, ‘born 1943, fifteen years at Fiat’, conducted by E. Delpiano for the Cooperativa Matraia di Torino for a project entitled ‘Caraterristiche e comportamenti degli operai Fiat in lista di mobilità’ (1981) and quoted in Revelli, M., Lavorare in Fiat, da Valletta ad Agnelli a Romiti. Operai Sindacati Robot (Milan: Garzanti, 1989), 34.Google Scholar For Balbo, writing in 1976, many workers ‘exhausted after the working day, let themselves be absorbed by television’, Stato, 110.

108 Barbagli, Provando, 61, and see also 63.

109 Pavolini, ‘I coreani’. In the poorest blocks at Comasina, ILSES reported that there were ‘frequent arguments’. Il quartiere, 13.

110 Barbagli, Provando, 63.

111 Lega ‘Bovisa’ di Milano, Libro sulle condizioni di vita e di lavoro alla FACE, n.d. [1955], printed in Rieser, V. and Ganapini, L., eds, Libri bianchi sulla condizione operaia negli anni cinquanta. Una ricerca promossa dal Centro ricerche e studi sindacali della Fiom-Cgil di Milano (Bari: De Donato, 1981), 88.Google Scholar

112 G. Lucchelli, ‘Una città al singolare’, La Repubblica, 6 Aug. 1994. See also G. Altieri, ‘Che tipi le famiglie!’, Politica ed economica, no. 5 (1991), 27–9, and A. Golini, ‘Profilo demografico della famiglia italiana’, in Melograni, La famiglia, 327–83.

113 See F. Barbano, ‘Evoluzione dei consumi e vita quotidiana nella società industriale’, in Tranfaglia, N. and Firpo, M., eds, La Storia. L'Età Contemporanea (Turin: UTET, 1988 ), 464–5Google Scholar, and G. Sapelli, ‘Le crisi italiane e il capitalismo’, unpubl. conference paper, 1994, 3.

114 For the negative stereotype of this tendency, which characterised the theoretical approach taken by ILSES, see Il quartiere, 4.