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Next to the Dog Pound: Institutional Discourses and Practices About Rom Refugees in Left-Wing Bologna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Davide Però
Davide Però*
Affiliation:
Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, UK, Telephone: 01273 678578, Fax: 01273 678571. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

This article examines the institutional discourses and practices that have characterized the process of incorporation of a group of Rom refugees from the former Yugoslavia in Bologna, the ‘showcase’ of the Italian Left. Following an anthropology of policy approach, the article provides insights into both the conditions of refugees in Italy and the relationships which exist between the political Left and the ‘new’ immigrations. This is done by showing how the discourses and the practices of the Left can be oppressive and how such oppression is not merely due to an inescapable macro-structural order of things but has local ‘origins’, too. Thus it is argued that if social justice is still a priority in the political agenda of the mainstream Left in Italy, as is claimed, then the Left has some rethinking to do in order to avoid its entanglement and responsibility in processes of oppression and domination in the context of migration.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 4 , Issue 2: Special Issue: The Italian experience of immigration , November 1999 , pp. 207 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. See for example Harrell-Bond, B.E. and Voutira, E., ‘Anthropology and the study of refugees’, Anthropology Today, 8, 4, August 1992, pp. 6–10; Black, Richard, ‘Refugees and asylum-seekers in Western Europe: new challenges’, in Black, Richard and Robinson, Vaughan (eds), Geography and Refugees. Patterns and Processes of Change, Belhaven, London, 1993, pp. 88–103; Malkki, Liisa H., ‘Refugees and exile: “from refugees studies” to the national order of things’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 1995, pp. 495–523.Google Scholar

2. Kertzer, David I., Comrades and Christians, Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, 1990, p. 272.Google Scholar

3. An exception to the rule is represented by Hellman, Judith Adler, ‘Immigrant “space” in Italy: when an emigrant sending becomes an immigrant receiving society’, Modern Italy, 2, 1/2, 1997, pp. 34–51; also Però, Davide, ‘Immigrants and politics in left-wing Bologna: results from participatory action research’, in King, Russell and Black, Richard (eds), Southern Europe and the New Immigrations, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 1997, pp. 158–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. This work is about to appear in my D.Phil, thesis at the University of Sussex under the title The Politics of Identity in Left-wing Bologna. Google Scholar

5. Shore, Cris and Wright, Susan, ‘Policy: a new field of anthropology’, in Shore, Cris and Wright, Susan (eds), Anthropology of Policy. Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power, Routledge, London, 1997, pp. 3–39.Google Scholar

6. However, it must be pointed out that participant observation in this context was greatly facilitated by the more general research approach I adopted during my fieldwork in Bologna, which consisted of a strategic combination of ethnography with elements of action and participatory forms of inquiry. For example, my witnessing of the officials' talks reported in this article was considerably helped by my active involvement in the ‘pro-refugees’ civic committee which was set up with the objective of confronting the racist reactions fomented by right-wing forces in the neighbourhood. Methodological discussions of my research approach appear in Davide Però. ‘Local action and academic knowledge: the experience from action and participation informed ethnography with immigrant workers in Bologna, Italy’, in Hussein, Karim and Però, Davide (eds), Linking Participatory Methodologies with People's Realities: Towards a Common Agenda, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, 1998, pp. 20–3; and Però, Davide, ‘Immigrants and politics in left-wing Bologna’, pp. 164–5 and ‘Political anthropology of Italy in action’, Anthropology in Action, 3, 3, 1996, pp. 36–8. A more detailed ethnography of the political struggle which developed in the Velodrome area appears in my D.Phil. thesis; see n. 4 above.Google Scholar

7. See Gennep, Arnold Van, The Rites of Passage, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1977 [1909]; also Eriksen, Thomas H., Small Places, Large Issues, Pluto Press, London, 1995.Google Scholar

8. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish, Penguin, London, 1991 [1977], p. 194.Google Scholar

9. Malkki, Liisa, Purity and Exile, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990, p. 15.Google Scholar

11. Though oppression and domination usually overlap, the former entails the latter but not vice versa. In other words, all oppressed groups are dominated, but not all dominated groups are necessarily oppressed.Google Scholar

12. Young, , Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 53.Google Scholar

13. Ibid.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 56.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 58.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

18. In doing so, however, one must bear in mind that different groups experience different combinations of the varied forms of oppression, and so do the different individuals within one group. As observed by Young, (ibid., p. 64), all groups claiming oppression are bound to suffer cultural imperialism, while the other oppressions vary.Google Scholar

19. Williams, Fiona, ‘Postmodernism, feminism and the question of difference’, in Parton, Nigel (ed.), Social Theory, Social Change and Social Work, Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 61–76.Google Scholar

20. The Rom are a gypsy population. The gypsies are considered to have left India a thousand years ago to embark on a journey which eventually led them to Europe, where they first appeared in the fourteenth century. The European gypsies are said to number 8 million and to constitute the continent's largest minority. Anthropologists have raised important questions on the issue of the origin of the gypsies, and on gypsy studies more generally. With reference to the British gypsies, Judith Okely has expressed scepticism on their supposed Indian origin. Most importantly, perhaps, anthropologists have drawn attention to the fact that the agenda of gypsy studies has been dominated for too long by a concern with the gypsies' origin and related questions, such as that of the extent to which they have preserved their original ‘Indianness’. Judith Okely and Michael Stewart seem to agree that this sort of obsession with the establishment of a single and exotic origin of the gypsy is not only of little scientific and policy relevance but also harmful to the gypsies. In fact, it may reinforce the widespread anti-gypsy sentiments which hold that gypsies are outsiders who do not belong to the European populations (while the opposite is the case) and thus weaken further the already scarce sense of responsibility and commitment that majority groups have towards the well-being of the gypsies. Besides, as Stewart reveals, such an insistent concern with the Indian origin of the gypsies ignores their own views of themselves: gypsies seem neither to care about where they come from nor to what extent they are ‘true’ or ‘bastardized’. Following on from the anthropological critique, then, the most important historical question about the gypsies is no longer that of their origin but that of their problematic relationship with the gadjes (non-gypsies). Such a conflictual relationship has been characterized—up to the present—by widespread and constant oppression, as the studies of David Crowe (among others) show. Such oppression, which witnessed its most dramatic moments during the Nazi era (when the gypsies, like the Jews, were exterminated en masse), continues today and characterizes democratic and progressive societies too, as this article shows with regard to Bologna. This extended note draws on the following references: Crowe, David M., A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia, I.B. Tauris, London, 1995; Okely, Judith, The Traveller-Gypsies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Stewart, Michael, The Time of the Gypsies, Westview Press, Boulder, 1997.Google Scholar

21. Berger, John, ‘Directions in hell’, New Left Review, 87/88, 1974, pp. 49–60.Google Scholar

22. Zorzella, Nazzarena, ‘La normativa in materia di profughi della ex-Jugoslavia. Aspetti di tutela delle minoranze etniche’, in Osservatorio Metropolitano delle Immigrazioni, La Società Multietnica , Provincia e Comune di Bologna, Bologna, 1996, pp. 107–12.Google Scholar

23. Quoted in Tiberio, Francesca, Senza memoria non c'è futuro. L'accoglienza ai profughi della ex-Jugoslavia a Bologna dal punto di vista del volontariato, Arciragazzi, Caritas Diocesana, Gruppo Reno and Opera Nomadi, Bologna, 1997, p. 3 (my translation).Google Scholar

24. Ibid., p. 2.Google Scholar

25. Malkki, , ‘Refugees and exile’.Google Scholar

26. This is examined in my D.Phil. thesis; see n. 4 above.Google Scholar

27. Malkki, , ‘Refugees and exile’, p. 498.Google Scholar

28. The pro-refugees committee was created by ‘progressive’ members of the local civil and political society. Its aim was to facilitate the relocation operation in the neighbourhood and, in particular, to counter the xenophobia fomented by the Right This was one of the contexts in which I combined ethnography with participatory action research, as indicated in n. 4 above.Google Scholar

29. This is my translation of the Italian expression ‘fumare come un turco’ commonly used to describe heavy smokers. The politically correct translation in English would probably be ‘smoke like chimneys’.Google Scholar

30. The CPA or Centro di Prima Accoglienza (‘Centre of First Shelter’) is the residential structure designed to host regular immigrant workers in Italy. I have extensively documented one of the CPAs in Bologna in: Però, Davide, ‘Immigrants and politics in left-wing Bologna’.Google Scholar

31. Maher, Vanessa, ‘Immigration and social identities’, in Lumley, David and Forgacs, David (eds), Italian Cultural Studies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 171.Google Scholar

32. Marcetti, Corrado and Solimano, Nicola, ‘Allontanate le vostre tende, avvicinate i vostri cuori’, in Brunello, Piero (ed.), L'urbanistica del disprezzo, Manifestolibri, Rome, 1996, pp. 63–75.Google Scholar

33. Lodi, Valeria, ‘La realtà del campo profughi del Trebbo di Reno’, in Osservatorio Metropolitano delle Immigrazioni, La Società Multietnica , Provincia e Comune di Bologna, Bologna, 1996, p. 167.Google Scholar

34. Among the very limited literature on refugees in Italy see Donne, Marcella Delle, ‘Difficulties of refugees towards integration: the Italian case’, in Donne, Marcella Delle (ed.), Avenues to Integration: Refugees in Contemporary Europe, Ipermedium, Naples, 1995, pp. 110–44.Google Scholar

35. Marcetti, and Solimano, , ‘Allontanate le vostre tende’, p. 66 (my translation).Google Scholar

36. Però, , ‘Immigrants and politics in Left-wing Bologna’.Google Scholar

37. Martin, Bill, ‘Multiculturalism: consumerist or transformational?’, in Willet, Cynthia (ed.). Theorising Multiculturalism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1998, pp. 121–50.Google Scholar

38. Però, , The Politics of Identity in Left-wing Bologna.Google Scholar

39. On issues for future research see also Black, , ‘Refugees and asylum-seekers in Western Europe’.Google Scholar