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IMMIGRANT ‘SPACE’ IN ITALY: WHEN AN EMIGRANT SENDING BECOMES AN IMMIGRANT RECEIVING SOCIETY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Judith Adler Hellman
Judith Adler Hellman*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, York University, New York, Ontario, M3J IP3, Canada jhellman@Yorku.CA
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Abstract

This article examines the social and political responses to the new flow of immigrants to Italy from outside the European Union. First, the Italian experience is compared with the rest of Europe with respect to such questions as the characteristics of the immigrants themselves, and the response to them on the part of political parties, the church, the unions, and the state at local, regional and national levels. Next, broader comparisons are drawn between the Italian case and that of classic ‘societies of immigration’, particularly with regard to the structure of economic opportunity available to the extracomunitari in Italy.

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ARTICLES
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 2 , August 1997 , pp. 34 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

1 Lie, John, ‘From International Migration to Transnational Diaspora’, Contemporary Sociology, 24, 4, July 1995, pp. 303–23, pp. 303–6. In this review of journals, Lie highlights International Migration Review as the principal site of the earlier approaches and Diaspora and Public Culture as exemplifying the new approaches.Google Scholar

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6 Of course 1940–1 witnessed the Italian Fascist occupation of Albania. However, the post-communist flood of Albanians into Italy is clearly not a case of former colonial subjects converging on the metropole.Google Scholar

7 This transformation is frequently expressed as the change from macaroni (the pejorative term used to denote Italian immigrants in the United States) to vú comprà (the term taken from the mixture of broken French and Italian spoken by the North Africans and Senegalese who normally work at this activity until they acquire enough Italian to gain less precarious employment). These expressions are often invoked by Italians sympathetic to the plight of the new arrivals who wish to appeal for empathetic understanding on the part of those they hope will acknowledge a common heritage of suffering.Google Scholar

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10 One has only to think of the comparatively great difficulty that foreign cuisines have had in gaining a foothold in Italy. As recently as the early 1980s Turin, then a city of 1.5 million people, boasted only one foreign restaurant – a Cantonese restaurant near the railway station – and most Turinese continued to consider the consumption of Tuscan, Sardinian or Pugliese regional specialties to be as exotic a food adventure as any reasonable person might willingly undertake. While this situation had begun to change in Turin, as in other large cities, by the end of the 1980s, it was still possible for the mayor of Rome in 1995 to call for municipal legislation to limit the ‘spread’ of foreign restaurants in what, ironically, is widely considered a world capital.Google Scholar

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12 See for example, Minardi, Everardo and Cifiello, Stefano (eds), Economie locali e immigrati extracomunitari in Emilia–Romagna, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1991; research sponsored by the Unione Regionale Camere di commercio dell' Emilia–Romagna; Cifiello, Stefano (ed.), Non solo immigrato: scenari migratori, diritti ed innovazioni nelle politiche locali, Nuova Casa Editrice Cappelli, Bologna, 1992, essays from a conference sponsored by the Provincia di Bologna; and Davide Benintende, ‘La domenica non so come perdere tempo’: un‘ indagine sull’ integrazione sociale dei lavoratori extracomunitari a Modena, Assessorato Sanita, Servizi Sociali e Politiche per l'Immigrazione, Modena, 1992.Google Scholar

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22 Of course, considering that Italy's record of untied foreign aid is very modest by Western European standards, this entire argument has a ring of unreality.Google Scholar

23 Umberto Bossi, leader of the Northern League, has evoked the image of an Italy overrun by immigrants who, he asserts, ‘will trample the individual liberty’ of northern Italians. Sarlo, Assunta, ‘Immigrati: sarà battaglia’, Il Manifesto, 16 February 1997.Google Scholar

24 Perlmutter argues that during the debates over the 1990 legislation on amnesty for undocumented immigrants, both the mass parties – the Communists (PCI) and Christian Democrats (DC) – avoided taking public stands while small parties, in particular, the Socialists (PSI) fought vigorously on the issue, arguing in favour of liberal immigration legislation, with the Republican Party (PRI) waging a campaign against. However following the passage of the Martelli Law in 1990 and the Albanian refugee crisis of 1991, a kind of silence fell until the autumn of 1994 when immigration again became a hot issue and every party was forced to formulate a stand on the amnesty for undocumented workers. Ted Perlmutter, ‘Bringing Parties Back In: Comments on “Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic societies’”, International Migration Review, 30, 1, 1997, pp. 375–88. Also see Perlmutter, , ‘Immigration Politics Italian Style: The Paradoxical Behaviour of Mainstream and Populist Parties’, South European Society and Politics, 1, 2, 1996, pp. 229–52.Google Scholar

25 I refer here to the fact that the Italian labour federations strive for mass-class representation. Rather than seeking simply to represent workers in a single trade, or struggling only to maximize the economic welfare of a particular category of job holders or to protect the jobs of those already employed, the Italian labour movement has, historically, seen itself in much broader terms as promoting the interests of the entire working class. For the distinction between ‘mass-class unionism’ and ‘business unionism’, see Hellman, Judith Adler, Journeys Among Women: Feminism in Five Italian Cities, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

26 See, for example, the union-sponsored edited volume of presentations on the need to reconceptualize Italy as a multicultural society. Treves, Claudio (ed.), Imparare a conoscersi: culture a confronto in un' Italia multiculturale, Ediesse, Rome, 1993. Or see the collection presented by the Secretary General of the CGIL, the General Confederation of Italian Workers: Trentin, Bruno, Sindacato dei diritti e società multi-etnica, Ediesse, Rome, 1988. These books came out of conferences held by the FILCAMS, the union federation that organizes workers in commercial and service occupations. FILCAMS has been particularly active in working to defuse tensions between Italian shopkeepers and immigrant street peddlers – previously North Africans and presently Senegalese. Also see Mottura, Giovanni and Pinto, Pietro, Immigrazione e cambiamento sociale: strategic sindacali e lavoro straniero in Italia, Ediesse, Roma, 1996.Google Scholar

27 Given that the Italian Constitution of 1948 recognizes freedom of religious expression in Article 8, but establishes Roman Catholicism as the state religion in Article 7, there is enough confusion around the legal status of non-Catholic practices to produce the need for mobilization on this issue. See Hellman, Stephen, ‘Italy’, in Kesselman, Mark and Krieger, Joel (eds), European Politics in Transition, 2nd edn, D.C. Heath, Lexington, MA, 1992, pp. 347–8.Google Scholar

28 ‘It is probably not coincidental that the takeover by immigrants of traditional enterprises such as corner grocers, has been particularly pronounced in Britain. This country has the lowest proportion of small businesses and self-employed in the Common Market. In a certain sense this indicates an empty space in the service sector which ethnic entrepreneurs are filling.’ Boissevain, Jeremy, Small Entrepreneurs in Changing Europe: Towards a Research Agenda, European Centre for Work and Society, Maastricht, 1981, p. 22, cited in Srinivasan, Shaila, ‘Reasons for South Asian Entry into Self-Employment in the United Kingdom’, paper prepared for the Conference, ‘Organizing Diversity: Migration Policy and Practice, Canada and Europe’, Berg en Dal, Netherlands, 8–12 November 1995, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

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30 On Argentinean ‘returnees’ to Italy, see Sausi, Jose Luis Rhi and Garcia, Miguel Angel (eds), Gli argentini in Italia: una comunità di immigrati nella terra degli avi, Biblioteca Universale Synergon, Bologna, 1992.Google Scholar

31 Of these, 1538 businesses were opened by Egyptians, 548 by Chinese, 497 by Eritreans, 348 by Tunisians, 226 by Brazilians and 191 by Moroccans. Maurizio Ambrosini and Paola Schellenbaum, cited in Ottieri, Maria Pace, ‘Lavoro, Milano d'Egitto’, Il Manifesto, 8 October 1994, p. 22.Google Scholar

32 Cf. Ciotti, Don Luigi, in Il Manifesto, 20 August 1995.Google Scholar

33 According to a study conducted by the General Accounting Office of the Italian State, should the current fertility rate remain constant, over the next fifty years, the population of Italy will decline from 57 to 44 million people and will grey rapidly, with 11 per cent of the population in their eighties by the year 2044. Zuccolini, Roberto, ‘Monorchio: per rivitalizzare l'economia servono 50 mila extracomunitari l'anno’, Corriere della Sera, 14 February 1997.Google Scholar