Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Social Exclusion

10
Citizenship: Anthropological
Approaches to Migration and
Social Exclusion
BRUNO RICCIO AND GIUSEPPE SCANDURRA
INTRODUCTION
T
his chapter focuses on the connections between the transformation
of citizenship, the diversification of poverty and the development of
transnational ways of migrating. As a result of the emergence of new
poverties, the methods of impoverishment are characterised by a deep individualisation, so that it is possible to observe different life situations, forms
of privation that go beyond ordinary economic deprivation. Furthermore,
new methods of migrating and of managing difference within multicultural
configurations have led some scholars to speculate on new paths for claiming and granting rights. However, human rights discourses tend to reify the
complex and ambivalent social and cultural processes through which rights
are negotiated, realised or denied within specific contexts. In some cases
there is a noticeable gap between the provision and the realisation of rights,
which is often affected by negotiation between individuals and groups. Such
negotiation is influenced in many ways by the representation (symbolic as
well as political) of social and migrant minorities.
We shall stress the importance of disaggregating both migrant as well as
poor ‘communities’. Poor persons do not constitute a homogenous group
and migrant groups are characterised by multiple and differing biographical and social trajectories. Taking into account the experiences of social
practitioners implementing policies towards migrants, and the case of the
street lawyers providing legal support to the homeless in Bologna, we shall
discuss the problem of essentialism and sedentarism informing many institutional practices and the implementation of rights. For instance, these
rights are often denied to people who live in conditions of extreme precariousness because they do not hold a certificate of residence. By considering citizenship as a problematic in specific contexts, we seek to explore
how anthropological and ethnographic approaches can contribute to the
208 Bruno Riccio and Giuseppe Scandurra
analysis of the realisation of human and citizenship rights in our
contemporary societies.
CITIZENSHIP: A CONCEPT IN NEED OF CONTEXTUALISATION
Marshall defined citizenship as a ‘status bestowed on those who are full
members of the community’1 which includes civil, political and social rights
and obligations. Analytically, citizenship may be discussed as a multi-tier
construct, which applies to people’s membership in a variety of collectivities: local, ethnic, national and transnational.2 The community to which
Marshall implicitly referred was, unproblematically, the ‘nation’, conceived
as a homogeneous cultural entity. Various anthropologists argue instead
that a central question in current debates about citizenship is the extent
to which ‘difference’ discriminates between citizens; whether, rather than
citizens being bearers of equal rights, their ability to exercise their rights
in full is affected by discrepancies in positioning of gender, culture, ethnicity, and so forth. Citizenship is often mediated by a person’s multiple and
intersecting identities and political subjects may be involved in more than
one political community. In the light of this, some scholars stress the need
to recognise the legitimacy of publicly articulated differences and insist that
citizenship is always dialogical. Even among liberal democracies, there is
no shared, fixed, once-and-for-all model of citizenship. On the contrary,
citizenship differs between countries and is historically contingent: a negotiated and often contested order. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is marginal groups
or non-citizens, those excluded from active participation in the political
community, which have the most impact on citizenship as a historically
evolving imaginary.
For instance, migrant minorities have affected the shape and trajectories
of citizenship in Western democracies.3 But if citizenship is to be redefined,
non-citizens must first move into the public sphere. Indeed, they may
often have to redefine the public sphere and its limits. Hence, struggles
over citizenship are often struggles over the very meaning of politics and
membership in the community. The contingent and emergent dimensions of
citizenship are nowhere more evident than in Europe’s cities, which attract
the most recent and most vulnerable citizens and non-citizens: the ethnic
minorities who are portrayed by the media as anonymous migrants and
refugees. Such misrepresentation can have a seriously detrimental impact
1 TH Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1950), p 14.
2 Yuval-Davis ‘Women, Citizenship and Difference’ Feminist Review (1997) 57: 5 quoted in
P Werbner et al, New Migrants in European Gateway Cities (unpublished, 2006).
3 RD Grillo, Pluralism and the Politics of Difference (Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1997).
Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Social Exclusion 209
on the ability of citizens to exercise their rights.4 What is entirely forgotten
in this debate is that today’s refugees or undocumented migrants may
become tomorrow’s upright citizens. New minorities will become citizens or
permanent residents, entitled to vote and put forward electoral candidates.
Nevertheless, policy continues to be dictated almost exclusively by notions
of migrants as ‘problems’ and by top-down attempts to define multicultural citizenship. But this in itself does not alleviate problems of residential
segregation in deprived neighbourhoods, which sometimes lead to extreme
cultural alienation.
Although, as Soysal5 has argued, there is some evidence that human rights
legislation protects non-citizens in ‘post-national’ states, this is no longer
straightforwardly the case as governments attempt to exclude disguised
economic migrants and admit short-stay migrants. The result has been that
some incomers have almost no rights and there is a vast shadow world of
undocumented migrants with even fewer rights. The increasing complexity
of categories of political status and the associated rights of persons now
resident in Europe, from full citizens to permanent residents who are denizens, short-term contract workers to ‘temporary’ refugees, asylum seekers
and undocumented migrants, is currently testing the limits of citizenship.
This range of forms of political memberships is, in a way, less evident in
migrants’ daily lives which are characterised by a range of informal work
opportunities. Moreover, virtually all of these new residents, whether or not
they are full citizens, still have a foot in another country and commitments
to a different culture and to family back home.6 Today’s itinerant global
movers are ‘flexible citizens’, and often carry multiple passports.7 As we
will see, personnel in charge of the implementation of rights often wonder
how this impacts on migrants’ sense of belonging and their ‘loyalty’ to their
newly adopted nation-state and city within which they settle.
One key to the theoretical assumptions grounding research on migration
and multiculturalism is that critical mass makes a difference; that the concentration of members of an ethnic group from one place of origin in large
numbers in particular cities creates a nucleus around which networks and
social capital can be built. At the same time, they also interact with other
ethnic groups in neighbourhoods and places of worship, forming wider,
multi-ethnic communities. Civil society, and indeed citizenship, are grounded
in such internal and external interactions. The fact that citizenship does
4
R King and N Wood (eds), Media and Migration (London, Routledge, 2001).
YN Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994).
6 B Riccio, ‘From “Ethnic Group” to “Transnational Community”? Senegalese Migrants’
Ambivalent Experiences and Multiple Trajectories’ (2001) 27 Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies 583–99.
7 A Ong, Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, Duke
University Press, 1999).
5
210 Bruno Riccio and Giuseppe Scandurra
not involve a fixed set of rights and responsibilities is particularly clear at
present. MP Smith has recently argued for the need to adopt an ethnographic approach ‘from below’ if we are to make sense of the new transnational urbanism. He argues that a bird’s eye view is inadequate, denying
agency and tending to rely entirely on ‘global narratives of epochal transformation’.8 Ethnography is particularly important for exploring the everyday
political participation and social negotiation not only of citizens but of
non-citizens. We need to investigate how such complex legal categorisations
of citizenship and non-citizenship rights affect different social and ethnic
minorities and their capacity for civic action. Not too dissimilar reflections
characterise the understanding of social exclusion and poverty, another kind
of non-citizenship.
Any analysis of social exclusion (since we are dealing with citizens not
recognised as such, especially those with no fixed residence, and immigrants
living in our country, in the context of a debate on citizenship and human
rights) must address specific problems relating to the policies of representation. In effect, the researcher studying these situations must consider to
what extent the analyses may be used as stereotyped representations of
vagabonds or, more generally, as negative descriptions of poor persons. This
is why, as ethnographers, we prefer not to employ the sort of interiorising
narratives that dominate the majority of the literature on poverty in Italy
and elsewhere, while playing down the suffering such persons face daily in
their struggle to survive.
But there is a more general problem: historically, anthropologists have
avoided directly addressing sensitive questions such as violence against
the person, alienation, social exclusion and self-destruction. The logic of
participant observation requires researchers to be physically present and
personally involved, which often leads to the negative dynamics being concealed, since we need to have an empathetic relation with the persons we
study: for it is easier to win the trust of the individuals of whom we write
when fairly harmless problems are addressed.9 In addition, encouraging
empathetic readings of the cultures or persons one studies stems from the
fundamental anthropological imperative of cultural relativism, according to
which, in the view of Bourgois, cultures are never either good or bad, but
merely possess their own inner logic.10 This precept involving hygienising
vulnerability is especially strong just now in Italy, where common sense is
by now defined by the theories of individual action based on the responsibility of the victim.
8
MP Smith, Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (Oxford, Blackwell, 2001)
p 24.
9
10
P Bourgois, In cerca di rispetto (Roma, Derive Aprodi, 2005).
Ibid.
Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Social Exclusion 211
In this arena, we can identify two typologies of analysis that may turn out
to be dangerous within the social science context: on the one hand, research
that criminalises the victims, making them solely responsible for their ‘career’
within a system of political discourse where the debate on poverty tends
increasingly to be polarised around the topics of ethnic membership and
individual value; and studies which emphasise the importance of ‘structures’,
ie conceiving the social actors as victims pure and simple, which, by omitting
their practices, prevents the reader from understanding how particular mechanisms of social exclusion are generated. Anthropology may be of use, in this
context, precisely to highlight the ‘ideological’ content of such discourse and
the lack of analytical complexity. For, if the theory of the ‘culture of poverty’
neglects the influence exercised on individual biographies by history, culture
and political-economic structures, political-economic analysis cannot be a
panacea for compensating for individualistic, racist or moralising interpretations of social marginalisation: emphasis on structure frequently glosses over
the fact that human beings are agents of their own history, not its passive
victims.11
DISAGGREGATING COMMUNITIES
Numerous scholars argue that nowadays migrants sustain multistranded
social relations that link their societies of origin and settlement, and emphasise the emergence of a social process in which migrants ‘establish social
fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders’.12 However,
we would like to emphasise the importance of disaggregating the so-called
‘migrant community’ and to urge the importance of recognising and analysing the internal tensions characterising these communities and the plurality of trajectories emerging from their transnational spaces. For instance,
Riccio has shown the variability of social networks used by migrants
according to different situations and has argued that transnationalism constitutes a field of contrasting and complex effects.13 This is not a system of
reified transnational networks but, rather, a dynamic process of constant
networking which encompasses a wide range of different and situationally
varied practices within transnational spaces.
For instance, Senegalese transnational migrants do not constitute a
homogeneous and monolithic entity. One may distinguish, on the one
hand, those who tend to enter the formal labour market with some success,
but also encounter exploitation and interact with the institutions of the
11
Ibid.
N Glick Schiller, L Bsch and C Szanton-Blanc (eds), Towards a Transnational Perspective
on Migration (New York, New York Academy of Science, 1992); M Callari Galli (ed),
Nomadismi contemporanei (Rimini, Guaraldi, 2003).
13 Riccio, n 6 above.
12
212 Bruno Riccio and Giuseppe Scandurra
receiving context a great deal, not being afraid to let themselves be known.
They try to organise a non-religious form of sociopolitical representation
relating to the logic of the Italian associational structure, and shape their
own personal networks as well as relying on the communitary networks. On
the other hand, there is a majority who may also enter the labour market
but tend to prefer trade, identifying the religious circles as the most fulfilling organisational form. These transnationals follow an inward-looking life
strategy and tend to avoid contact with Italians; they benefit instead, spiritually as well as materially, from life within a transnational social field.14
Poor and socially excluded groups also need to be disaggregated.
It is now generally accepted that the ‘poor’ no longer constitute a social
class or homogeneous group but, rather, a mass of undefined contours
having no self-representation and often not recognised by the system
upon which they nonetheless depend.15 The people we call vagabonds,
for example, account for a very small part of the heterogeneous group
legally defined as having ‘no fixed abode’: hence the name ‘vagabond’
conveys a particular conception of the complex phenomenon of homelessness. Persons of no fixed abode are in a situation of dire need because, as
well as having no home, they are without even a minimum income, they
have broken with their family, and are often at risk of physical and mental
deterioration. Vagabonds (proportionally in a minority) are distinguished
within this group by their habit of collecting cardboard boxes and plastic
bags often full of refuse.16
But what links these persons together? In anthropological terms, can one
speak of a culture of poverty?17 The ethnographic work of Oscar Lewis, for
example, hinges on the fact that the street life led by these persons represents a culture of resistance capable of elaborating a different perception of
spatio-temporal reality. Hence it is not merely a form of passive, parasitic
marginalisation, but should rather be viewed as a cultural mutation, since
these people infringe the important value of our society that is economic
production. A second type of mutation is physical: in the absence of a
fixed abode, healthy management of one’s own body is not possible. Thus,
the homeless also deviate from a series of hygienic and moral norms that
regulate our culture.18 But it is the very concept of dwelling that changes in
14
Ibid.
M Bergamaschi, Ambiente urbani e circuito della sopravvivenza (Milano, Franco Angeli,
1999).
16 F Bonadonna, Il nome del barbone: vite di strada e povertà estreme in Italia (Roma,
Derive Approdi, 2001).
17 N Anderson, Il vagabondo. Sociologia dell’uomo senza fissa dimora (Roma, Donzelli,
1994); O Lewis, La cultura della povertà e altri saggi di antropologia (Bologna, Il Mulino,
1973); P Bourdieu, La misère du monde (Paris, Editions du seuil, 1993).
18 F Bonadonna, Il nome del barbone: vite di strada e povertà estreme in Italia (Roma,
Derive Approdi, 2001).
15
Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Social Exclusion 213
the homeless. If having a fixed residence means, etymologically speaking,
having habits, then being without a fixed residence also means assuming
other habits: the street alters the perception of reality.19
At the same time, these persons in no way represent a homogeneous
social group. In the Massimo Zaccarelli dormitory, where Scandurra performed a study over 15 months in order to analyse the practices of daily
life of a group of inmates, all of those inmates continue to speak their
dialect, contaminating it with that of their interlocutors.20 The Romans
speak a little Salentino, the Campanians make an effort to use Calabrian
words. The result is a southern language hard to understand. It is the
idiom of the working-class districts of large cities like Naples, Palermo,
Rome, Cagliari, Bari.
Moreover, the anthropologist visiting those dormitories was surprised
to find very young men and women. All of them have become parents
before reaching majority age. At 20, many dormitory inmates have already
travelled over half of Italy, have sampled almost everything in the way of
drugs and alcohol, and have married, divorced and married again.21 Thus,
while there is an increasing number of immigrant inmates, that of the
40-plus Italians who have lost their jobs grows exponentially. Yet, the
strong presence of adults notwithstanding, as mentioned above there are
large numbers of young persons hardly over the age of 20 who leave university and fail to find steady work. The presence of equal numbers of women
as men is a new phenomenon, dating from the 1990s.22
THE HOMELESS IN BOLOGNA
Bologna has always contained a wealth of different groups: as a university
city, a market for the townships surrounding it, a city of fairs and entertainments, a city of immigration. From the 1980s, however, each of these
attributes appears to define individual groups rather than an ensemble
amalgamated according to a shared common residence. Only somewhat
recently have the various citizen groups accentuated their character of
separate worlds. With the passing of time, many districts have become the
hub of different groups and cultures: immigrants, students from outside of
Bologna, persons of no fixed abode, commuting workers.23
19 F Remotti, F Luoghi e corpi. Antropologia dello spazio, del tempo e del potere (Torino,
Bollati Boringhieri, 1993).
20 G Scandurra, Tutti a casa. Il Caracci: etnografia dei senza fissa dimora a Bologna
(Rimini, Guarladi, 2006).
21 Ibid.
22 A Roversi and C Bondi, ‘Senza fissa dimora a Bologna’ (2006) Quaderni. Città Sicure.
23 M Callari Galli, ‘Cittadinanze lacerate’ (2004) IV 7 Gomorra 15–32.
214 Bruno Riccio and Giuseppe Scandurra
In this sense, we may see Bologna as containing several worlds that
coexist without touching one another. The centre of the city has its own special character conferred by the arcades, not to be found in other city centres
like the museified ones of Florence or Rome, where the poorest territories are
often relegated to the outskirts. This aspect of Bologna renders the centre not
socially homogeneous: whereas the old buildings are inhabited by common
citizens, by a well-off bourgeoisie, Bologna’s arcades offer a kaleidoscope
of diversity. Mendicants, homeless and immigrants stand or squat before
the windows of the luxury shops, theatres and churches. In some sense, the
arcades become their dwelling place, while the ‘original citizens’ pass by
them, so that very different social worlds touch and coexist, even though the
gaze of the inhabitants of one world does not contemplate the members of
the other. The university area provides a classic setting for such coexistence.
Bologna, then, encompasses a number of cities that scrutinise, touch
and avoid each other, in profoundly different and asymmetric positions. Its
‘legitimate’ society, mostly composed of residents and lodgers, does not know
the nomadic, ‘illegitimate’ society (workers in casual, non-guaranteed jobs,
migrants, the homeless) but it continually adduces that other society, blaming it for the ongoing deterioration of the city, as a constantly impending
threat.24 By no mere chance, the local elections in these last years have turned
on questions of ‘legality’ and ‘security’. As from the 1990s, various citizens’
‘anti-deterioration’ committees have sprung up and continue to appeal to the
Mayor to protect them against these hordes of ‘aliens’ that generate malaise.
Two decades on from their first appearance, the flows of migrants towards
Italy can no longer, in effect, be considered as an exceptional phenomenon. The commune of Bologna houses some 30,000 regular immigrants
(7.2 per cent of the population) who work, study and fulfil all their civic
duties within the commune while lacking any political rights. These are genuine second-class citizens with no voice in the political and administrative
decisions that condition their lives and professional activities. Some idea
of their importance in Bologna’s economy can be gained by observing the
numbers of them crowding into the buses and trains heading every morning
for the outlying industrial districts, or by listening to the languages spoken
on the building sites. Bologna’s historic centre has been revived, enriched
with colour and trading activity thanks to the scores of small shops opened
by Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Latin Americans who provide
the resident and student populations with services that would otherwise
be unavailable.25 Women from Moldavia, Poland, Ukraine, Peru and the
24 A Dal Lago and E Quadrelli, La città e le ombre. Crimini, criminali, cittadini (Milano,
Feltrinelli, 2003).
25 B Riccio, ‘Transnazionalità urbana. Meticciato in città ?’ in M Callari Galli, D Londei
and A Soncini Fratta (eds), Il meticciato culturale. Luogo di creazione, di nuove identità o di
conflitto? (Bologna, CLUEB, 2005).
Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Social Exclusion 215
Philippines fill an increasingly irreplaceable role in the care and moral and
physical support of thousands of elderly persons unable to defray the costs
of clinics and hospices.26
At the same time, there are growing numbers of homeless people, as we
have seen, who make up an organic part of the city tissue; these ‘poor’ persons now include many Italians who have lost their jobs, students who fail
to find jobs, and a large number of ‘30-somethings’ who manage, at best,
to obtain small jobs on fixed-term contracts one year out of every two. To
what extent are these persons considered citizens?
In 2000, the city of Bologna set up a ‘Street Lawyer’ office staffed entirely
by volunteers. This is designed to ensure free legal counsel and defence, in
cases of potential legal controversy, for people with no fixed abode living in
the city.27 During the five years since the inception of this office, the street
lawyers have dealt with some 500 cases. Homeless men and women, having
no residence, are unable to exercise the right to vote (those not figuring in
the registers of the population residing in a commune do not appear in the
electoral registers); they cannot fully benefit from the local healthcare service (those not resident have access to the public healthcare structures only
through the emergency services and cannot benefit from their own general
physician), nor can they regularise their position as regards a professional
register (since they have no status as residents, they cannot officially be
employed, thus are not registered for tax or VAT).
Among the most important cases are those involving homeless people
who come within the right to healthcare of the homeless in Bologna. Many
of these are denied hospital admission by certain city physicians, since no
kind of intervention is granted in relation to persons without residence
and thus lacking healthcare coverage. Yet the right to healthcare is envisaged as a fundamental one by the Italian Constitution, under Article 32,
which states: ‘The Republic shall protect health as a fundamental right of
the individual’.28 Though the majority of such persons are entitled to free
healthcare assistance through the National Health Service, many of them
have no physician since, being without residence, they are not registered
and therefore do not qualify for health coverage.
Other cases have to do with the norm providing for repatriation with
compulsory expulsion orders. As from September 2001, the police authorities in Bologna have intensified their on-the-spot activity, acting on express
orders from the Questore (Chief of Police). The most relevant item as
26 B Riccio, ‘Le esperienze delle donne migranti nell’ambiente di lavoro e il difficile percorso
verso un’organizzazione di sostegno reciproco’ in A Sgrignuoli (ed), Stereotipi e reti sociali
tra lavoro e vita quotidiana. Un’analisi multiculturale della complessitàò di genere (Rimini,
Guraldi, 2004).
27 I Diritti e la povertà, Collana Nuovamente (I Quaderni (ed), Bologna, Sigem, 2005).
28 A Arduini, ‘Diritto alla tutela della salute dei senza fissa dimora’ in I Diritti e la povertà,
Collana Nuovamente (I Quaderni (ed), Bologna, Sigem, 2005).
216 Bruno Riccio and Giuseppe Scandurra
regards the Compulsory Expulsion Order would seem to concern persons
subjected to this procedure who fail to report elements in their defence that
demonstrate positive behaviour which would show their lack of tendency or
capacity to commit offences. The procedure concludes with the issue of an
order for their departure from Italian territory, the Compulsory Expulsion
Order. Their ‘dangerousness’ is imputed merely to their being ‘vagabonds’
and ‘idle’.29 Hence the paradox of a local administration that, even while it
seeks to stem the continual influx of homeless, mainly from South to North,
issues expulsion orders that compel these persons to continual transfer—in
a word, to nomadism. In theory, were this practice to be adopted by all of
Italy’s police departments, it would lead to a situation whereby Italian citizens of no fixed abode would have no right to stay in any commune of their
own country; there are, indeed, recorded cases of people who have received
an expulsion order from more than one Italian commune.
While the value of the street lawyers is unquestionable, they are sometimes called upon to deal with emergency situations without having had
the time and/or the cultural background needed to analyse the matter. Their
discourses report infringements of rights, but contain no reference to the
individual biographies of the homeless persons concerned; rather, they
seek to essentialise these social actors, in such a way as to create dossiers
and subdossiers of the cases, merely with the aim of resolving specific
situations. In reading those dossiers, for instance, one gets the impression that, in relation to an immigrant social group (say Senegalese) or a
group of homeless from South Italy, while one may intervene to defend
specific universal rights, the battle to make those persons fully-fledged
citizens of Bologna is in vain; for determinate patterns of values and
behaviours recognised by them as cultural are inextinguishable since they
are transmitted from one generation to another: the reference is to value
and behaviour patterns that are recognised as ‘not belonging to Bologna’.
The usefulness of anthropology then lies not so much in deconstructing
the activity of those lawyers, but rather in criticising it by showing them
how these people often tend to implement a ‘cultural’ behaviour according to contexts and convenience. In this regard it is worth asking ourselves
how useful it is, with a view to conducting a thorough analysis, to employ
concepts such as ‘homeless’ and ‘immigrant’ as closed categories referring
to social groups that are more or less homogeneous, or whether it would
be better to simply refer to a heterogeneous mass of women and men who
are denied even universal and constitutional rights directly stemming from
the more general right to ‘citizenship’, such as the right to vote and to
health.
29 A Murru, ‘La misura del rimpatrio con foglio di via obbligatorio’ in I Diritti e la povertà,
Collana Nuovamente (I Quaderni (ed), Bologna, Sigem, 2005).
Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Social Exclusion 217
As already mentioned, although it is incorrect to talk about a ‘culture
of poverty’ insofar as the homeless of Bologna are concerned, it is possible
to recognise some elements (in terms of needs and expectations) common
to all of these people; needs and expectations which are different, in most
cases, from those of the numerous Senegalese immigrants who have been
living in Bologna for a considerable period of time. Even if it allows us to
construct useful categories, it is nonetheless important to avoid essentialising the order of the discourse dealing with such subjects as if they were
some kind of stable entities.
Aware of the various types of intervention (in terms of assistance and
universal rights) put into practice by social actors such as street lawyers or
immigrants’ associations, those ‘outcasts’ represent themselves as ‘homeless’ or ‘non-EU immigrants’ according to the circumstances. It is not
exceptional to hear of cases such as that of an Italian homeless person
defining himself as a Rom immigrant just because some trade unions are
campaigning for Romanian immigrants, belonging to the Rom group, to
be recruited on the city’s building sites, due to the lack of Italian workers;
or a North-African immigrant pretending to be ‘homeless’, aware that the
communal lists for housing give priority to the ‘homeless’, rather then to
‘immigrants’, who appear only in a secondary list.
TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION AND SEDENTARIST POLICIES
The right to residence is the right most frequently invoked in cases that
the street lawyers are called upon to deal with. Non-enrolment in a population register results in people not being able to enjoy the fundamental
rights recognised by the Italian Constitution, such as the right to housing.
Today, however, thanks to the cases taken by the street lawyers against the
Commune of Bologna, homeless persons can obtain residence in the public
dormitory structures: an association allowing them to register as citizens.
Bologna now has some 300 extra citizens, some of whom have already
found work and have embarked on the arduous route that will lead them
out of the precarious situation in which they find themselves.30
The issue of housing is among the most urgent problems and a requirement for all migrants in Italy. Moreover, this is the major concern of local
immigration policies. Wherever migrants live they have to confront the
racist demonstrations of their potential or actual neighbours. Although
many migrants are granted the permesso di soggiorno (residence permit),
this affects the possibility of transnational migration. It is only when the
permit is obtained and re-entry to Italy guaranteed that Senegalese can
30 A Mumolo and P Pizzi, ‘Il diritto alla residenza: la prima causa degli avvocati di strada’
in I Diritti e la povertà, Collana Nuovamente (I Quaderni (ed), Bologna, Sigem, 2005).
218 Bruno Riccio and Giuseppe Scandurra
start going backwards and forwards between the two countries and thus
manifest transnational mobility. Far from being in a post-national era,
as some ‘transnational anthropologists’ seem to suggest,31 transnational
organisation still needs to negotiate and deal with national and local state
regulatory practices which can sometimes be exclusionary.32
As shown elsewhere,33 transnational strategies may clash with the sedentarist views which inform housing policies. Among social practitioners in
charge of the implementation of housing policies for migrants one may find
an ambivalent stance. The general consensus is that, in spite of difficulties
in having to deal with a constant ‘turnover’ of Senegalese users because of
migrants’ reliance on communitarian networks, the ability of Senegalese
to accept life in big groups, with a representative dealing with the cooperatives, helped to shape the model of first reception within the receiving
context. On the other hand, the various practitioners and most of the documents produced on this topic urge ‘the need to move to another stage of
immigration policies and of integration’. They express the need to move on
to new housing policies that focus more on small apartments for families
than on big buildings (with the risk of ‘ghettoisation’ and the ‘threat’ to
the locals). This shift in thinking is due also to the increase in reunions of
family members. However, one of the problems stressed by practitioners
themselves is that out of 1,069 Senegalese, only 50 have been joined by
their families (5 per cent of Senegalese vs 37 per cent of Moroccans), which
seems to indicate that the dominant Senegalese organisational mode with a
strong orientation towards return and circularity suits the ‘first reception’
policy better than the second one.
The lack of attachment to Italy and the transnational mobility of the
Senegalese contrasts with the conceptions of immigrants expressed by the
majority of social practitioners. However, those views underpin policy
guidelines: ‘the general orientation is to accept people who are coming with
the aim of settling for a while and to refuse the seasonal migrant who wants
to street sell: he is not interesting’. Clearly, the implicit requirement of
settlement expressed by those practitioners testifies to the sedentarist logic
behind this work. There is a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’ underlying the policies towards migrants and the way such policies are conceived.34 Senegalese
31 A Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
32 MP Smith, Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (Oxford, Blackwell, 2001).
33 B Riccio, ‘The Italian Construction of Immigration: Sedentarist and Corporatist
Narratives Facing Transnational Migration in Emilia-Romagna’ (2000) 9 Anthropological
Journal on European Cultures 53–74.
34 LH Malkki, ‘National Geographic: the Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of
National Identity among Scholars and Refugees’ in A Gupta and J Ferguson (eds), Culture,
Power, Place (Durham, Duke University Press, 1997); M Callari Galli (ed), Nomadismi contemporanei (Rimini, Guaraldi, 2003).
Anthropological Approaches to Migration and Social Exclusion 219
transmigrants in the end are insufficiently ‘disciplined’ users: they fit in, to
be sure, because they are able to bear the precariousness of reception policies, but they are not the ideal settler ‘to integrate’. We feel that the reason
for the ubiquity of these conceptions relies also on the identificatory power
of their professional practice in considering the exclusionary motives of
residentiality to be natural. The sedentary mode of life and its institutionalisation through provincial residence are taken for granted because of all the
administrative practices implied in such institutionalisation. In a country
where, thanks to the marginalisation of migrants, their particular characteristics and potential contribution are rarely taken into account in policy
decisions which reflect them, it seem increasingly necessary to overcome the
tension between the new migratory mode and traditional conceptions of
dwelling, although even that will not be sufficient for negotiating a potential realisation of rights for such persons.
However, our aim in this chapter was to discuss the need to embrace
analytically a broader conception of citizenship than that often provided
by political sciences, by considering social and political incorporation as a
contested and negotiated process implying different and occasionally contrasting perspectives. Certainly, citizenship is conferred by the nation-state,
but the enactment of rights and social engagement often begins at local level
and sometimes involves the foreign born who are not naturalised as much
as the unrecorded homeless are. These examples have been adduced to
show how anthropological and ethnographic explorations may contribute
to enhancing the understanding of the enactment of citizenship rights by
giving non-citizens a voice and by problematising the perspective held by
those in charge of the implementation of such rights.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, N, Il vagabondo. Sociologia dell’uomo senza fissa dimora (Roma,
Donzelli, 1994)
Appadurai, A, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
Arduini, A, ‘Diritto alla tutela della salute dei senza fissa dimora’ in I Diritti e la
povertà, Collana Nuovamente (I Quaderni (ed), Bologna, Sigem, 2005)
Bergamaschi, M, Ambiente urbani e circuito della sopravvivenza (Milano, Franco
Angeli, 1999)
Bonadonna F, Il nome del barbone: vite di strada e povertà estreme in Italia (Roma,
Derive Approdi, 2001)
Bourdieu, P, La misère du monde (Paris, Editions du seuil, 1993)
Bourgois, P, In cerca di rispetto (Roma, Derive Aprodi, 2005)
Callari Galli, M (ed), Nomadismi contemporanei (Rimini, Guaraldi, 2003)
——, ‘Cittadinanze lacerate’ (2004) IV 7 Gomorra 15–32
Dal Lago, A and Quadrelli, E, La città e le ombre. Crimini, criminali, cittadini
(Milano, Feltrinelli, 2003)
220 Bruno Riccio and Giuseppe Scandurra
Glick Schiller, N, Bsch, L and Szanton-Blanc, C, (eds), Towards a Transnational
Perspective on Migration (New York, NY Academy of Science, 1992)
Grillo, RD, Pluralism and the Politics of Difference (Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1997)
King, R and Wood, N (eds), Media and Migration (London, Routledge, 2001)
Lewis, O, La cultura della povertà e altri saggi di antropologia (Bologna, Il Mulino,
1973)
Malkki, LH, ‘National Geographic: the Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization
of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees’ in A Gupta and J Ferguson
(eds), Culture, Power, Place (Durham, Duke University Press, 1997)
Marshall, TH, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1950)
Mumolo, A and Pizzi, P, ‘Il diritto alla residenza: la prima causa degli avvocati di
strada’ in I Diritti e la povertà, Collana Nuovamente (I Quaderni (ed), Bologna,
Sigem, 2005)
Murru, A, ‘La misura del rimpatrio con foglio di via obbligatorio’ in I Diritti e la
povertà, Collana Nuovamente (I Quaderni (ed), Bologna, Sigem, 2005)
Ong, A, Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, Duke
University Press, 1999)
Remotti, F, Luoghi e corpi. Antropologia dello spazio, del tempo e del potere
(Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1993)
Riccio, B, ‘The Italian Construction of Immigration: Sedentarist and Corporatist
Narratives Facing Transnational Migration in Emilia-Romagna’ (2000) 9
Anthropological Journal on European Cultures 53–74
——, ‘From “Ethnic Group” to “Transnational Community”? Senegalese Migrants’
Ambivalent Experiences and Multiple Trajectories’ (2001) 27 Journal of Ethnic
and Migration Studies 583–99
——, ‘Le esperienze delle donne migranti nell’ambiente di lavoro e il difficile
percorso verso un’organizzazione di sostegno reciproco’ in A Sgrignuoli (ed),
Stereotipi e reti sociali tra lavoro e vita quotidiana. Un’analisi multiculturale della
complessitàò di genere (Rimini, Guraldi, 2004)
——, ‘Transnazionalità urbana. Meticciato in città ?’ in M Callari Galli, D Londei
and A Soncini Fratta (eds), Il meticciato culturale. Luogo di creazione, di nuove
identità o di conflitto? (Bologna, CLUEB, 2005)
Roversi, A and Bondi, C, ‘Senza fissa dimora a Bologna’ (2006) Quaderni Città
Sicure
Scandurra, G, Tutti a casa. Il Caracci: etnografia dei senza fissa dimora a Bologna
(Rimini, Guarladi, 2006)
Smith, MP, Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (Oxford, Blackwell,
2001)
Soysal, YN, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in
Europe (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994)
Werbner, P et al, New Migrants in European Gateway Cities (unpublished, 2006)
Yuval-Davis N (1997) 57 ‘Women, Citizenship and Difference’, Feminist Review
4–27