Race and immigration in Sicily.
Item
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Title
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Race and immigration in Sicily.
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Identifier
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AAI9325081
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identifier
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9325081
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Creator
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Cole, Jeffrey Eugene.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Jane Schneider
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Date
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1993
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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Recent violence and political mobilization against immigrants, refugees, and settled minorities have underlined the importance of race in Western Europe. This study examines the absence of significant anti-immigrant expression in the Southern Italian region of Sicily, despite a large African and Asian immigrant population and high unemployment, and given the resurgence of racism and nationalism in Europe. It is based on a year of anthropological research in the city of Palermo.;The dissertation addresses two questions: class variation in Sicilian evaluations of immigrants, and the ways race and immigration find political expression in Sicily as opposed to Northern Italy. Review of immigration to Italy, the bearing of race on this phenomenon, and the political economy of Palermo provide the background for the study. Starting from the question of working-class racism, working-class and bourgeois views of immigrants are compared in the context of class experience, Italian popular culture, and Sicilian ideas about the obligation of former emigrants to current immigrants. Working Palermitans worry about competing for resources with immigrants, whom they call "Turks" (although none come from Turkey), but rarely express racism. Their views are typically ambivalent, recognizing immigrants as fellow poor while denigrating them as undeserving of opportunity in Italy. The bourgeoisie, by contrast, express an explicit anti-racism towards "immigrants of color." These views draw on traditions of solidarity in Italian political culture as well as on the ideas of the local intelligentsia about Sicilian tolerance. Yet bourgeois power over foreign workers and notions about the relative aptitude of different immigrant groups cloud these ideals of anti-racism.;The contrast of an apolitical acceptance of immigrants in the poor region of Sicily with a highly politicized response to them in the rich North of Italy illustrates the interplay of regional culture and politics in racial politics. Northern "leagues" draw on widespread anger toward the Italian state and popular anti-Southernism to demonize immigrants and Southerners alike. The absence of racist politics in Sicily, by contrast, stems from tolerance born of the emigrant experience and from a clientelistic system that impedes political expression on race as well as on other issues.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
