DOCSLIB.ORG

Italophilia Meets Albanophobia: Paradoxes of Asymmetric Assimilation and Identity Processes Amongst Albanian Immigrants in Italy Russell King, Nicola Mai

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Italophilia Meets Albanophobia: Paradoxes of Asymmetric Assimilation and Identity Processes Amongst Albanian Immigrants in Italy Russell King, Nicola Mai Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric assimilation and identity processes amongst Albanian immigrants in Italy Russell King, Nicola Mai To cite this version: Russell King, Nicola Mai. Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric assimilation and identity processes amongst Albanian immigrants in Italy. Ethnic and Racial Studies, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2008, 32 (1), pp.117-138. 10.1080/01419870802245034. hal-00513309 HAL Id: hal-00513309 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00513309 Submitted on 1 Sep 2010 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Ethnic and Racial Studies For Peer Review Only Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric assimilation and identity processes amongst Albanian immigrants in Italy Journal: Ethnic and Racial Studies Manuscript ID: RERS-2007-0129.R2 Manuscript Type: Original Manuscript Albanian migration, Italy, assimilation, integration, Identity, Keywords: stigmatisation URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rers [email protected] Page 1 of 27 Ethnic and Racial Studies 1 2 3 Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric assimilation and 4 5 identity processes amongst Albanian immigrants in Italy 6 7 8 9 Russell King and Nicola Mai 10 11 12 Abstract 13 14 This paper discusses what we call the ‘Albanian assimilation paradox’. Since arrival 15 16 in 1991, AlbaniansFor have Peer become one Review of the most ‘integrated’ Only of all non-EU immigrant 17 18 groups in Italy, based on their knowledge of Italian, geographical dispersion, balanced 19 demography, employment progress, and desire to remain in Italy. Yet they are the 20 21 nationality most rejected and stigmatised by Italians – stereotyped as criminals, 22 23 prostitutes and uncivilised people. Based on 97 interviews with Albanians in three 24 25 cities in Italy, we explore the multifaceted dimensions of their patchy assimilation. 26 Although the hegemonic negative framing of Albanians by Italian media and public 27 28 discourse plays a major role, other elements of the picture relate to Albanians’ 29 30 complexly shifting identities, framed both against and within this discourse (and 31 32 hence both resisting and internalising it), and against changing concepts of Albanian 33 34 national and diasporic identities derived from ambiguous perceptions of the national 35 homeland. 36 37 38 39 Keywords : Albanian migration; Italy; assimilation; integration; stigmatisation; 40 41 identity 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 1 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rers [email protected] Ethnic and Racial Studies Page 2 of 27 1 2 3 Introduction and theoretical reference-points 4 5 6 7 Two refrains echo through the hundreds of conversations we have had with Albanian 8 9 immigrants living in Italy. The first is an overwhelming sadness at the stigmatisation 10 11 they have been subjected to by the Italian media and society. Their reactions to 12 stereotyping as ‘undesirables’ and ‘criminals’ range from extreme anger to resignation 13 14 and even to tacit acceptance and internalisation. The second refrain is often framed as 15 16 a question:For ‘Why won’t Peer they let us beReview like them?’ This can Only be seen as an inversion of 17 18 the title of Greeley’s (1969) famous essay about immigrants in the United States – 19 ‘Why can’t they be like us?’ By deploying the term ‘asymmetric assimilation’ we 20 21 explore in this paper the inclusion/exclusion of Albanian migrants in Italy. Our 22 23 neologism is not without historical precedent or analogy, as we shall see shortly. We 24 25 propose its application to the Albanian case because of the paradoxical situation 26 whereby the migrant group which is the most rejected by Italian society is that which, 27 28 on several indicators, is also the most ‘similar’ to the host society, and moreover sees 29 30 itself as such. 31 32 For a long time now, assimilation and integration have been dominant themes 33 34 in the study of immigration. Although there are important earlier origins in Europe in 35 Durkheimian sociology and in the Chicago School in the US, we pick up the 36 37 theoretical debate with Milton Gordon’s canonical Assimilation in American Life . 38 39 Gordon (1964) made a key division into structural assimilation (engagement in 40 41 multiple primary-group relations with the host society, entering into social institutions 42 and structures), and identificational assimilation (taking on a sense of host-society 43 44 ‘peoplehood’); Gordon correlates the latter, although not exactly, to cultural 45 46 assimilation or acculturation . This division has passed across into the European 47 48 literature on integration , which is much more recent (see e.g.Vermeulen and Penninx 49 50 2000). Hence European authors commonly make distinctions between structural, 51 socio-cultural and identificational integration; or between formal participation in 52 53 sectors such as education or the employment market, and informal participation in 54 55 neighbourhood relations and leisure activities (Engbersen 2003; Heckmann 2005). 56 57 Returning to Gordon, we note one of his major propositions: ‘ Once structural 58 assimilation has occurred, either simultaneously with or subsequent to acculturation, 59 60 all the other types of assimilation [here Gordon is referring to intermarriage, erosion of discrimination, absence of power differentials etc.] will naturally follow’ (Gordon 2 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rers [email protected] Page 3 of 27 Ethnic and Racial Studies 1 2 3 1964, p. 81, italics in original). According to Gordon, structural assimilation 4 5 inevitably produces acculturation, but not the reverse; indeed, for the US, Gordon’s 6 7 thesis is that ‘whilst acculturation has been substantially achieved, this is not the case 8 1 9 with regard to the other assimilation variables’ (1964, p. 105). Gordon’s concept of 10 11 ‘acculturation without assimilation’ will be used as a template against which to assess 12 the Albanian experience in Italy. We will see that it approximates, but is not identical 13 14 to, our preferred notion of asymmetric assimilation. 15 16 WeFor suggest, byPeer way of signposts Review into our analysis, Only three essential differences 17 18 between Gordon’s model and our findings. The first is Gordon’s curious omission of 19 substantive discussion of the labour market, a key component of subsequent 20 21 assimilation/integration literature, especially in Europe. Second, Gordon suggests 22 23 (1964, p. 81) that acculturation implies the disappearance of prejudice and 24 25 discrimination, which is definitely not the situation in our case-study. Third, Gordon’s 26 account carries little acknowledgement of how different immigrant groups’ 27 28 aspirations for assimilation might be matched (or not) by the host society’s hegemonic 29 30 perceptions of the ‘assimilability’ of different groups. 31 32 Gordon’s landmark analysis was of course only a stage in the evolution of the 33 34 assimilation debate. Subsequently assimilation become a discredited term (Glazer 35 1993), although some revival can recently be noted, both in the United States (Alba 36 37 and Nee 1997) and in Europe (Brubaker 2001). Key to the concept’s rehabilitation has 38 39 been a shift away from the original assumption of ‘straight-line assimilation’ into 40 41 ‘Anglo-conformity’ (in the US context) to a more nuanced and analytically complex 42 use of the term. Much attention has been given to alternative models of assimilation, 43 44 notably the segmented assimilation of Portes and Zhou (1993), but this line of 45 46 analysis focuses on the second generation, less relevant to Albania where the 47 48 migration is less than a generation old. Finally, much depends on national models of 49 50 immigrant integration and exclusion; within Europe France has been the country 51 where the assimilationist tradition has been most strongly represented (Brubaker 2001, 52 53 pp. 535-7). 54 55 In the case of Italy, a recent country of immigration, there is as yet no 56 57 overarching model of immigrant incorporation. Policy measures have been ad hoc and 58 frequently contradictory. There seems to be an acceptance of the economic rationale 59 60 of harnessing migrant labour and of the inevitability of immigration in a scenario of enhanced global mobility; and yet the trend in legislation – from the Legge Martelli 3 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rers [email protected] Ethnic and Racial Studies Page 4 of 27 1 2 3 (1990) through the Turco-Napolitano (1998) to the Bossi-Fini law (2002) – has been 4 5 to pay lip-service to integration and instead to keep immigrants as a marginalised, 6 7 temporarily-resident fraction of Italian society (Zincone 2006). Italian press and other 8 9 media have reinforced this stance by continuously representing immigrants as 10 11 outsiders and a threat to the nation. Throughout the 1990s and since, Albanians have 12 been the lightning-rod for this negative discursive framing of immigration. 13 14 In this paper we look at the assimilation-integration trajectory not from the side of 15 16 national modelsFor or policy Peer but from Reviewthe perspective of an Only individual migrant group – 17 18 Albanians. Our evidence base is 97 in-depth interviews, taped and transcribed, with 19 Albanian immigrants in three Italian cities – Rome, Modena and Lecce. These cities 20 21 were strategically chosen to represent different socio-economic conditions for 22 23 migrants in Italy (respectively the capital and medium-sized cities in the industrialised 24 25 North and less-developed South).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • SAMPLE SYLLABUS Spring 2021–History of Immigration HIST-UA 9186 F01
    SAMPLE SYLLABUS Spring 2021–History of Immigration HIST-UA 9186 F01 Class Description: This four credit course explores how the dynamics of migration have shaped identity and citizenship. By providing students with a range of theoretical approaches, the course will address questions of migration, national identity and belonging from a multidisciplinary perspective drawing from (amongst other fields): Sociology, History, Geo-Politics, Gender Studies, Black European Studies, and Cultural Studies. Taking the so called “refugee crisis” as a starting point, the course will pay particular attention to the figure and representation of the “migrant” going from Italian mass migration in the late 19th century to the migrants crossing every day the waters of the Mediterranean in order to reach Fortress Europe. Yet, a course on migration processes undertaken in Italy cannot limit itself to a purely theoretical framework. Migration means movements of people bringing along personal histories, families and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore the presence of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers reaching Europe is having a significant impact on the current social and political agenda of European government, as in the case of Italy. Therefore the course will include a series of fieldtrips aimed at showing students how immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers insert themselves into the labor market and society in Italy. Inclusion, Diversity, Belonging and Equity NYU is committed to building a culture that respects and embraces diversity, inclusion, and equity,
    [Show full text]
  • Geographies of Production and the Contexts of Politics: Dis-Location and New Ecologies of Fear in the Veneto Citta© Diffusa
    Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2006, volume 24, pages 41 ^ 67 DOI:10.1068/d346t Geographies of production and the contexts of politics: dis-location and new ecologies of fear in the Veneto citta© diffusa Luiza Bialasiewicz Department of Geography, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, England; e-mail: [email protected] Received 3 October 2003; in revised form 27 July 2004 Abstract. Scholars of regionalist mobilisation have focused their attentions largely on the ideal and idealised landscapes that are an integral part of regional mythmaking, noting the ways in which such `representative landscapes' are deployed by regional ideologues to convey belonging and emplace identity. I argue that to understand regionalist mobilisation it is equally important to consider the lived, everyday spaces of the region, spaces within which such regionalist politics are born. In this paper, I focus on the Veneto region in the Italian North East: one of the wealthiest productive areas in Europe but also the site of some of the most reactionary regionalist and localist rhetorics. I explore the links between the transformations in the Veneto's production landscapes over the past decades and the emergence of new political discourses, arguing that it is only through an understanding of the new geographies of production and consumption that structure the Veneto spaceöa space that is increasingly deterritor- ialised and decentred, suspended between its rural past and an unaccomplished urbanisationöthat we can begin to understand fully the region's increasingly exclusionary identity politics, and the ways in which the globalised Veneto citta© diffusa that has made its fortunes on the global market and on global migrants is increasingly reacting against both and finding refuge in hyperlocalised myths of belonging.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Italy in Milton's Early Poetic Development
    Italia Conquistata: The Role of Italy in Milton’s Early Poetic Development Submitted by Paul Slade to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in December 2017 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. Abstract My thesis explores the way in which the Italian language and literary culture contributed to John Milton’s early development as a poet (over the period up to 1639 and the composition of Epitaphium Damonis). I begin by investigating the nature of the cultural relationship between England and Italy in the late medieval and early modern periods. I then examine how Milton’s own engagement with the Italian language and its literature evolved in the context of his family background, his personal contacts with the London Italian community and modern language teaching in the early seventeenth century as he grew to become a ‘multilingual’ poet. My study then turns to his first published collection of verse, Poems 1645. Here, I reconsider the Italian elements in Milton’s early poetry, beginning with the six poems he wrote in Italian, identifying their place and significance in the overall structure of the volume, and their status and place within the Italian Petrarchan verse tradition.
    [Show full text]
  • Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age
    Differentia: Review of Italian Thought Number 6 Combined Issue 6-7 Spring/Autumn Article 7 1994 From Italophilia to Italophobia: Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age John Paul Russo Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia Recommended Citation Russo, John Paul (1994) "From Italophilia to Italophobia: Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age," Differentia: Review of Italian Thought: Vol. 6 , Article 7. Available at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia/vol6/iss1/7 This document is brought to you for free and open access by Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Differentia: Review of Italian Thought by an authorized editor of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. From ltalophilia to ltalophobia: Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age John Paul Russo "Never before or since has American writing been so absorbed with the Italian as it is during the Gilded Age," writes Richard Brodhead. 1 The larger part of this American fascination expressed the desire for high culture and gentility, or what Brodhead calls the "aesthetic-touristic" attitude towards Italy; it resulted in a flood of travelogues, guidebooks, antiquarian stud­ ies, historical novels and poems, peaking at the turn of the centu­ ry and declining sharply after World War I. America's golden age of travel writing lasted from 1880 to 1914, and for many Americans the richest treasure of all was Italy. This essay, however, focuses upon Brodhead's other catego­ ry, the Italian immigrant as "alien-intruder": travel writing's gold­ en age corresponded exactly with the period of greatest Italian immigration to the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • In Both Europe and the US, the Topic of Immigration Is Highly
    Class code HIST--UA 9186 Name: Prof. Kathryn Lum Instructor Details NYU Home Email Address: [email protected] Office Hours: 13:00-15:00 Thursday Villa Ulivi Office Location: Office # 7 Villa Ulivi Office Extension: 055 5007 317 Semester: Spring 2015 Class Details Full Title of Course: The History of Immigration in the US and Italy from the 1880´s onwards Meeting Days and Times: 15:00-17:45 Thursday Classroom Location: Colletta 1 There are no prerequisites for this course Prerequisites In both Europe and the US, the topic of immigration is highly politicized, Class Description and frequently occupies the center of national and regional debates on identity, citizenship and belonging. On both sides of the Atlantic, the contours of multiculturalism and the question of irregular migration present thorny issues for academics and policy makers. This course will provide a general comparative (US/Europe) introduction to the history of migration, from the late 1880´s to the present day in order to help students develop a basic historical framework that will allow them to more deeply understand contemporary migration policy and debates surrounding integration and multiculturalism. The experiences of a number of European countries will be looked at in depth: the UK, France, Italy, and Germany. Throughout the course, we will be exploring deeper questions of national identity and belonging, both historically and cross-nationally. We will begin by looking at mass Italian migration to the US in the late 19th and early Twentieth Centuries, discussing how the first waves of Italian migrants were categorized and racialized and how they were inserted into the existing racial order in the US.
    [Show full text]
  • ANDREI BELOBORODOV and ITALY Russia's Silver
    ANDREI BELOBORODOV AND ITALY Andrej Shishkin Russia's Silver Age was greatly indebted to the wave of Italophilia which affected the works of the most diverse writers, including Dmi- trii Merezhkovskii, Viacheslav Ivanov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Maksimilian Voloshin, Nikolai Berdiaev, Vasilii Rozanov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandel'shtam, Boris Zaitsev, and Pavel Muratov. Encounters with the Italian "Elysium" served both as the inspiration for art and as the symbol of physical death and spiritual immortality. 1 Viacheslav Iva- nov was speaking for many of his contemporaries when he declared: "Love for Italy is an indicator of cultural Ioftiness. One can judge the character of an age by the way it loves Italy and what it chooses to love in her".2 This was the context from which emerged Andrei Beloborodov (1886-1965), one of the most originai Russian artists to have devoted his work to Italy. For various reasons Beloborodov's legacy has remained neglected and forgotten until quite recently.Now he is beginning to be recognized as a major contributor to the com- plex relationship between Italy and Russian culture. 3 I "I find the idea of a trip to Italy quite possible," wrote Kuzmin in his diary on 31 December 1934, foreseeing his impending death; M. Kuzmin, Dnevnik 1934 g. (St Petersburg 1998) 145. As Gleb Morev notes, the idea of the sacred end of a Iife-path is here linked to the image of the entrante to paradise and immortality; Gleb Morev, "Kazus Kuzmina," lhid. 23-24. 2Russko-italianskii arkhiv , Trento 1997, 503. See allo P. Deotto, /n viaggio per ralizzare un sogno.
    [Show full text]
  • Ambivalent States: Anglo-American Expatriates
    AMBIVALENT STATES: ANGLO-AMERICAN EXPATRIATES IN ITALY FROM 1848 TO 1892 by MOLLIE ELIZABETH BARNES (Under the Direction of Tricia Lootens) ABSTRACT This dissertation studies Anglo-American expatriates who address, or pointedly don’t address, the Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy. I argue that the ambivalence writers associate with Italy is important, not just because it upends allegiances normally understood as simply republican or as simply anti-republican, but also because it challenges the ways we read the mood of the period and the ways we define emerging nation-states. I frame the dissertation with Margaret Fuller, who argues that this mid-century moment forced her to reconcile seemingly incompatible allegiances to “Art” and to the “the state of the race” or “the state of the people.” Anglo-American Italophiles were, in fact, often overwhelmed by ambivalence in the wake of the mid-century revolutions; and expatriate writers often realized allegiances to politics and to aesthetics, to republicans and to anti-republicans. I trace Anglo-American expatriates in three cities (Rome, Florence, and Venice) and across two generations (1848–1870 and 1871–1892), and I divide the dissertation into three diptychs: chapters one and two are about Rome; chapters three and four are about Florence; and chapters five and six are about Venice. The first half of each diptych shows how mid-century writers weren’t defined by unequivocal republicanism or unequivocal anti-republicanism but by a much more elusive disposition: politicoaesthetic ambivalence. I argue that this ambivalence intensifies in the years just following the unification of the peninsula.
    [Show full text]
  • John Florio and Shakespeare: Life and Language
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Archivio della ricerca- Università di Roma La Sapienza On Biography ISSN 2283-8759 pp. 109-129 (December 2015) John Florio and Shakespeare: Life and Language Donatella Montini Pour nous, Shakespeare a connu et approché l’Italie, sa langue, sa littérature et sa civilisation, par l’intermédiaire de John Florio. Car […] les deux hommes, le poète et le grammairien, se connaissaient nécessairement. Clara Longworth Chambrun When, in his 1747 annotated edition of Shakespeare’s works, William Warburton declared that “by Holofernes is designed a particular char- acter, a pedant and schoolmaster of our author’s time, one John Florio, a teacher of the Italian tongue in London”1, he certainly could not have imagined that he had inaugurated one of the most intriguing threads within the never-ending quest to find Shakespeare’s ‘traces of life’, literally opening the proverbial Pandora’s box. With his hypothesis Warburton suggested a close connection between the playwright and John Florio (1553-1625), an Italian teacher (Firste Fruites, 1578; Second Frutes, 1591), lexicographer (A World of Words, 1598; Queen Anna’s New World of Words, 1611), translator (Montaigne’s Essays, 1603; Decameron, 1620), recognized as one of the most outstanding interpreters of Italian humanistic culture in Elizabethan England. After Warburton, many other modern critics have been haunted by a sort of ‘magnificent obsession’ to prove the existence of a liaison, both in a biographical and/or in a linguistic perspective, between these two giants of Elizabethan culture2. Gentlemen and courtiers in Queen 1 William Warburton and Alexander Pope, eds, The Works of Shakespear, London, J.
    [Show full text]
  • Fascism and the Italian Population of Queensland 1910-1945
    “BEFORE EVERYTHING, REMAIN ITALIAN”: FASCISM AND THE ITALIAN POPULATION OF QUEENSLAND 1910-1945 DAVID BROWN. BA (HONS), BEd. A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland in August 2008 School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics. Declaration by author This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis. I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional editorial advice, and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my research higher degree candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award. I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University Library and, subject to the General Award Rules of The University of Queensland, immediately made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the copyright holder(s) of that material.
    [Show full text]
  • This Four Credit Course Explores How the Dynamics of Migration Have Shaped Identity Class Description and Citizenship
    Class code HIST--UA 9186 Name: Professor Angelica Pesarini Instructor Details NYU Home Email Address: [email protected] Office Hours: TBC Villa Ulivi Office Location: Villa Ulivi Office Extension: Semester: Spring 2018 Class Details Full Title of Course: The History of Immigration in the US and Europe since World War II Meeting Days and Times: 15:00-17:45 Wednesday Classroom Location: TBC There are no prerequisites for this course Prerequisites This four credit course explores how the dynamics of migration have shaped identity Class Description and citizenship. By providing students with a range of theoretical approaches, the course will address questions of migration, national identity and belonging from a multidisciplinary perspective drawing from (amongst other fields): Sociology, History, Geo-Politics, Gender Studies, Black European Studies, and Cultural Studies. Taking the so called “refugee crisis” as a starting point, the course will pay particular attention to the figure and representation of the “migrant” going from Italian mass migration in the late 19th century to the migrants crossing every day the waters of the Mediterranean in order to reach Fortress Europe. Yet, a course on migration processes undertaken in 2017 Italy cannot limit itself to a purely theoretical framework. Migration means movements of people bringing along personal histories, families and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore the presence of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers reaching Europe is having a significant impact on the current social and political agenda of European government, as in the case of Italy. Therefore the course will include a series of fieldtrips aimed at showing students how immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers insert themselves into the labor market and society in Italy.
    [Show full text]
  • Stories of Ordinary Blindness in Nowadays Italy
    “I am just like you, but you don't see it”: stories of ordinary blindness in nowadays Italy Racism in Italy Racism in Italy is very much widespread, but few people would realize and admit the existence of it. The typical statement from an average Italian goes: “I am not a racist, but …” and here you can add everything from “Romanians are all thieves” to “Gypsy people only commit crimes and don't want to integrate” to “I cannot stand Africans”. A very good example for this hit the headlines these days in Italy, where a teacher in Rome told to a Jewish student which was not feeling well and therefore not being attentive to the lesson, “If you would have been in Auschwitz, you would have been attentive”. Upon a request of explaining her comment, she affirmed: “I am not anti semitic, I said that to refer to a very well organized place”, thus worsening her position. There is a very good thing about this episode though, namely that the classmates of the girl defended her, accusing the professor of racism, thus revealing sensitivity toward the problem1. This paradoxical attitude, that makes the acceptance of the unacceptable possible, in conflict with all the democratic rules upon which Italy and the western societies are built, leads to prejudices underlining in the immigrants a de facto ineptitude and diversity status that makes “them” unable to integrate with “us”, and thus erasing the equality principle, allows the discrimination to take place.2 This schizophrenic attitude is expressed also in an another widespread phenomenon of nowadays' Italy: the very same people that affirm what I explained above are also the same people that in their 1 http://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2013/04/05/news/ad_auschwitz_saresti_stata_attenta_classe_in _rivolta_contro_la_prof_antisemita-55973828/?ref=search seen on 5 April 2013.
    [Show full text]
  • The Papers of Professor Emeritus Jerome Krase
    BROOKLYN COLLEGE LIBRARY ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS 2900 BEDFORD AVENUE BROOKLYN NEW YORK 11210 718 951 5346 http://library.brooklyn.cuny.edu THE PAPERS OF PROFESSOR (EMERITUS) JEROME KRASE Accession #2003-006 TABLE OF CONTENTS OVERVIEW OF RECORDS INTRODUCTION BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE COLLECTION OUTLINE SERIES DESCRIPTIONS CONTAINER LIST OVERVIEW OF RECORDS CREATOR: Prof. Jerome Krase TITLE: The Papers of Prof. Jerome Krase BULK DATES: 1960s – 2003 QUANTITY: 131 boxes/approx. 65.5 cubic feet ACCESSION: #2003-006 REPOSITORY: BROOKLYN COLLEGE LIBRARY ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 2900 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn NY 11210-2889; Phn: 718 951 5346 ACCESS: The collection is open for research. COPYRIGHT: Retained by Brooklyn College Library PREFERRED CITATION: Item, folder title, box number, The Papers of Prof. Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College Archive, Brooklyn College Library PREPARED BY: Dorothea Coiffe, Fall 2003 Additional Entries, 2005 Pamela Kerns, Updated Summer 2006 Additional Entries, 2008 1 INTRODUCTION Jerome Krase, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College from 1970-2003 and chair of the sociology department twice, taught classes in urban sociology, inter-ethnic group relations and introductory courses. For three decades, he worked as a community activist-scholar and was a student of "ordinary" urban neighborhood life by lecturing, giving photographic exhibitions, and writing for alternative newspapers. He lectured and did research at Universities of Perugia, Pisa, Trento, and Trieste. Dr Krase was a visiting professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and University of Rome, "La Sapienza." He retired from Brooklyn College in Spring 2003. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE “I have had many major influences but you might say that growing up poor in Brooklyn and seeing so much wasted potential in people led me to believe that things could be made better if people spent more time and effort ‘doing the right thing while doing what you gotta do’ to quote Spike Lee.” Jerome Krase, Dec.
    [Show full text]