SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO-BICOCCA Department of Scienze umane per la formazione Riccardo Massa PhD program: DACS antropologia culturale e sociale Cycle XXX In search of Italianness: an ethnography of the second-generation condition in a mobility perspective Surname: Grimaldi Name: Giuseppe Registration number: 744185 Tutor: Prof. Bruno Riccio Co-Supervisor: Prof. Timothy Raeymaekers Coordinator: prof. Alice Bellagamba ACADEMIC YEAR 2016/2017 Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1 The second-generation condition ................................................................................................................. 5 Habesha in immobility: ancestral identification as a site of incorporating difference ................................. 8 Habesha as a source of mobility. Practicing the difference to navigate a second-generation condition in the social space of the diaspora .................................................................................................................. 11 Milano as an interconnected space. Siting the exploration of a second-generation condition ................. 13 Between methodology and epistemology. The “clue paradigm” and the second-generation condition .. 15 Structure of the work .................................................................................................................................. 19 Chapter 1: Italianness and Habesha. Genealogy of a differential relation ............................................... 21 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 21 1.2 Italianness in the making of a colonial otherness ................................................................................. 21 1.2.1 Italianness in the making of a colonial paradigm ........................................................................... 22 1.3 From Habesha to Abyssinia and Eritrea. The Italian Colonial paradigm and identification shifts ........ 25 1.3.1 Habesha in the Ethiopian and Eritrean national paradigm ............................................................ 26 1.3.2 Habesha in the regional paradigm ................................................................................................. 28 1.4 The Italianness Habesha Postcolonial paradigm ................................................................................... 30 1.4.1 Postcolonial Tigray-kebessa relation .............................................................................................. 30 1.4.2 Hegemonic Italianness and Postcolonial differentiation ................................................................ 31 1.4.3 From the Horn to Italy: postcolonial mobilities. ............................................................................. 32 1.5 Habesha in mobility ............................................................................................................................... 34 1.5.1 The Making of a Habesha culture of migration .............................................................................. 34 1.5.2 From ethno-regional to national identification. The making of the generation nationalism. ....... 36 1.6 Diaspora space in Milano ...................................................................................................................... 39 1.6.1 The Habesha neighborhood of Porta Venezia ................................................................................ 39 1.6.2 Being Habesha in Milano: incorporating social difference ............................................................. 42 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................. 44 Figures: Asmara’s progressive expansion in precolonial and colonial maps: 1872-1929 ........................... 45 Chapter 2: Ancestral Identification or differential italianness? Habesha as the marker of a second- generation condition ............................................................................................................................ 47 2.1 Second generations and Italianness: split in two cultures or pushed away? ........................................ 47 1.2 The postcolonial condition and the second-generation condition: family resemblances .................... 51 2.2.1 Precondition pt.1: Children of domestic workers .......................................................................... 52 2.2.2 Precondition pt2: downward assimilation. Why a Milanese Habesha should speak Neapolitan? 53 2.3 Racial differentiation, gender, class. The making of Habesha second generations .............................. 55 2.3.1 Ragazzi di zona. The class connotation of the Habesha identification .......................................... 55 2.3.2 The Habesha dark side. second-generation condition and gender divide ..................................... 58 2.3.3 Cultural Translations: second-generation condition and the making of Habeshaness .................. 60 2.4 Translating ethnicity from the ancestral land to the Italian context. Habeshaness as a space of subjectivity................................................................................................................................................... 62 2.4.1 Liminoid spaces of Habesha constructions: The oratory of Via Kramer......................................... 63 2.4.2 Nationalist winds: the fracture between a second generation Habeshaness and the ancestral lands ........................................................................................................................................................ 64 2.4.3 Global flows and differentiation. Habesha at the “Muretto” ........................................................ 68 2.4.4 National division, shared differentiation: Habesha as the marker of a differential Italianness .... 70 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................. 72 Chapter 3: We are all on that ship: the reconfiguration of a second-generation Habeshaness and the Mediterranean route ........................................................................................................................... 73 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 73 3.2 Second-generation condition and the Habesha diasporic space: disconnections ................................ 75 3.3 Second generations and ethnic identification with refugees. A reading in the Italian system of regulation of the Mediterranenan route ..................................................................................................... 77 3.3.1 The asylum seekers’ flow and its marginality in the Italian public discourse ................................ 77 3.3.2 The resignification of the asylum seekers flow in Italy .................................................................. 79 3.4 Mediterranean route and second generation’s Habeshaness in the liminal. We are all on that ship .. 82 3.4.1 Second-generation Habesha’s Ethnic engagement as an Italian phenomenon? ........................... 84 3.5 Second generation volunteering for refugees ....................................................................................... 87 3.5.1 Italianness and the making of Porta Venezia as an informal reception space ............................... 87 3.5.2 Second generations engaging for refugees. Differential italianness as a source of legitimation .. 88 3.5.3 The end of the reception. Second generation Habeshaness in the post liminal and the reintroduction of a differential paradigm. .............................................................................................. 90 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................. 91 Chapter 4: Performing difference, reproducing Habeshaness: status and second generations return to Ethiopia ............................................................................................................................................... 93 4.1 Prologue. A Research companion .......................................................................................................... 93 4.2 In between-ness and children of immigrants. The predicament of a third space................................. 94 4.2.1 This is not my Ethiopia: Habesha, Ferengi and Diaspora ............................................................... 94 4.2.2 Habeshaness through Ferenginess ................................................................................................. 96 4.3 Inside the diaspora. In-betwenness as a structural process ................................................................. 98 4.3.1 They are not real diaspora. Cultural difference as an hegemonic discourse ................................. 99 4.3.2 Assimilating Tigrayness in the hegemonic category of diaspora.................................................. 101 4.4 Performing the status. ......................................................................................................................... 105 4.4.1