University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 9-2013 Contested Subjects: Biopolitics & the Moral Stakes of Social Cohesion in Post-Welfare Italy Milena Marchesi University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Other Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Marchesi, Milena, "Contested Subjects: Biopolitics & the Moral Stakes of Social Cohesion in Post-Welfare Italy" (2013). Open Access Dissertations. 808. https://doi.org/10.7275/my1b-dt19 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/808 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONTESTED SUBJECTS: BIOPOLITICS & THE MORAL STAKES OF SOCIAL COHESION IN POST-WELFARE ITALY A Dissertation Presented by MILENA MARCHESI Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2013 Anthropology © Copyright by Milena Marchesi 2013 All Rights Reserved CONTESTED SUBJECTS: BIOPOLITICS & THE MORAL STAKES OF SOCIAL COHESION IN POST-WELFARE ITALY A Dissertation Presented by MILENA MARCHESI Approved as to style and content by: ______________________________________ Elizabeth L. Krause, Chair __________________________________________ Lynn Morgan, Member __________________________________________ Leslie King, Member __________________________________________ Julie Hemment, Member _________________________________________ Thomas Leatherman, Department Chair Anthropology Department DEDICATION For Jeff and Noah Matteo ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is based on research supported by a 2006-2007 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (No. 7477) and a 2006-2007 University of Massachusetts Graduate School Fellowship. The Anthropology Department’s European Field Study Program allowed me to conduct pre-dissertation research in 2004 and provided an intellectual space for formulating a research project, as well as financial support. A research associateship at the Five College Women’s Research Center at Mount Holyoke College in 2009 offered a supportive intellectual community and a productive writing space. The Reproductive Politics Group at Hampshire College brought together a community of scholars and activists engaged in reproductive issues and served as an early sounding board for this research. The Center for Research on the Family offered support for presenting my work. I am profoundly grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, Elizabeth (Betsy) Krause, Lynn Morgan, Julie Hemment, and Leslie King. This dissertation could not have been written without Betsy’s tireless advising efforts; I am thankful for her invaluable intellectual and professional mentoring, enthusiasm, collegiality, trust, and patience. I am grateful to Lynn Morgan for guiding me through the intellectual landscape of the literature on reproduction, for providing invaluable feedback on grant applications, and for cheering me on through the long path to completion. Thanks are due to Julie Hemment for her expert feedback and for welcoming me as an auditor in her research and writing course, which came at a crucial moment in my analysis. I am also grateful to Leslie King for hanging on during the long writing process. Jackie Urla and Banu Subramaniam contributed early on to shaping my dissertation project with rigorous v feedback and productive questions. I would never have embarked on an anthropological career had it not been for the teaching and mentorship of Donna Goldstein, my undergraduate advisor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who made it possible for me to envision myself as a potential researcher. I am indebted to Silvia De Zordo for her invaluable collaboration on academic panels and publications and to the faculty and graduate students in the anthropology department whose research, political engagement, and passion for the discipline have been a source of inspiration throughout my graduate career. The staff in the anthropology department office, especially Shelley Bellor, but also Lisa Wegiel, Grace Rock, and Debbie Averill, helped me navigate university and department bureaucracy, a support that was particularly invaluable to me as a first generation university student. Much would have fallen through the cracks without their steady support. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the many people in Milan whose generosity in welcoming me into their lives made this dissertation possible. I am particularly indebted to the indomitable “Nilde” for providing the first field site foothold at a feminist family planning clinic and to the rest of the staff for agreeing to host me. Eleonora Cirant and Marina Mariani helped me see the bigger picture of what is at stake in women’s health in Milan. Many thanks are due to the Milanese cultural mediation cooperative that allowed me to audit a cultural mediation course and to the course’s participants, particularly to those who took time out of their busy lives to talk to me. I am thankful to Monica and Sahar for warmly welcoming me into their integration project and to other members for their availability and openness. Thanks are due also to Dr. Graziella Sacchetti, to the vi immigrant association “Todo Cambia,” and to the indefatigable and inspiring Edda Pando. I am grateful and so much richer for the friendships that got me through graduate school and which have grown far beyond it as we move on to the next phase of life. I am particularly indebted to Lisa Modenos who regularly prodded me to “write like the wind” and who reminded me of how good it would feel to be done, and to Leyla Keough who reassured me whenever I hit a rough patch that it was surely a sign that I was close. Mary Hannah Henderson and Flavia Stanley helped me believe in my work when insecurity reared its head. Julie Skogsbergh provided moral support and priceless childcare at critical times in my writing. I also owe many thanks to my friend Jessica Lawrence for introducing me to anthropology in the first place and for her enduring friendship and support over two decades. I am also grateful to Kenneth and Sue Golden for their early and invaluable influence on my academic path and to Christopher Golden for encouraging and sharing the early part of this journey. Finally, I owe a profound debt of gratitude to my family for their unwavering encouragement and support throughout my (long) academic career. I am grateful to my father, Luigi Marchesi, for modeling the skeptical mind and a love of knowledge, for laying the foundations for an intellectual path, and then for generously contributing to supporting it, and to my stepmother, Francoise Marchesi, for her enthusiastic support. I am grateful to my mother, Palma D’alessandra for sharing with me her political passion and for introducing me to feminism and reproductive politics early in life. My sister, Barbara Marchesi, provided encouragement and cheerleading when it mattered most. I am endlessly grateful to my husband, Jeffrey Felberbaum, enthusiastic fieldwork vii companion and assistant, unconditional supporter, and parent extraordinaire. Last, but not least, much gratitude goes to my son, Noah Matteo, for adding new impetus and a much needed sense of balance to the dissertation project. viii ABSTRACT CONTESTED SUBJECTS: BIOPOLITICS & THE MORAL STAKES OF SOCIAL COHESION IN POST-WELFARE ITALY SEPTEMBER 2013 MILENA MARCHESI, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Elizabeth L. Krause The requirements of European Unification, along with broader processes of globalization, including immigration, are reshaping economic and welfare priorities and reconfiguring the relationship between citizens and the state in Italy. The reorganization of the Italian welfare state around the principle of subsidiarity combines neoliberal restructuring with a commitment to social solidarity and cohesion and privileges the family as the social formation best suited to mediate between state, market, and citizens. As the state retreats from some of its former social welfare responsibilities, it simultaneously extends its reach into matters of reproduction and family-making. Biopolitics in the time of subsidiarity encompasses concerns over birth rates, the population, the rights of the unborn, and the proper composition of the family. This dissertation examines the terms of social cohesion in post-welfare Italy and the central role that matters of reproduction and the family play in its reformulation as a moral and cultural problem. I focus on three discursive sites: the politics of life; the assertion of the heteronormative family as an urgent and legitimate site of political ix intervention; and the parameters for the “appropriate” integration of migrants into Italian society. I draw on ethnographic inquiry with associations and individuals engaged in reproductive and migrant health and politics in Milan. Tracing the policies, practices, and discourses that seek to govern in the name of social cohesion sheds light on new citizenship projects and logics of inclusion/exclusion in the post-welfare moment