Il tema dell’immigrazione è entrato negli ultimi anni prepotentemente all’ordine del giorno della discussione politica nazionale e internazionale. Gli Stati nazionali, i governi, le organizzazioni umanitarie, le istituzioni internazionali, gli attori economici, la società civile si confrontano ogni giorno con il nodo della politica migratoria, declinata di volta in volta a seconda delle rispettive esigenze, dei rapporti di forza, degli equilibri, degli assetti che le classi dirigenti scelgono di privilegiare. In Italia il dibattito pubblico è dominato dalla cosiddetta «emergenza sbarchi», con tutto il corollario di provvedimenti di urgenza, di circuiti assistenziali, di rigurgiti razzisti che sono ampiamente documentabili quantomeno per il periodo che corre dalle «primavere arabe» del 2011 fino a oggi. La ricerca scientifica fatica a individuare uno spazio di riflessione e di sperimentazione capace di affinare lo sguardo e di ragionare sulla lunga durata dei fenomeni. Questo numero della rivista affronta il tema dell’immigrazione in una prospettiva di lungo periodo con una particolare attenzione alla sua dimensione politica. L’ottica adottata consente di cogliere aspetti rilevanti del rapporto tra la società italiana e le istituzioni pubbliche. Conoscere l’immigrazione aiuta infatti a disvelare il modo con cui si intrecciano le dinamiche nazionali e quelle internazionali, partendo dal processo di integrazione europea; aiuta a comprendere le trasformazioni nel mercato del lavoro; permette di ricostruire i punti di forza e di debolezza dell’azione delle istituzioni sul territorio; fa capire meglio l’origine e lo sviluppo dei conflitti sociali; porta a riflettere sulla centralità del terzo settore e la crisi del welfare: solo per citare alcune delle questioni che emergono dalle ricerche proposte. Dal punto di vista scientifico l’immigrazione rappresenta un terreno di incontro formidabile tra gli studiosi di storia e di scienze sociali. In questo numero, si intende rafforzare e rilanciare questo incontro. Le ricerche presentate intendono soffermarsi su un periodo storico che va dagli anni sessanta a oggi. Viene ricostruito il lungo percorso di politiche che lo Stato italiano ha adottato per governare l’immigrazione straniera, dalla prima circolare del Ministero del lavoro risalente al 1963 fino ai provvedimenti emanati dal governo Gentiloni nel 2017, con un contributo dedicato interamente al passaggio al ministero dell’Interno di Marco Minniti. Vengono esaminati nel dettaglio i primi flussi migratori numericamente significativi che si collocano negli anni sessanta-settanta, quali quello delle lavoratrici impegnate nel settore domestico e quello degli operai provenienti dalla Jugoslavia e diretti in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Viene proposto un focus specifico sulla legge Turco-Napolitano del 1998 e in particolare sulla sua connessione con il processo di integrazione europea. Viene sintetizzata la storia dell’intervento sindacale verso l’immigrazione dagli anni settanta ai primi anni novanta. Viene analizzata la trasformazione di uno dei più importanti partiti politici italiani, la Lega, che si caratterizza per il passaggio da formazione di stampo antimeridionale a partito ostile all’immigrazione straniera. Emerge un quadro complesso e articolato, che ci permette di conoscere più a fondo un tema troppo spesso schiacciato sulle contingenze del presente.
Per una storia del governo dell’immigrazione straniera in Italia: dagli anni sessanta alla crisi delle politiche
Michele Colucci,
The article examines government policy in respect of foreign immigration in Italy from the 1960s to present day. The author links the policies adopted towards immigration within the different historical contexts in which they were developed, and highlights the priorities chosen by the ruling class, the concrete functioning of the legal provisions and the effects these have had on society. A complex picture emerges, namely the growth of foreign immigration corresponding to the emergence of conflicts which, in turn, have led to an increasingly fraught public debate.
Keywords: Immigration; History; Migration Policies; Contemporary Italy.
«Le estere». Immigrazione femminile e lavoro domestico in Italia (1960-80)
Alessandra Gissi
The analysis of female immigration is fundamental to reconsider the consolidated periodization that places the arrival, analysis and narration of the flows to Italy only from the eighties of the twentieth century. Within a research still in its early stages, this contribution aims to investigate some features of female foreign immigration and its reception in public discourse between the late sixties and seventies of the twentieth century. This is an analysis conducted through the first investigations of different origins and through a survey of the daily and periodical press, including the feminist one. Data and narratives contribute to analyze the construction of paradigms – visibility, invisibility, subalternity, rights, racialization – linked to female immigration and to a specific sector of employment such as domestic work.
Keywords: Female immigration; Domestic Workers; Sixties; Seventies; Italy.
This article aims to investigate the institutional response to the arrival of the first economic migrants to the Peninsula, between the late sixties and early seventies. The investigation was conducted on the ministerial correspondence (of the Ministry of the Interior) on the case of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, one of the first Italian regions where the phenomenon manifested itself more intensely. In fact, given that there wasn’t any law, the management of economic migrants was totally under Public administration jurisdiction. The reading of the documents showed that the institutions failed immediately to implement an adequate response to the problem, mainly due to the inability of the competent ministries to agree on the measures to be taken to hinder the growth of the phenomenon.
Keywords: Immigration; Friuli-Venezia Giulia; Migration policy.
Sindacati e immigrazione straniera in Italia dalla fine degli anni settanta ai primi anni novanta
Fabrizio Loreto
The essay analyses the initial reaction of the main Italian Confederation (Cgil, Cisl, Uil) in the face of the new phenomenon of immigration, that provoked numerous tensions in the national labour market during a period characterized by the increasing unemployment, starting in the Seventies. Moreover, the essay examines the quantitative and qualitative increase of trade union action between the Eighties and Nineties: in particular, through the birth of the first offices for foreigners, the offering of new services and the formulation of specific requests on behalf of immigrants. In Italy the labour unions have implemented important initiatives for and with foreigners, but they have failed to establish a real union of immigrants.
Keywords: Trade union; Immigration; Assistance; Collective Bargaining; Rights; Solidarity.
Percorsi leghisti. Dall’antimeridionalismo alla xenofobia
Paolo Barcella
Lega Nord (Northern League) is one of the most long-standing parties sitting in the Italian parliament. Deeply-rooted in several regions, the party displays a well-defined ideological outline that guarantees it a place among the range of European far-right forces. Its characterization is the result of a complex history that saw the gradual coalescence of localist-oriented political forces born and evolved in the northern Italian regions since the end of the 1970s. This essay retraces the paths of those forces, reflecting upon their evolutions and variations, examining two of their most characterizing traits: anti-southernism and xenophobia. The former had a pivotal role in the first period of Lega Nord’s existence; whereas the latter became the characteristic trait of the political season in which occurred the passage from the «Martelli» to the «Bossi-Fini» law. The present work outlines how, regardless of what is considered common knowledge by many observers, Lega Nord’s ideology was not an outcome of the erasure of Italian emigration’s memory. On the contrary, the regions in which the party demonstrates the strongest appeal are those that were greatly affected by the post-WWII incoming migratory exodus. It is exactly there, where it is more spread and stronger, that the memory of the emigration has been re-elaborated and re-framed in a xenophobic outlook.
Keywords: Northern League; Migrations; Anti-Southernism; Xenophobia; Racism.
La legge Turco-Napolitano: un lasciapassare per l’Europa
Simone Paoli
The article focuses on the role of the Schengen Agreements in the origins of the Turco-Napolitano Law. It shows that the Italian Government’s willingness to join the Schengen Area was an important factor in prompting and shaping reforms of national immigration legislation between the mid- and late 1990s. In order to be admitted into the Schengen Area, Italy needed to convince its partners, especially Germany and the Netherlands, that it was able to effectively control external borders and expel irregular migrants. The Turco-Napolitano Law was thus expected to reassure Schengen countries in addition to domestic public opinion. The article also argues that the Government in Rome used Schengen for speeding up the decision-making process and persuading radical pro-immigration groups and parties to accept restrictive measures. The leftist components of the Government’s majority were reluctant to tighten immigration policies. Schengen thus served as an external constraint to breach their resistance and modernize national norms and procedures.
Keywords: Schengen; External Frontiers; Germany; Immigration Control Policies; Turco-Napolitano Law.
Una filosofia della sicurezza e dell’ordine. Il governo dell’immigrazione secondo Marco Minniti
Enrico Gargiulo
In Italy, Marco Minniti was appointed Minister of the Interior in December 2016. Since then, he has not radically changed the norms and the policies about immigration, although he has added some original elements. Specifically, Minniti has proposed an actual “philosophy” of the immigration management, hinging on the signifiers of “order” and “security”. The article aims to reveal this philosophy by focusing on both its material and ideological dimensions. While the first consists of concrete policies and actions, the second has to do with the values inspiring political choices and the reasoning that justifies them. To this end, two different kinds of empirical evidence are used in the analysis: formal acts, such as laws, decrees, plans, and circulars; and discourses, contained in press conferences, public speeches, and interviews with newspapers.
Keywords: Immigration Management; Security; Public Order; Integration.
Le strade ferrate siciliane: una società in movimento (secoli XIX-XX)
Giovanna Canciullo
To the classic historiographical thesis, the railways history in Italy has to be read through an interpretative point of view mainly economical (relationship between railways and industrial development, so, more generally, economical). The essay offers a different reading which considers rather the connection between railways and big social transformations. Particularly, these infrastructures helped not only the movement of both local and foreign entrepreneurs, but also of women and university students. At the same time, on tracks began to carry newspapers and magazines of various kinds, with many luxury goods (marbles and precious furniture) increasingly requested by the urban middle classes. The great protagonist of the railways inquiry will be the middle-class, that asks to improve the road conditions for leisure and culture reasons. At the end of the nineteenth century, in fact, will be born the great phenomenon of mass tourism. However, the writer points out also the limits of these infrastructures: they, firstly, created a regional market in place of the national one and secondly, unlike the English case, they didn’t press for the birth of basic and mechanical industries. The concession companies, in fact, most of them foreign, bought throughout the nineteenth century the fixed and mobile material from European industries, most of all the Swiss and German ones.
Keywords: Railways; Entrepreneurship; Sicily; Tourism.
«Risorse maledette». Petrolio e acqua nella prospettiva storica della crisi mediorientale
Valerio Caruso
An historical perspective allows to link water and oil with the never-ending Middle Eastern conflict. By refusing an unilateral and teleological approach, explicit in resource curse and hydraulic despotism theories, historical analysis can shed light on both material and mental factors: socio-economic, political, military, ethnic and religious matters intertwine with water and oil, and with each other, to define the long-term process of state-building and his reverse, internal conflict. This article focuses on Iraq and its internal struggles, in the last fifty years. A brief summary of Iraq’s twentieth century history serves as a premise for a reconsideration of the Iraqi-Kurdish conflict, the destruction of the Marsh Arabs of the Shatt’al-Arab basin, and the birthing process of the Islamic State, in which past environmental issues and socio-political repercussions reveal themselves in all their actuality.
Keywords: Middle East; Oil; Water; Conflict.
Antifascismo e Resistenza visti dalla Sicilia
Rosario Mangiameli
The essay analyzes the impact on the far Sicilian society of the Mid-Northern Italy liberation struggle against the fascism. Returning partisans are often isolated and misunderstood and they are suspected of being dangerous subversives. Above all, the partisan movement in Sicily is not a politically solid and territorially organized one. In Sicily, the legacy of the liberation struggle is carried on by the original and often conservative antifascism. For these reasons, the mutual understanding between the two parts of Italy, divided by the front-line, is very difficult. During the winter of 1944-45, the popular movements against the call to arms in the liberation army [Moti del Non si parte] represent the most dramatic aspect of this inability to understand each other. Just during the Sixties, the national political parties can involve Sicily in the public narration of the Italian Resistance Movement.
Keywords: Mob in Southern Italy; Resistance Movement and Sicily; Antifascist Legacy.
L’eclissi delle utopie
Francesco Benigno
This is a review of the latest book by the Italian historian Enzo Traverso, Malinconia di sinistra. Una tradizione nascosta, Feltrinelli, Milano 2016 (in English translated as Left-Wing Melancholia. Marxism, History and Memory, Columbia U.P., New York 2017). The theme of the book is the sense of loss of the idea that the building of a new better world, a dreamed project called socialism, is possible. The perspective of this interesting book is that the sunset of the utopias produces a feeling of melancholia that can be found also in the past, traced around the many hard defeats of the workers’ movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nowadays, this feeling can be perhaps used, under certain conditions, to reactivate the left-wing strength. The review shows the many ambiguities of such a nostalgic approach, particularly where it tends to reduce the leftist tradition to its Bolshevik component and to crush the differences between the past and the present.
Keywords: Left Politics; Marxism; History.