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Senegalese Street-Sellers, Racism and the Discourse on ‘Irregular Trade’ in Rimini

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Bruno Riccio
Bruno Riccio*
Affiliation:
Centre for the Comparative Study of Culture, Development and the Environment, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN, UK, Telephone: 01273 606755. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

The coast of Emilia-Romagna is a favourite destination for the seasonal movement of Senegalese street-sellers. It is no coincidence that Rimini hosted one of the first racist demonstrations of shopkeepers in 1989. The situation has worsened over time. In fact, the local public discourse on immigration never developed autonomously but has always been connected to the discourse expressing the main concern of the town: irregular trade. Yet discourses do not work alone and are linked also to social relations and to economic trends such as the restructuring of the local retailing economy and the tourist sector. This article therefore shows how racism in Rimini is the fluid product of, first, the overlapping of discourses about differing social phenomena which shape the dominant discourse on immigration; and, secondly, the identification with this dominant discourse that has emerged from everyday social relations and institutional practices. The latter part of the article presents elements of the counter-discourse, based on observations and conversations carried out with Senegalese immigrants in a summer camp outside Rimini. Finally, a proposal by the mayor of Rimini to exclude non-resident immigrants coming from outside the province is analysed as an example of the criminalization of immigrants through the application of a ‘sedentarist metaphysic’.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 4 , Issue 2: Special Issue: The Italian experience of immigration , November 1999 , pp. 225 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. After Dini's Decree Law (489, 1995) Senegalese immigrants legally resident in Italy (with permessi di soggiorno) numbered 31, 870. They are mainly men (30, 229) migrating as individuals, following routes shaped by migratory chains, and highly geographically mobile within Italy (ISMU, Terzo rapporto sulle migrazioni, Angeli, Milano, 1997). Regarding the specific case of Romagna, see Chiani, Valter, ‘Caratteristiche della immigrazione extracomunitaria nelle provincie di Forlì e Ravenna’, in Minardi, Everardo and Cifiello, Stefano (eds). Economic locali e immigrati extracomunitari in Emilia Romagna, Angeli, Milan, 1991, pp. 199–222. For some studies of Senegalese in other localities, see Scidà, Giuseppe, ‘Senegalesi e Mauriziani a Catania: due risposte divergenti alla sfida dell'integrazione sociale’, La Ricerca Sociale, 47–48, November 1993, pp. 173–200; Marchetti, Aldo, ‘La nuova immigrazione a Milano. Il caso senegalese’, in IRER, Tra due rive. La nuova immigrazione a Milano, Angeli, Milan, 1994, pp. 241–366; Zinn, Dorothy L., ‘The Senegalese immigrants in Bari. What happens when the Africans peer back?’, in Benmayor, Rina and Skotnes, Andor (eds). Migration and Identity, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, pp. 53–68; Carter, Donald Martin, States of Grace. Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997. More generally on Senegalese in Italy, see Campus, Aurora, Mottura, Giovanni and Perrone, Luigi, ‘I Senegalesi’, in Mottura, Giovanni (ed.), L'arcipelago immigrazioni. Caratteristiche e modelli migratori dei lavoratori stranieri in Italia, Ediesse, Rome, 1992, pp. 249–77; di Friedberg, Ottavia Schmidt, Islam, solidarietà e lavoro. I muridi senegalesi in Italia, Edizioni della Fondazione Agnelli, Turin, 1994.Google Scholar

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