Tag Archives: Migration

The Mediterranean at the Dawn of the Third Millennium

10/02/2024Conference paper (multiple non-blind peer review)Global South, God, Mediterranean, Migration, Neocolonialism, Third millennium, War, climate change, genocide, identity, raceLeoluca Orlando

“Where there is danger, there grows what saves”

Friedrich Hölderlin, in Patmos

11.IX.2001 – 7.X.2024. The brutal attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the brutal terrorist violence of Hamas mark the dawn of the new millennium and constitute reference dates for a new era in the Mediterranean region, which is already conditioned by climate change, by the affirmation and crisis of international finance, and by growing migratory flows that have transformed the Mare Nostrum into the cemetery of a genocide produced by financial selfishness and political pettiness.

The Mediterranean is no longer the hub of the West-East conflict, typical of the Cold War after the Second World War, but a place of confirmation of the decline of the hegemony of the West. That hegemony is reduced to identifying itself in 2003 in the disastrous invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition led by the USA with the neocolonial claim of George W. Bush jr. to impose democracy on that country after the defeat and killing of Sadam Hussein, and in recent months – after the massacres of Hamas – the shameful image of Israel reacting to terrorist violence with the massacre of tens of thousands of defenseless Palestinian civilians. And the US-EU axis appears incapable of finding diplomatic ways to reach a ceasefire, hence it passively suffers the wicked choices of the Israeli Government and the consequences of the failure of the attempts of US President Biden to stop Israel, which is responsible for what is now a genocide. It is a massacre that fuels not only hatred due to belonging to Israel or Palestine, but hatred due to religious faith.

The Netanjhau government becomes a negative symbol of the West, but is also the heaviest enemy of the people of Israel, provoking reactions to the detriment of the Jewish people in the world. And while the Jewish people, who have suffered terrible violence in the name of racial and religious hatred, deserve the utmost respect, History reminds us that it will be hard to extinguish religious hatred.

After the Second World War the West had taken on the face of a US and a Western European alliance opposed to the Soviet Union. During the years of the Cold War, “satellite” countries in the various Souths of the world were connected to either leading Western countries or the Soviet Union.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022 has once again made the decline of Western hegemony legible in the heart of Europe, posing a question that is a call to responsibility and a guilty “distraction” of the US/EU axis: Where were the US and EU in 2014 when pro-Nazi Ukrainian militias (recognized by Kiev and trained by NATO instructors and still used today by Kiev and the West) operated in Donbass, killing defenseless citizens? And the West, incapable of promoting solutions and paths to peace, today finds itself mired in a war destined to have no end or to record the military victory of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Again, with more specific geographical reference to the Mediterranean, the brutal massacres of 7 October 2024 by Hamas posed the same question, which is a call to responsibility and guilty “distraction” of the USA and the EU: Where were the USA and the EU when, for decades, Israel militarized the Gaza Strip and persecuted defenseless Palestinians in defiance of human rights and United Nations resolutions?

And, again in reference to the Mediterranean, a similar question can be asked about the continuation of an unacceptable Western neocolonialism to the detriment of African peoples, which is confirmed by an unstoppable instability of the current regimes and makes Africa a place of Russian and Chinese neocolonialism.

Climate change produces already massive desertification and hunger, unstoppable migrations, while the financialization and globalization of the economy, with their recurring excesses and crises, facilitate genocides, wars and terrorism, to the detriment of defenseless and migrant populations, and new forms of colonialism thus find in the Mediterranean area a breeding ground made up of fragmentation, conflicts and conditions of institutional confusion. Concomitantly, there is a progressive loss of spirituality, or, even worse, the instrumental use of spiritual values: fanaticism and violence are thus championed from time to time by devious interests, as well as fears, and mixed racial and religious references.

In this context, new protagonists emerge such as India and China, who “hide” their military apparatus, making the numbers of their respective populations weigh – each of the two countries with over a billion inhabitants – as well as their financial and planning resources, the construction of infrastructural works, and their potential for corruption to the detriment of hundreds and hundreds of millions in absolute poverty. China, in particular, is characterized internally by systematic violation of human rights, while still keeping capitalism and communism within itself, and hence conditions that are typical of the global South and conditions typical of the North interact, from time to time presenting a different and captivating face, i.e., with communist or capitalist realities, from the North or from the South of the world. A heavy neocolonialism without the display of armies follows, which appears less unacceptable (but is equally heavy) than Western neocolonialism with its historical burden of military violence.

It may seem off topic that I refer to spirituality, understood as a vision inspired by respect for the human rights of each and every one. Yet, spirituality today means for me democratic brotherhood, beyond the traditional contrast between the primacy of freedom over equality or the primacy of equality over freedom. And I am convinced that the present, and even more future, condition of the Mediterranean is so serious as to require a radical change of spiritual perspective, through the research and choice of fundamental principles that, moreover, are widely codified in Universal Declarations and Conventions on human rights, and call for the consequent coherence of economic, cultural and political actions.

My proposal is to return to placing at the center of attention and reread, in the light of the times in which we live, values and references such as Race, Identity and God, all of which have been widely manipulated, obscured, considered instrumentally at the service of partisan interests and neocolonial claims starting precisely from the Mediterranean.

The first part of this proposal is to reject the belief that identity depends exclusively on the blood of parents and, instead, acknowledge that identity is an unrepeatable and individual act of freedom and personal experience. Approximately 8 billion human beings coexist on our planet and each has a different identity, differently composed. As many human beings as there are, as many as there are identities.

The second part of this proposal is to defend the one human race. Anyone who distinguishes men and women on the basis of a plurality of races prepares marginalization, intolerance, genocide.

In the Mediterranean, these last two propositions lead to the denial of the category of so-called, i.e., closed in itself. “migrants”: we are all human beings, belonging to the same race, all equal and all different without any discrimination between those born in a given reality and those who find themselves living in that reality.

A final part of this proposal for a radical change of perspective concerns God. Whoever believes that God is one (and I believe that God is one) will have to accept that someone meets God in the square of Allah, someone in the path of Jesus Christ, others in the avenue of Yahweh, but also in the paths of Shiva, Buddha or Confucius as well as in the path of reason. It is necessary to reject religion used as the “opium of the people” and respect religious faith as an impulse and choice for the liberation of every human being.

The Mediterranean, rich in history and cultures, faiths and languages, can be an extraordinary miscellany, a mosaic of civil coexistence, an interdependence experienced as an alternative and against intolerance and conflicts. Is this, just mentioned, an abstract and simplistic response to such a complex and concretely violent reality?

Yes and no, at the same time.

The answer depends on the will and ability to contribute – from the world of schools to that of information, from the world of economics to that of finance, from the world of the family to religious and even artistic realities – behaviors, concrete actions, lifestyles. All this is certainly difficult; and it alone is not enough. It is essential that this change of perspective becomes widespread awareness, but it is equally and completely necessary that this radical change of perspective becomes political action, a compass of orientation for States and international organizations.

This vision, this change of perspective in the politics and in the policies of the many States, is struggling to manifest itself, despite the many strong calls from artists, intellectuals, associations of citizens and spiritual leaders (from those condemned to the torture of migrations and dictatorships to artists and Nobel Prize winners, from isolated prophets of a new time to religious leaders such as Pope Francis). The European Union’s political choices currently appear not to be adequate to the ambitions and potential of the EU, which is itself one of the most extraordinary democratic institutional innovations of the history of humanity. And today, everyone understands that the role of European Union is essential for the future of Mediterranean and for peaceful international coexistence.

The Ambiguity and Danger of the Concept of Border

09/02/2024Conference paper (multiple non-blind peer review)Immigration, Migrants, Migration, Toleration, ambiguity, border, border studies, borders, danger, ethics of migration, intolerance, openingLuigi Patronaggio

Some scholarly friends have recently invited me to discuss the theme of the border. The first thing that came to mind was the ambiguity and danger of the concept of border.

Already starting from the definition given by the Italian encyclopaedia Treccani, we realise the duplicity of the concept of border:

The border is the line that separates one state from another. The concept, however, has a different origin and above all has a much wider use: we also need “boundaries” to organise our thoughts. The concept of the border is one of the tools we use to master reality (…) the word end comes from the Latin finis and, as in Italian, it indicates the conclusion of something (in Latin it was used precisely to indicate the border); “Con-finis” means that that conclusion is common, it is the same for both territories or lands. Each of the two territories ends, has an ending point, is limited, and ends up on the same border.

A first observation arises spontaneously for me: the border delimits the self and preserves one’s identity but at the same time it prevents reunification and exchange.

The cognate and synonymous concept of boundaries is, moreover, a common heritage of various branches of knowledge. We have deep traces of it in the myths of the Greek world, but we find the concept of border in the history of philosophy, in the biological sciences, in psychology, but above all, the concept has been widely explored – in the field of study closest to me – in law, both classical and modern, and finally in international law.

The border in the Greek and the Latin worlds separated order from chaos, the known from the unknown, the right from the wrong. You can always go beyond the border, however, as long as you have a good guide with you, a new Virgil.

For Heraclitus, the soul has such remote boundaries that it is not possible to reach them.

Horos in Greek is the border that separates two lands but also the stone that concretely signals their limit. Horos defines both a concept, an experience but also the norm that separates and defines. Horos also has a normative power; it represents a necessity guaranteeing an order. To raise a boundary means to recognise a difference, an otherness, to regulate the relationship with it.

In Hesiod’s Theogony, the boundary is the original delimitation between heaven and earth starting from primordial chaos. The limit is an ordering element through which to get out of chaos. The limit is a barrier to man’s fear of the infinite.

Heracles, during his journey in search of Geryon’s herds, defeats monsters and monstrous creatures, sets a physical boundary between the known world and the world where human beings must not go, placing the border with two columns placed on the two shores of the Strait of Gibraltar. And this limit, if you think about it, resisted until Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Indies. For Christians for centuries, on the other hand, the edge of the world was Santiago de Compostela on the Portuguese shores of the Atlantic Ocean where the remains of St. James the Great arrived.

But the boundary seems to exist to be crossed, as Dante’s Ulysses teaches, even at the risk of death (see verse 119 of Canto XXVI of the Inferno, known as the “Canto of Ulysses”, which reads: “You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge”).

It should be noted, however, that Hermes (not surprisingly the protector of travellers, merchants, and thieves), the deity who protects borders but at the same time encourages them to be overcome.

The boundary marks a dividing line that establishes a relationship of inclusion/exclusion. At the border, you can make two choices: either stand at the threshold or cross it.

The border is always defined but at the same time open. It has in itself the idea of limit and difference, of otherness and passage as a link between the inside and the outside, between the known and the unknown. It is not a locked door but a passage to be crossed, possibly with good moral guidance.

The concept of boundaries in the natural sciences

In biology – although the statement should be taken with approximation as the writer is not an expert on the subject – the so-called primordial cell has been hypothesized, and subsequently reproduced in the laboratory, a cell with a circumscribed environment, separate but in communication with the outside world and with the potential to increase its complexity; Going beyond the boundary of the cell produces new life; reproduction occurs only by penetrating the other cell, mixing and splitting the DNA of the mother cell so that the daughter cell contains part of the DNA of the two fusing cells.

It is well known that the structure of the cell is formed by the cell membrane, the nucleus and the cytoplasm. For the cell to reproduce, it is necessary to penetrate the cell membrane, reach the nucleus and then allow the DNA to be mixed.

A French psychoanalyst, Didier Anzieu, in his work “The nomadic epidermis and the psychic skin”, borrowed the behaviour of cells, and elaborated the metaphor of the skin, an imaginary metamorphosis of the skin: the skin as a “psychic envelope” that ensures protection against excess stimuli, allows the development of the senses, and acts as a support and containment to the feeling of self.

The sphere of law

In Roman law, the “limes” in Roman law marks the boundary between Roman civilisation and the barbarians who cannot be integrated (barbarians are those who stammer, who do not speak Latin, the language of the fathers).

Throughout the Middle Ages, during the Empire and during the Papacy, the border did not represent something essential because all the space belonged to the Emperor thanks to the investiture of the Pope.

It was only with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which put an end to the Thirty Years’ War and effectively created the modern absolute state, that the concept of the border returned and the modern border as it is understood today was born.

In Roman civil law, property, the “dominium ex iure Quiritium”, was recognised only to “cives” and only on Italian soil; defined by the classics as absolute law that extended “usque ad coeleum et ad inferos”, it was protected by robust actions to defend the borders (“actio finium regundorum”). It was often granted as a war prize, but with the disintegration of the Roman Empire small property almost completely disappeared and already with the barbarian invasions, in the Middle Ages, everything had returned to the property of the occupying sovereign.

With the fall of feudalism, private property was reborn as a positive concept for the emerging bourgeoisie (according to the French Civil Code of 1804 “the right of property is that which belongs to every citizen to enjoy and dispose of his goods, his income, the fruit of his work and his industriousness”); already in the Napoleonic Code it is stated that property is recognised within the limits of laws and regulations; and also in the Italian Civil Code of 1942 property is recognised “within the limits and with the observance of the obligations established by the legal system”.

After all, feudalism dies when it is reborn and private property is recognised. The border divides what belongs to the Prince from what belongs to the bourgeoisie. Among private individuals, “u limmitu” (a word from the archaic Sicilian language), acts as a boundary, it is what separates my property from the property of others.

And yet, in modern civil law, the concept of property has always had limits, it must have boundaries and it must be crossable in the general interest. This is stated in art. 832 of the Italian Civil Code of 1942. According to art. 42 paragraph 2 of the Italian Constitution of 1947, the right to property is not a right without limits, it must be based on the principle of solidarity, and it is necessary to impose limits on private property for purposes of social solidarity (the so-called social function of property), these limitations must allow society to grow economically beyond the selfish needs of the individual owner.

The border as a place of separation within our society

Be careful, sometimes borders have crept into our own society: what else are prisons and asylums? They are confined places where the inside/outside exchange is difficult, complex, sometimes hindered and marginalised. The best sociology and the most modern psychiatry, however, indicate that the resocialisation of the prisoner passes through the exchange with “the outside”; just as mental distress is cushioned by social inclusion (see the illuminating pages of Franco Basaglia on this point).

Turning to modern international law, it is noted that the ambiguity, and above all the danger, of the concept of the border that delimits the nation is back. That of nation is an idea of romantic derivation: as a unity of language, religion and traditions, but it is an equally dangerous idea because it is at the basis of nationalism and its authoritarian drifts: think of the exaltation of the Aryan race by the Nazis, of the magnificent roots of the Roman Empire exalted by fascism and the examples could unfortunately continue. In the early 1900s, this concept of the nation was opposed, without any success, by the utopia of socialist internationalism, the borderless homeland of workers all over the world, an idea, in turn, sadly exploited by the Bolshevik revolution and Stalinism.

Borders are often drawn for political reasons, as often for economic reasons, and the economic question is often deliberately confused with the religious or historical-political one. Think of the border disputes over international waters for the exploitation of marine resources, or more recently, the war for the conquest of space. On the other hand, we cannot fail to point out how difficult international negotiations are for the protection of the seas and the atmosphere from pollution, where seas and atmosphere cannot but be considered as universal goods, without borders, functional to the very existence of the human race.

For the conquest of the border, wars are fought and deaths are caused, and this is why I am increasingly beginning to distance myself from the concept of border, as is now openly outlined in this article.

The open society

I can say without hesitation that the border must be crossable: the border that can be crossed is functional creating of an open, multicultural, multiethnic society.

And yet, despite having taken sides, I cannot ignore that this ambiguous and dual concept of border also has limited positive aspects: it allows the preservation of traditions, cultural heritage, the teachings of the fathers, it is a barrier to the vulgarity of the world and resistant to the so-called liquid society described by Zigmunt Bauman.

According to Zigmunt Bauman, in fact, we Westerners live in a “liquid society”: an environment without definitions, where everything mixes and merges with something other than itself, producing a single media soup. Liquids dilate, mix, have no boundaries.

After all, respect for other people’s traditions and cultures is respect for the border.

Integration is therefore the solution that is perhaps not definitive and perhaps not a salvation: it represents the virtuous fusion between two cultures without one becoming hegemonic over the other: this is how the United States of America was born and became great, mixing Irish, Italians, Germans and Jews.

But the West is burdened by the sin and the unhealed wound of colonialism that is still at the root of the Third World’s serious backwardness and at the root of continuous and ever dormant disputes and claims. In fact, it is difficult to talk about integration in countries where poverty still reigns and where the economic and cultural disasters of colonialism are still visible.

Recall that for years the American colonialists denied the culture of the American Indians and the Spaniards did the same in South America. More recently, think of the extermination of the Armenians or the Kurds. The systematic eradication of indigenous cultures has sometimes been carried out by genocide. It is difficult for the West to allow us to forget such outrages.

A dominant culture must not only respect minorities but must also be able to tolerate aspects of “other” cultures that are often not easily understood.

There are many examples: think of the problem of the veil of Islamic women resolved in a heterogeneous way within the EU, often banned because it is seen as an intolerable harassment of Islamic women, while in the perspective of the Parisian “banlieues” it represents the affirmation of an identity. In Iran, on the other hand, the imposition of the veil remains an authoritarian act of rejection of Western culture, considered dangerous for religious customs, so a real civil war is being fought in which women are the absolute protagonists. In modern Turkey, until the advent of Erdogan, the state, which wanted to be secular, forbade women to wear the veil at public activities and in universities because there was a desire for modernisation and integration. Today in Turkey, the veil is back in fashion. It is equally difficult in our eyes to accept certain forms of “jus corrigenda” typical of certain patriarchal cultures. Think again of the controversy over the ban on the use of pork in state school cafeterias or the practice of circumcision.

Beyond easy and populist slogans (“immigrants must respect our rules and must adapt to our culture…”), we “dominants” must also have the ability to set limits that are often not always shared by the majority: just to give an example, think of the ban on displaying the crucifix in public offices. Of course, the crucifix identifies a large and millenary community such as the Christian one, but if we want to be truly “open” and affirm the secularity of the state and the equality of all religions before the state, then we need to take a small step back.

However, efforts must be made to understand and the best Western models must be promoted, without imposing them. There is, in fact, a non-negotiable core of Western values, encapsulated in the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which we must be proud defenders of. And here the border once again takes on a positive value of defending fundamental values that characterises us as a virtuous community that, after the disaster of the two world wars, recognises itself and is founded on those values inscribed in the Convention.

The only boundaries we must preserve are those of the freedom of others, of property, culture and the language of others.

In this sense, applying the principles of the Convention, and of other national and supranational fundamental charters, means attributing to positive law an educational function. The same thing happened in Italy when “reparative marriage” was abolished or the so-called abandonment of the marital roof was decriminalized.

The issue of immigration

The concept of border leads us to confront the great, pretended border that perhaps never existed represented by the Mediterranean Sea, which has always been a place of exchange of civilizations: from the Phoenicians, to the Greeks, to the Romans to the Arabs.

Today we want there to be an undrawn border beyond which many peoples fleeing war and famine must not cross. Syrians fleeing a bloody internal war that has already caused more than 430,000 deaths must not pass; Eritreans and Somalis who are weakened by years of wars, famines and dictatorships that in Eritrea impose an endless military conscription on men and women must not pass; sub-Saharans or Pakistanis whose living conditions are miserable must not pass through (just think that the annual per capita income in countries such as Pakistan stands at $1,505, in Ivory Coast at $2,549 or in neighboring Tunisia at $3,800, compared to $35,657 for the annual per capita income in Italy and $43,658 in France); The Bangladeshis in their country of 170,000,000 inhabitants live crammed into a space that is three times smaller than Italy, afflicted by floods, where there are 50,000,000 people living in poverty and where 40 % of the population lives on less than two dollars a day.

But before accusing ourselves of populism and giving ourselves the usual handy lesson, “let’s help them at home”, I want to recall some positive norms only formally signed by almost all the states of the world:

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of any State. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his own country.”

Art. 14 c. I Dec. Univ.: Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution “.

And what can be said of our Constitution, which not only recognises a broad right of asylum (art. 10 of the Constitution). “a foreigner who is prevented in his country from effectively exercising the democratic freedoms guaranteed by the Italian Constitution has the right to asylum in the territory of the Republic under the conditions established by law”) but recognises the right of our citizens to emigrate (Art. 35 c. III “… recognises the freedom of emigration, subject to the obligations laid down by law in the general interest…).

If, therefore, there is a positive right to emigrate, if you will allow me to provoke you, there are no borders, no frontiers, no barriers, no walls. And as Pope Francis said on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall: we need bridges, not walls!

And how odious it is the distinction that we Westerners strive to emphasise between those who can be recognized as “asylum seekers” and those who are only “migrants of necessity” who must be rejected.

Of course, this is not to deny the right of each individual state to regulate immigration, but as the Italian Constitutional Court pointed out in its judgment no. 105/2001: “… Although the public interests affecting immigration are manifold and however much they may be perceived as serious problems of security and public order linked to uncontrolled migratory flows, the universal character of personal freedom cannot be affected in the slightest, which, like the other rights that the Constitution proclaims inviolable, cannot be affected in the slightest. It is up to individuals not as participants in a particular political community, but as human beings.”

From the border to the ghetto

Allow me now to make one last comment on what I have now revealed to be my negative judgment on the border: how much horror is emanating from the Gaza Strip, which is nothing more than the violent imposition of a border that tightens like a noose around the neck of the Palestinian civilian population and has caused as many as 20,000 deaths to date, including at least 8,000 children.

This is not the place and the time to reflect on the causes of the war between Palestinians and Israelis, but it seems paradoxical to me how Israelis have forgotten the suffering inflicted on them by the Nazis in the Jewish ghettos of half of Europe: today the new ghetto is the Gaza Strip! The extremes connect.

Fortunately, it leaves me with a glimmer of hope, which comes, as always, from culture and dialogue, and I am referring to the so-called Israeli writers of dialogue: Abraham Yehoshua, Amos Oz (who already in 1967 said “even an inevitable occupation is an unjust occupation”); David Grossman, advocate of coexistence between Arabs and Israelis.

Two peoples in two states, it is hoped: at this moment, the impassable border is not the one defended by tanks and barbed wire, but the one erected by religious absolutism and economic selfishness. The certainties of the Jewish religion against the absolutism of Islam; the Western wealth of Israel and the poverty of the Palestinians; the arrogance of the Jewish settlers and the lack of water and arable land of the Palestinians… and we could go on…

But now it is time for me to stop after rambling on too much.

Philip E. Phillis, Greek Cinema and Migration, 1991–2016 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020)

17/02/2023Volume 18, no. 1 (2023), Book review (editorial review)Greece, Migration, cinema, cultureViviana Tagliaferri

With this engaging work on the contemporary filmic representation of migration by Greek cinema, Philip Phillis enters significantly into the hotly debated the issue of migration en masse to Europe of the last decades, doing so with an approach that is both artistic and historical. In focusing on the border crossings that have particularly affected the geopolitical space of the Greek peninsula over the last thirty years, the author succeeds in proposing a thorough outlook to the migratory question through the analysis of its cinematic portrayals by Greek filmmakers or filmmakers active in the Greek area from 1991 to 2016. In fact, through a sensitive and intelligent operation, Phillis sets issues of a purely cinematic nature alongside an eminently political analysis, developing these in parallel throughout the book. This dual nature of the discourse is masterfully held together through the careful — and never superficial — descriptive analysis of the films covered and the ability to compare the poetics of the various directors with the need to re-give voice to migrants and refugees. In fact, Phillis, while praising many directors in his book, seems never to lose sight of the fact that “Greek immigration cinema is produced from a hegemonic position of enunciation since relevant power structures empower indigenous filmmakers rather than the migrants represented on film” (p. 11).

The book opens with a wide-ranging introduction, in which a number of key elements underlying the research work are discussed. First and foremost is the question of identity, Greek and European, and how this has been tested by the phenomenon of migration and is reflected in the nationality of the individual cinematic works themselves. In this regard, Phillis states that one of the main aims of his work is to “closely examine the preoccupation of Greek filmmakers with migration in order to convey the transformation of Greek cinema from national to transnational and to show how Greek films have moved from a more insular model to one that mirrors Greece’s European agenda” (p. 3). The transition from national to transnational takes place for Phillis mainly at the level of regional co-production, which makes him speak of a cinema that is now ‘Balkan’ rather than ‘Greek’. However, he notes has well that the official certification of nationality remains a central element in the life of a cinematic production, as it is the only way to ensure that the various filmmakers can compete in European and other international festivals (p. 57). Indeed, like other cinematic products that could be defined as non-mainstream, festivals remain the main and most important dissemination venue for cinema about migration, which seem to have a very poor reception at the general audience level. Phillis points out that these types of productions remain unattractive, if not unpalatable to Greek audiences, often disturbed by the unattractive portrayal of their own society as xenophobic. On the other hand, the reaction to some films, such as Constantine Giannaris’ Hostage/Omiros (2005) “provide some evidence to the nationalistic conditioning of a segment of Greek audiences, for whom the very thought of a film prioritising the experience of an Albanian migrant is anathema. This is the basic element that separates Hostage from the rest of Giannaris’s filmography, and it brings solid evidence as to the anxieties that migration films can trigger in Greece” (pp. 62-63).

Four major themes can be identified in the book. The first, which is dealt with at length in the first chapters, concerns the role of Albanians in the migration films produced in Greece or by Greek filmmakers. As the first and largest group to cross their borders to get to Greece, the Albanians play a fundamental role in the Greek imaginary and, consequently, in Greek cinema about migration. Phillis investigates in depth the dynamics between the Greeks and this group, the members of which are alternately defined as criminal or hard workers. Nevertheless, in Chapter 5, two films are analysed that manage to go beyond this cultural bias. These are See You/Mirupafshim (Voupouras and Korras 1997) and Eduart (Antoniou 2006), and are considered as “valuable sources of insight on the unsettling potential of cultural difference as they propose nuanced and complex identities and affiliations, contesting xenophobic discourse and simultaneously defying liberal, western views that produce the more painless version of migrant identities” (p. 128). This reflection leads to the second focus of the analysis, the migration narratives. Otherness and its narration, in fact, are usually used in these productions as a mirror for reflecting the otherness by the dominant identity. Here, the author is perhaps the first to criticise the narrative of Theo Angelopoulos — the most iconic and praised Greek director. In fact, Phillis notes how Eternity and a Day/ Mia Aioniotita kai mia Mera (1998) is deeply Eurocentric and paternalistic in nature, providing an elitist discourse on diversity where otherness is meant to serve as a stimulus for the protagonist, usually a white character. This leads directly to the third focal point of the book, that is how migrant agency is represented in these films. The book points out how usually we cannot find any political reflection on the causes of migration, on why people have decided to migrate, and in the case of refugees “systemic violence, which turns citizens into refugees, is disregarded and refugees are revealed in terms of non-agency, loss and death, leaving little room for reflection” (pp. 199-200). There is no control of the other over his or her life, in a tragic vision that is only rarely taken up by the cinema of migration. The last aspect to be analysed is that of documentary production on migration and the rise of xenophobic violence in Greece with the Nazi party Chrysi Avgi. In placing cinematic fiction under the pretence of reality representation offered by documentaries, the book closes the circle on the migration narrative offered by Greek filmmakers. Eventually, the book aims to be a complete and meditated handbook that can guide the reader, even non-specialist, to discover a rich but little-known production.

Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner, Regine Paul (eds.), Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2021)

04/02/2022Book review (editorial review)Migration, Politics, governanceLara Wilhelmine Hoffmann

The study of migration governance requires a global and interdisciplinary framework of analysis. The editors of the “Handbook of the Governance and Politics of Migration” bring together multifaceted perspectives to further understanding on how migration is governed and politicized today. This anthology is edited by Emma Carmel, an Associate Professors in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, UK, Katharina Lenner, Assistant Professor at the same department, and Regine Paul who is an Associate Professor of Comparative Policy Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. The book is divided into six sections comprising “Conceptualising the Politics and Governance of Migration”, “The Politics of Categorising Migration”, “Institutions and Regimes of Migration Governance”, “Spaces of Migration Governance”, “Processes and Practices of Migration Governance”, and “Contesting Migration Governance”.

The handbook situates migration governance within three dualisms: “conceptual framing and material expression”, “global scope and relational practice”, and “structured form and dynamic changeability” (Carmel et al. 2021: 3). With migration and mobility becoming increasingly complex phenomena, the handbook provides readers with a rich perspective on migration governance on a global scale. Migration movements today become increasingly screwed and the number of sending countries increasing and the number of receiving countries decreasing, which can, if looked at through the lens of the receiving country, can lead to the impression that there is a significant increase in migrants (Czaika & de Haas, 2022). By bringing in different perspectives and local contexts, the editors accomplish to provide a more nuances perspective on migration governance.

One of the key contributions of this handbook is a critical reflection on how terms used to describe migrants are conceptualized and by whom. Boas and Wiegel criticise the use of the term “climate refugees” in migration research, arguing that this term reinforces fearsome ideas of an incoming flood of refugees (Boas and Wiegel, 2021). Similarly, Blakewell argues for a reconceptualization of the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration (Blakewell, 2021), emphasizing that those categories are not clear cut and Vicky Squire discusses how ‘illegality’ is a produced condition “which emerges in contextually specific ways across various regions and states” (Squire, 2021: 144).

The self-reflexivity of the researchers must be positively emphasized. This is especially of a field such migration studies where the area of research is in constant flux. For example, in their chapters, Boas and Wiegel reflect on their own use of the term ‘climate migrant’ in previous work (Boas and Wiegel, 2021). This can pose an encouraging example for early career researchers, who are likely to read handbooks to familiarize themselves with the terminology. Incorporating such self-critical reflections thorough the handbook can encourage self-reflection and openness to changing terms and methodologies.

A limitation of this publication is that the editors claim repeatedly that they aim to “diversify research perspectives and empirical applications beyond ‘Northern’ academia, as well as research settings” (Carmel et al, 2021: 9). However, the editors and most authors are based at Western institutions. This is acknowledged in the introduction where the editors state “all our contributors take this as a central task, acknowledging the situatedness of their critique, in, mostly, the ‘global North’, and in particular social science disciplines” (Carmel et al, 2021: 9). This handbook, which aims to provide a global scope on migration governance, would be strengthened by actively including more voices from institutions outside of ‘Northern’ academia instead of merely acknowledging that this is important, but most contributors are situated in the ‘global North’. Perspectives from other institutions are not addressed in sufficient detail in this publication which could be a potential avenue for future publications to explore for the contributors.

Overall, this handbook is an interesting and well-structured read for those wanting to become acquainted with the field of migration theory. Both experienced researchers and students at the beginning of their journey in the field of migration studies and adjacent disciplines can benefit from this publication. The chapters of this book provide insightful reading material for introduction courses about migration governance or migration more general.

Francesca Ippolito, Gianluca Borzoni and Federico Casolari (eds.), Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean: Prospects for Migration Issues (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2020)

18/01/2021Book review (editorial review)EU, France, Greece, Italy, MENA, Malta, Mediterranean, Migration, Spain, Turkey, place of safety, soft lawLara Wilhelmine Hoffmann

The Mediterranean has been at the centre of many heated discussions about migration-related issues in recent years. Especially since the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 there is a growing number of publications addressing migration and its attendant issues in this region. The anthology Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean: Prospects for Migration Issues brings together 14 contributions covering various aspects of bilateral relations in the Mediterranean. Whilst most of the contributions approach the topic from the perspective of the legal discipline, the anthology also incorporates historical and political aspects as well. This work, furthermore, incorporates several levels of analysis and discusses various actors dealing with migration issues in the Mediterranean, such as nation-states, the European Union, and International Organizations.

The book is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 addresses the topic on the level of the nation state and consists of five sub-chapters covering Spain, Greece, Malta, France and Italy, respectively. Chapter 2 addresses supranational forms of legal bilateralism, consisting of four sub-chapters on relations between EU and Mediterranean countries, Southern Mediterranean States, the EU partnership framework on migration, countries in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood, and EU-Turkey cooperation. Chapter 3 investigates Horizontal issues of migration management covering five sub-chapters on soft law and shared responsibilities in the Mediterranean, the negotiation process for a Euro-Mediterranean free-trade area, the rhetoric of human rights in EU external relations in the Mediterranean, and fighting irregular forms of migration.

By incorporating case studies from different countries and on different levels, this book provides a comprehensive overview over issues of migration in the Mediterranean. This comparative approach and broad perspective is a significant strength of this publication, and it allows the anthology to pinpoint central issues of migration in the Mediterranean today. Also, this interdisciplinary and transnational approach enables the editors to take a big-picture perspective on issues around migration in the Mediterranean.

A few key challenges and important recommendations for policy makers become apparent when reading this book: The first central challenge that emerges from this analysis is the increasing informality when dealing with migration issues. This issue is emphasized by Casolari (2020) and Di Filippo (2020). The second central issue that becomes apparent is a lack of agreement in crucial definitions across different EU member states. This poses challenges to decision-making, which is especially noteworthy in the context of emergencies where quick decisions need to be taken. Facts such as that there is a lack of definitions on terms such as “Place of Safety”, as shown by Papastavridis (2020: 237), are most concerning, and it is thanks to the book’s comparative approach that these key challenges become evident.

The issues discussed in this publication are very timely. This anthology has been published in 2020, but several of the contributions were updated since 2017. This in itself is not a limitation, but there is a patent lack of information on up to which point in time the data in this anthology apply. This would have been good for readers to know and would make engaging with this book easier, e.g., leading the reader to consult additional sources in order to be better informed about the most recent developments.

Despite this small limitation, this book is a very valuable read, in my opinion. As someone who is not from the legal discipline, I nevertheless found this anthology very easy to access and insightful because the contributions are written in a very comprehensive and clear manner. I would thus recommend this book to all academics working on migration as well as to policymakers dealing with migration issues.

References

Casolari, F. (2020) The unbearable ‚lightness‘ of soft law: on the European Union‘s recourse to informal instruments in the fight agains irregular immigration. In F. Ippolito et al. (Eds.), Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean: Prospects for Migration Issues (215-228). Cheltenham/ Northhampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786432254.

Di Filippo, F. (2020) Fighting irregular forms of migration: the poisonous fruits of the securitarian approach to cooperation with Mediterranean countries. In F. Ippolito et al. (Eds.), Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean: Prospects for Migration Issues (301-315). Cheltenham/ Northhampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786432254.

Papastavridis, E. (2020) Search and rescue at sea: shared responsibilities in the Mediterranean Sea. In In F. Ippolito et al. (Eds.), Bilateral Relations in the Mediterranean: Prospects for Migration Issues (229-249). Cheltenham/ Northhampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786432254.

Luisa Greenfield et al. (eds.), Artistic Research: Being There, Explorations into the Local (Aarhus: NSU Press, 2017)

31/12/2019Book review (editorial review)Art, Migration, performanceAlina Romo

To perceive what remains hidden in our lives, to identify what we take for granted, to find ways to look more critically at our surroundings and ourselves, and to grasp what distinguishes this place from every other place. Perhaps these are the resonances of art practices and research that are grounded in the idea of the local. (“Introduction” 7)

The opening lines of Artistic Research: Being There, Explorations into the Local establishes a tension that persists through the volume: being somewhere—experiencing the local—and being involved in the creative process embodies the possible, the perchance, and the process. There are, however, other aspects to the contingency outlined above, those of displacement, itineracy, and loss. The editors acknowledge this tension by defining the local as an idea that “focuses on the strategies that allow one to become rooted in each place even when in the throes of transition” (9). And for almost all of the artists whose work constitutes what is, in effect, a larger and collective creative project, the idea of transition, of change, and of movement, is connected to experiences of mourning and yearning.

Place, locality, the local: each iteration is an intimate discursive space for communication and communion with times, people, things, and ideas that are either now elsewhere or still in the process of becoming. By foregrounding “being there,” the artists and researchers of the Nordic Summer University (NSU) unavoidably ask the reciprocal question: what does it mean to not be somewhere else? As for an answer, taken together, the collection’s essays and creative projects seem to offer the following: everything is relational. There is no local without the global, no citizen without a stranger, no present without the past, no art without resistance, no I without thou. In the Preface “Being T/here,” Robert Mock gestures to this point when he describes the essays in the collection as “utopian performances” that offer “fleeting glimpses of the ‘potential of elsewhere’” (24; Dolan 5 quoted in Mock 24). The idea of “elsewhere,” then, can only exist if there is a here, a locality from which to look out from and imagine a collective whole. Being in a state of “receptive relation to an other space” drives the production of the creative works within Being There and unifies them, at the same time (Greenfield 27).

The interconnected sense of mourning and yearning that permeates the writing and haunts the performances may stem from the collaborative nature of the NSU; each artist is always aware of their larger role in a bigger project and, consequently, always aware of both the presence and absence of their fellow artists and friends. This dual awareness appears over and again in the writing and serves as a unifying core to the work, perhaps nowhere more obvious than in “Windows. A Correspondence Between Elina Saloranta and Myna Trustram,” which is a standout piece in the collection. While each woman is undergoing their own process of mourning—one, a marriage and the other, a death—both are yearning for each other’s letters, for the relational interaction that helps form and give meaning to their artistic production and their individual experiences of the local as a moveable place for healing and comfort. There is a real intimacy in the exchange of letters across space and time, albeit mostly in email form, that transposes the sense of the local from a place of potential isolation (meaning, if you are there, and I am here, we are apart) to a movable and shared experience: “So, in the correspondence the two women move between the immediate (the green chair) and the distant (the geographical distance between them, their different responses to loss and so on). Where do they locate their losses?” (111). For Saloranta and Trustram their losses are indeed located, they reside both within and in places.

The titles of the collection’s three sections, “Itinerant Locals,” “Placing the In-between,” and “Encountering a Singular Place,” help narrow the ambitious scope of the work. In “Itinerant Locals,” for example, both Per Roar’s “Docudancing the Local,” and Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt’s “Suriashi,” link the local with the dancing and choreographic body and, in similar ways, conscientiously query the nature and effects of the translation of culture from a local-historic-specific context to someplace else. Additionally, because of the deeply personal stories from which their projects arise, the moving body becomes a vessel for remembrance, an iteration of the local that resonates throughout the collection. The related ideas of “slipping” in “Micropracticing the Local” and “spontaneity” in “Fun Palaces,” each speak to the generative value of repetition with difference, another subtext to the collection as a whole that is introduced early in these more theoretical essays and which resonates especially well with Maggie Jackson’s rumination on possession and migrancy in “On the Road Again.”

Jackson’s essay, like the other middle essays of the collection, is most overtly concerned with what I mention at the outset as the shadow side of the “being t/here” binary—migrancy, refugeeism, displacement, or, to use Eduardo Abrantes’ own words, the “contrast between the idealized wanderer who departs to gain the world she has not yet seen but dreamt of, and the refugee whose utopic dream is born of the violent eradication from the world she knew” (91). Balancing this contrast is perhaps the collection’s greatest challenge and feat, which is successful only because of its constant state of self-awareness and self-correction. The images of the compass and the semi-obscured billboard that reads “Have No Home…Keep Driving,” in Larissa Lily’s “Meanwhile in Another Town,” make the shadow side of the local unmistakable. The break from first person to third person narrative in Luisa Greenfield’s “Milena” also speaks to this hard truth: sometimes, the weight of history causes a rupture, driving us from ourselves and from the places, the localities, where one cannot separate what has happened from what is happening—“this could be anywhere” (131). For the woman in “Milena,” walking into the water, forcing herself into a present and place that feels different, even though it may be the literal embodiment of what she is attempting to escape, is what allows her to remain, to endure.

The collection’s final section focuses on these particular places, both within and outside the context of the familiar. “I am writing in this place where I am,” writes Alexandra Litaker in “We All Have Such Islands.” To focus on being in the immediate experience of place is to perceive how Seamus Heaney’s “cold floor” or Wordsworth’s oars touching, breaking, entering, and leaving the dark waters of Ullswater Lake can produce a type of knowing otherwise obscured. Cecilia Lagerström’s “Spies of Everyday” and Eduardo Abrantes’ “Local Sound Families and a Choir in Estonia” both return to the idea of relationality and the artist’s de-centered position as one who “patiently responds to events in the surroundings (Lavery 45, quoted in Lagerström 154). Attentive walking and performance writing are mutually generative artistic processes for Lagerström and develop what she identifies as the creative tools of “both closeness (recognition) and estrangement (distance)” (157). These “observant moments” (cold floor, oars on the water, “greet the beggar”) waver between closeness and distance, recognition and estrangement, here and there (156). “Near and far,” Eduardo Abrantes writes, “at different pitches, the animal voices, simultaneously glorious and eerie, entered into an uncanny and undecipherable dialogue with the Northern Lights” (178). Abrantes’ exploration of “local sound families” examines the uniqueness of particular soundscapes, meaning groupings of sounds dependent on and emergent from a particular place (170). Yet, his powerful penultimate essay is equally about recognizing the “radical interdependence” of any given locality, regarding both its constituent parts and its alterity. His extension of the soundscape family to the animal world speaks to this recognition:

The soundscape of that situated place at that moment, the local sounds experienced …and their interrelationships, fully expressed their radical interdependence that, if interfered with, can make whole species extinct, or conversely, can awaken a strong sense of immersive co-habitation, of full and engaged ecological interconnection in its widest implications. (178-179)

Dialogue, interrelationships, interdependence, a surmise that humanity seems to need reminding of again and again—we are all connected and interdependent even when we are apart. Perhaps, a more fitting title for the collection would have been Being T/here, the back slash a visual representation of our mourning, of our yearning.

Alexandra Délano Alonso, From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration, and Social Rights beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)

14/08/2019Book review (editorial review)Migration, diaspora, human rights, integration, interculturalism, multiculturalism, transnationalismLara Wilhelmine Hoffmann

Since the pivotal work on transnationalism by Glick-Schiller, Basch and Blanc-Szanton (1992), a number of studies have investigated transnationalism as a perspective on migration that goes beyond earlier concepts of one-way assimilation. Whilst the boundaries between host country and receiving country are becoming increasingly intertwined, studies on transnational migration have for the most part focused on the perspective of the receiving country. Immigrant integration is frequently framed as processes that are taking place in the receiving countries alone, placing the responsibility for integration on actors on immigrants’ countries of destination, e.g. migrants, migrant organizations or the government of the receiving country. The receiving country bias in migration research prevails (Castles, 2010; Czaika & De Haas, 2014). There remains a gap in the literature on the impact of actors in countries of departure on the well-being and incorporation of immigrants in the societies in which they reside.

Alexandra Délano Alonso book, “From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration, and Social Rights beyond Border”, goes beyond the prevailing focus on the destination country in research on transnationalism as it looks at institutions supporting the integration of Latin-American immigrants in the United States and Canada, highlighting the role of the destination country. The book is a case study of initiatives in the United States and Canada, focusing primarily on Mexican diaspora organizations and other Latin American diaspora organizations. A central claim and contribution of this work is its focus on the responsibility and accountability of various actors, particularly actors in immigrants’ countries of origin, which have not been largely discussed in the literature. In order to analyze this claim, Alexandra Délano Alonso analyzes actors on several levels, such as civic participation and diaspora organizations as well as the consulates of the countries of origin and the country of destination.

After providing an overview of the theoretical background of looking at diaspora policies as integration, the book focuses especially on two case studies, namely two programs offered to Latin American immigrants in the United States by Mexican diaspora organizations: Ventanillas and Plazas Communitarias. While Ventanillas focuses on health care of migrants, Plazas Communitarians are a provider of adult education, for example English language training. Then, the analysis is extended towards collaborations between different diaspora organizations in the United States and Canada. Alexandra Délano Alonso demonstrates that there is a significant number of examples of collaborative projects across various Latin American diaspora organizations. The role of Mexico is in this context in some cases a best-practice example and Mexican diaspora organizations further provide resources used by other diaspora organizations. Subsequently, the author discusses aspects of return and reintegration.

Alexandra Délano Alonso discusses the efforts of diaspora initiatives and the countries of origin to support immigrant integration into both the destination countries and immigrants’ countries of origin. The author particularly highlights imbalances in efforts of immigrants’ countries of origin, which tend to focus on the integration of immigrants in the destination countries, especially “in relation to migrants with precarious status” (p. 158).

In her work, Alexandra Délano Alonso raises questions about “Rethinking transnational responsibility for the well-being of migrants, including their social and political rights in another country” (p. 174). This approach, therefore, shifts the responsibility towards the perspective of the governments of the sending countries. The book further highlights various points and limitations in research, for example that the programs and initiatives discussed in the research have favored certain groups of migrants and that efforts of the governments discourse have for the most part focused on the integration of migrants in the country of destination. Drawing on these findings, Alexandra Délano Alonso makes a claim for an extension of these efforts towards more intersectionality and increased inclusion of groups of migrants, which at the point of this study benefit less from the organizations and programs discussed in this case study than other groups of migrants.

The term “integration” features prominently in the title of the book. Alexandra Délano Alonso highlights that her work looks at integration as a two-way process in contrast to previous notions of one-way assimilation. Whilst being one of the key word in the title of the book, in the conclusion the term “integration” is discussed in a rather short paragraph. As, in fact, the book does not simply look at integration as a two-way process between the destination country and migrants, but includes actors on various levels and across several borders, the study provides a new perspective on migrant integration. While the author does acknowledge the need for new theoretical perspective, discussing migrant integration and concluding that a “multilayered approach” (p. 186) is much needed, this aspect is not emphasized in the contribution. The conclusion primarily emphasizes the relevance of the work in the context of current political developments in the United States. In addition, however, the data collected and the original angle of this work could provide material for a more in depths discussion of the implications of this work and its original contribution to transnational migration research from a theoretical angle. As mentioned earlier, the work does for example provide material to rethink “integration” as a concept through the findings of this case study.

The book shifts the perspective of the analysis towards the responsibility of actors in immigrants’ countries of origin to support the incorporation of immigrants into the receiving countries. Even though the author does not provide an in depth discussed of the findings of the study on a theoretical level, the shift in responsibility suggested by the researcher can be adapted to other case studies as well. As the receiving country bias in migration studies prevails, this work provides an interesting angle on the role of immigrants’ countries of origin. Alexandra Délano Alonso’s work is thus a continuation of immigrants’ involvement in the receiving countries from a transnational perspective and provides valuable insights for a further reconceptualization of theories of immigrant integration.

References

Castles, S. (2010). Understanding Global Migration: A Social Transformation Perspective. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(10), 1565–1586. doi: 10.1080/1369183x.2010.489381

Czaika, M., & Haas, H. D. (2014). The Globalization of Migration: Has the World Become More Migratory? International Migration Review, 48(2), 283–323. doi: 10.1111/imre.12095

Schiller, N. G., Basch, L., & Blanc-Szanton, C. (1992). Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 645(1), 1–24. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1992.tb33484.x

Us vs. Them: Ideology and Discourse

23/05/2019Conference proceedings (double non-blind peer review)Biopolitics, Emigration, Immigration Commission, Migration, assimilation, crime, racism, toleranceMirella Pasini

No one said the “East” or the “Reds” or the “Soviets” or the “Russians” any more. That would have been too confusing, since some of Them weren’t of the East, weren’t Reds, Soviets and especially not Russians. It was much simpler to say We and They, and much more precise. Travelers had frequently reported that They did the same in reverse. Over there They were “We” (in the appropriate language) and We were “They”

(I. Asimov, Let’s get together, «Infinity Science Fiction», 2, 1957: 66-7).

The question I ask myself about the Us vs. Them polarisation is apparently simple. The phrase is certainly a divisive and adversial but: can it only mean a desire to overcome and subjugate, or is it possible to remark on differences between groups of people without necessarily assume conflict and abuse? In the quoted short story, Asimov wrote:

At the beginning, it had been called a Cold War. Now it was only a game, almost a good-natured game, with unspoken rules and a kind of decency about it (Ibidem: 67).

In sports and in playgrounds, the meaning of “Us vs. Them” is straightforward: teams competing to win a game. Sometimes the competition is fierce, but it is always regulated by precise rules, and characterized by mutual respect. Teams can be assembled, disassembled, and reassembled without any negative consequences on the single members of either team: it is matter of agonism, not antagonism. Except for The Paul Street boys – but that was a war game. And in wars competition is violent and the opponent is an enemy to be killed, as well as defeated.

We do not need to quote Machiavelli or Lionardo in the Libri della famiglia (The Family in Renaissance Florence) by Leon Battista Alberti, to note that some traditional games for boys have been interpreted as a preliminary exercise to prepare for war.

My question is, therefore: can a group of people feel different from another group of people without necessarily feel superior? Or is any difference implicitly – if not openly – discriminatory? When does equality in difference become inequality, and how? Is this inevitable?

Social psychology studies about diversity and prejudice offer no univocal answer. Many theories analyse stereotyping processes according to the cognitive-motivational approach. Some focus on the contrast between a deeper prejudice (someone could describe it as innate, but I prefer implicit) and controlled beliefs. Patricia Devine pointed out the phenomenon of ambivalence (see Devine 2012). Acknowledging the existence of implicit prejudice even in those individuals who deliberately refuse prejudice – be it racial, sexist or homophobic – is a necessary step to develop containment and control strategies. Devine and Cox, who prefer to define the implicit bias as unintentional bias, try to demonstrate «that unintentional bias is like a habit that can be broken with sufficient motivation, awareness, and effort». Moreover «the habit-breaking intervention produces enduring changes in peoples’ knowledge of and beliefs about race-related issues». And about bias reduction strategies they write: «We believe … that the prejudice habit-breaking intervention causes its recipients to recognize bias and its consequences for minorities, then address it in the world around them» (Forscher, Mitamura, Dix, Cox, Devine 2017). If biases are as manageable as habits, they can be overcome just like bad habits.

Social Dominance Orientation theorists seem less optimistic: according to them, in hierarchical societies, such as modern industrial and post-industrial societies, individual minds are permeated with prejudice (Sidanius-Pratto 1999). The Social Dominance Theory, developed in the ’90s, recently experienced a revival in relation to the migration phenomenon. The SD theory maintains that in groups – and between groups – there is a kind of predisposition to inequality, confirmed by the wish to maintain hegemony by those higher up in the hierarchy. The SDO seems to be pervasive in contemporary society, albeit in different degrees depending on gender and personality. It is strictly connected with conservative policies and social attitudes, with racism and sexism – «ideologies that promote or maintain group inequality are the tools that legitimize discrimination» (Pratto-Sidanius 1994: 741).

Susan Fiske states that cultural biases and sterotypes are the base for the Us vs. Them polarization and the resulting discrimination, where the other group – “Them” – is dehumanized. Fiske hopes for the scholars’ focus to move from discrimination to a search for balance in diversity (Fiske 2000). This is what she said in a public debate:

It’s only human to be comfortable with people who you think are like you; there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it gets us through a lot of stress – to be attached to our in-groups is our backup system. But the downside is that you’re then excluding people who are not in the in-group (Smith 2013).

The trouble is: if in feeling part of the “US” we find warmth, trustworthiness, and friendliness, what happens when we feel “THEM”? What are the individual and social consequences of these processes?

It seems useful to approach the problem from another point of view: e.g. from a sociolinguistic perspective. The purpose is to find a method to analyse interpersonal and public communication in order to identify the traps of essentialist differentialism – gender, culture, people, nation – and its heavy social repercussions.

The research carried out by Teun van Dijk about ideological discourse structures could prove particularly useful at this time in the history of European societies – our history – when national revanchism seems dominant.

Ideology

The topic is complex. It refers to the long history and different meanings of the concept of ideology, starting from the lucky lexical invention by Destutt de Tracy in Élémens d’Ideologie (1825-27). We have been experiencing a “crisis of ideologies”, involving views of the world on which political establishments are founded. However, this does not imply the end of ideology as a system of thought and behaviour.

Ideologies can be expressed through all forms of communication – verbal, gestural, visual. We shall focus on verbal communication, limiting our field of research to discourse, both as written text and oral expression.

Van Dijk started studying verbal communication of racist ideology in the ’80s, identifying in the opposition us/them one of its typical discursive structures. It must be noted that Van Dijk describes ideology as a cognitive and social structure. Thanks to this definition of ideology, Van Dijk can carry out his investigation at a macro level – groups and societies – as well as at a micro level – individual interactions (Van Dijk 1998).

«Ideologies, then, are the overall, abstract mental systems that organize such socially shared attitudes», he wrote in his Discourse Analysis as ideology analysis (Van Dijk 1995: 18). In other words, ideologies are a group’s defining characteristics. Ideologies affect the cognitive construction of mental models organizing experiences and actions of both individuals and groups.

For those who wish to study the matter more in depth, Van Dijk developed a complex multilevel system for the analysis of the relationship between ideology and discourse – social, cognitive, and communicative. His intuition is apparently elementary: ideologies control social interactions, text and talk. The opposite is also true, however: social interactions convey social notions – i. e. ideologies.

Discourse Analysis can thus be described as ideology analysis, with well known applicative results in the social and ethic fields (see also Van Dijk 1985). This is nothing new, if we think about the way news are offered in newspaper headlines.

Scientific Ideology

Considering Discourse Analysis as a tool for ideology analysis – actually the tool for those who deal with communication – I think that to analyse at a macro level the way the US/THEM, inclusion/exclusion issues are expressed, the premises to the work by epistemologist Georges Canguilhem on the definition of scientific ideology could still prove very useful.

The ideological use of science – or, rather, the supposed scientificity of ideology – plays an important role. Canguilhem wrote:

Is the notion of scientific ideology relevant? Is the term a suitable one to designate and properly delimit the whole range of discursive structures claiming to be theories, the whole variety of more or less consistent representations of interphenomenal relations, and the whole spectrum of more or less permanent structures in terms of which men have interpreted their everyday experience? In short, is it a useful way of denoting those pseudosciences whose falsity is revealed solely by the fact that a genuine science has been established to refuse their claims (Canguilhem 1977: 35)?

Discursive structures claiming to be theories: what closer connection between ideology and discourse?

As far as discrimination is concerned – in particular, racial or ethnic discrimination (see Amselle-Bokolo 1985) – we can say that science no longer supports discriminatory ideology. But it remain in public opinion.

Aliens

To better explain the above considerations on methodology, I would like to illustrate a case study about the US/THEM issue – and, ultimately, racism – in the past and nowadays, from scientific discourse to media debate.

Recently Italian media and social networks have been arguing about “Italians were migrants, too!”. From L’Orda. Quando gli Albanesi eravamo noi, by journalist Gian Antonio Stella (2002) to anthropologist Marco Aime’s lectures, the “We were migrants, too. We were illegal, too” argument has proved rather controversial (for the debate in USA see Stapinski 2017). In 2018 migration stopped being a crucial issue for both media and politicians, but racial ideology, attitudes, and expressions, as van Dijk would say, remain widespread.

The following passage was broadcast by Italian Rai News24 between 2009 and 2011, and circulates on the Web, widely commented by fact-checking professionals and amateurs:

They are usually short and dark-skinned. They don’t like water. Many of them smell because they keep the same clothes for weeks. They build huts for themselves out of wood and aluminium in the outskirts of cities and towns, very close to each other. Whenever they move towards the city centre, they rent out dilapidated flats at high prices. They come in pairs, usually, and look for a room and a kitchen. After a few days, there are four of them, six, ten.

They speak unintelligible languages, probably ancient dialects.

Many children are sent out begging, while in front of the churches women in dark clothes and old men ask for pity in whimpering and irritating tones.

They have many children, whom they struggle to support, and are very close-knit. They are said to be prone to thieving and, if confronted, violent. Our women ignore them not only because they are wild and unattractive, but also because they are said to attack women who walk home from work along empty streets and rape them.

Our authorities have opened the borders to too many people, without checking whether they were coming to our country to work or to live by expedients or even illegally.

I suggest preference is given to those who come from Veneto and Lombardy, as they are more willing to work, although slow of understanding and uneducated. As long as their families can be together, they are willing to live in houses where Americans would refuse to stay, and do not negotiate for higher salaries. The rest of them – on whom this first report largely focus, come from the South of Italy.

You are requested to check where they come from and to send back as many of them as you can. Our security must be our first concern.

This is proposed as a passage from a Report by the US Congress Inspectorate for Immigration into the United States dated October 1912. Actually, it is a popularisation of some pages of the Reports of Immigration Commission – the famous Dillingham Commission, named after its chairman, Republican Senator William P. Dillingham – which from 1907 to 1910 studied immigration to the United States, collecting data and developing recommendations.

The Reports consist of 41 volumes, now available on-line: the summary on Italian immigrants quoted above is quite reductive. Reading the original documents is very interesting for those who study migrations, but also for statisticians and sociologists. The Reports are indeed a thought-provoking example of scientific ideology and political discourse, with more or less obvious social repercussions. We cannot analyse the issue in depth, here, but I would like to point out a few points in the Reports which show the ambiguity in passing from scientific ideology to public discourse and, therefore, to social bias.

I recommend reading a few pages of Volume 5, Dictionary of races or peoples, Volume 36, Immigration and crime, and Volume 38, Changes in bodily form of descendants of immigrants, published by the Government Printing Office, Washington, in 1911. The Abstracts of Reports and Recommendations in Volume 1 and 2 will help us draw a few general conclusions.

Dictionary of races or peoples

This Dictionary of races or peoples (by anthropologist Daniel Folkmar, “assisted” by Elnora Cuddeback Folkmar) originated from a need for study and classification explained in the Introductory. Following the new ethnical factors resulting from immigration to the US from Eastern Europe, it was felt that the true racial status of most immigrants was unknown. It was not clear what race those new aliens were. Before 1899, immigrants were recorded only according to their countries of birth, with no indication of race or people. Under the Bureau of Immigration, there were 45 races or peoples, 36 of which were European. Under the Dictionary, there are more than 600 subjects!

The Commission’s survey was not for ethnologists, but rather for those who studied migrations, and its purpose was to collect sources and data and to promote «a better understanding of the many different racial elements that are being added to the population of the US through immigration» (Dictionary: 2).

Given the «present imperfect state of science» and having decided to classify by race – there being 3 races according to some scholars, 15, 29 or even 63 races according to others – the authors adopted Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s classification of human races. The father of physical anthropology had identified 5 groups: “Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongolian, Malay and American, or, AS FAMILIARLY CALLED [my capitals] white, black, yellow, brown an red races”.

The Report compilers were clearly aware that the various possible classifications were not objective, and chose the one that was best known in the US. It was a communication decision, a political, rather than scientific effort. The fact that the new “races” introduced in addition to the original five were based on linguistic differences – cultural parameters – further proves the scientific inadequacy of these divisions claimed by physical anthropology.

Let’s stop here. However, one cannot help but wonder: what was the ratio behind this racial (racist?) classification of immigrants, if the authors themselves specified that it had little practical use, since inspectors in the Immigration Office had no time to classify each new entry as dolichocephalic o brachycephalic (Dictionary: 4)? As we’ll see later, an answer can be found in the recommendations on “ethnically” restricted migration policies – dangerously close to eugenics and “biopolitics”.

As far as it concerns US closely, wrote the author. Well, as far as it concerns us, here, we’ll deal with the Italians (Dictionary: 82 ff.). The Bureau of Immigration divided them into two main groups: Northern Italians and Southern Italians, different in looks, language, temperament and geographical distribution. The former lived in the river Po basin, the latter in the rest of the peninsula and the islands. Even the Genoese were considered Southern Italians.

It is the same distinction drawn by the famous Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi, who “invented” the Mediterranean race. According to Sergi, the Mediterranean race originated from the Kamits who lived in the highlands of Ethiopia, who were not «true Africans», notwithstanding «some traces of infusion of African blood in certain communities of Sicily and Sardinia» (Dictionary: 82). While according to Sergi the Mediterranean race was mainly an alternative to the Arian explanation of the origins of European peoples, in a crudely simplified version it could be used to confirm that Northern Italians were not only different from, but also superior to, Southern Italians.

If complemented by the results of another Italian anthropologist, Alfredo Niceforo, such physical and psychic distinction between the two ethnic groups would show the “decay” and “degeneration” of Latin peoples, especially from the South of Italy. Finally, statistical data indicated that Italy had the highest crime rate as regards offences against the person, in the South more than in the North (Bosco 1891). In the Report, Italy was described as «one the most illiterate countries in Europe», with 48.5 % of its population who could not read or write – 78.7 % in Calabria, as we can read.

For the compilers of the Dictionary, the number of Italian immigrants in itself showed that Italians, especially from the South, were a problem – 2,284,601 from 1899 to 1910, 1,911,933 of whom from Southern Italy. Just in 1907, out of 297,000 immigrants to the US, 240,000 were from Southern Italy – definitely the most numerous race. It was a significant data, compared to the overall number of Italians who emigrated that year: 415,000. Most of them were from Sicily and Calabria, the least productive and most poorly developed regions. The quoted number of immigrants from Liguria, South Italian in race, is higher than the number of immigrants from the whole North of Italy – it is a figure we find difficult to believe.

Italian immigration was a problem as it continued, because of its high birth rate, even when people from other countries stopped emigrating to the US (Dictionary: 84). Southern Italians were the most numerous race in absolute terms, followed by Jews, Polish, German and Scandinavian people. The problem, therefore, was their demographic weight in the whole immigrant population.

Immigration and crime

Notwithstanding the migratory waves from Southern and Eastern Europe (the language is not that different from that used today) the author of the Report on Immigration and crime is determined to disprove the preconceived notion that there is a causal link between immigration and crime. In the Introduction, Leslie Hayford maintains there is no evidence of the fact «that immigration has resulted in an increase in crime disproportionate to the increase in adult population. Such comparable statistics of crime and population… indicate that immigrants are less prone to commit crime than are native Americans» (Immigration and crime: 1).

The uneven distribution of immigrants, however, who lived mainly in cities and towns in the North-East, caused the author to wonder: «is the volume of crime in the United States augmented by the presence among us of the immigrant and his offsprings?» And «If immigration increases crime, what races are responsible for such increase» (ibidem)? These questions assume there is a link between immigration and crime, even though no evidence is provided to support it. It is obvious that immigration affected crime, increasing the number of offences against the person, public policy and chastity, even though more crimes were committed by Americans than by immigrants.

It is clear that the purpose of the survey, albeit patchy and incomplete was to emphasize «the change of character of crime in US which had resulted from immigration and the crimes peculiar to various races and nationalities» (Immigration and crime: 9). Italians ranked high in in blackmail, extortion, kidnapping, kidnapping of minors, homicide and offences against public policy, at least in the 5 districts of New York (Immigration and crime: 17-18).

The only data from the Bureau of Census that could be used to draw such conclusions refer to alien prisoners and juvenile criminals. Two graphs show that in 1904 the largest percentage of aliens under sentence for murder and attempted murder were Italian (Immigration and crime: 26), while in 1908 Southern Italians were at the top of the list (over 2000), followed by the Irish, Polish, German, and Northern Italians (less than 500, see Immigration and crime: 180).

Notwithstanding Hayford’s determination, the above connections between specific crimes and races could not but have a political and social impact.

Recommendations

The first repercussions concern the Recommendations set forth by the Commission. Immigration laws in force and recommendations resulting from the research concerned mainly the physically and morally unfit, but it is stated that future laws would have to be based primarily on economic or business considerations touching the prosperity and economic wellbeing of «our people» (Abstracts: 45). A slower industrialization would have been preferable to the rapid process implemented through high numbers of workers imported from abroad, who lowered the American standard of wages and conditions of employment (ibidem).

American society should first of all be protected against unfits: any immigrants convicted of serious crimes within five years after they arrived just like those who became a public charge within three years should be deported. Aliens trying to persuade immigrants not to become American citizens were also subject to deportation. Aliens having no intention to become American citizens and unskilled single labourers should be excluded, as well those who were considered undesirable because of their personal qualities and habits (Abstracts: 47). Exclusion could also depend on race: the authors suggested that the Chinese continue to be barred, as they had been since 1882.

Considering that the recent massive immigration, mainly from Southern Europe, had caused worse working conditions for natives and older immigrants (Abstracts: 500ff), decreasing the number of aliens in those areas would be beneficial. Some aliens used forms of economic and social control often leading to exploitation and abuse: the “padrone system” was widespread among Italians and Greeks (Abstracts: 29).

The best – and most feasible – way to reduce undesirable immigration, according to the majority of the members of the Commission, was to introduce of a reading and writing test (Abstracts: 48). As many Southern Italians were illiterate, such test was deemed a good method to reduce their number.

Assimilation

The stated purpose of the Dillingham Commission was to promote the assimilation and naturalization of immigrants, and their possible settlement in farming states.

In a context where physical anthropology was so important, assimilation implied physical changes in immigrants’ offspring: «even the racial physical characteristics do not survive under the new social and climatic environment of America». Changes in bodily form of descendants of immigrants by Franz Boas, an anthropologist whose theories were never based on the concept of race, contains a number of tables illustrating the changes occurring in American born descendants of Bohemian, Jew, Sicilian and Neapolitan immigrants – weight, stature, but also headforms (Changes: 500-509). The American environment apparently made some a little less brachycephalic and others a little less dolichocephalic. Such observations, adequately documented, would undermine racial fixity.

Assimilation, however, could be achieved only in certain conditions: immigrants must be healthy, literate, skilled labourers, with a family and a spotless record. Those who did not fit these criteria should be sent back. In particular, surveys and data collected showed the rather problematic situation of immigration from Southern Italy (and from Liguria).

Migration policy, scientific ideology and prejudice

What were the consequences of such a description of hundreds of thousands of Southern Italian on migration policies? What was the impact on the public opinion of “natives” (that is American-borns) and “older” immigrants?

The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 introduced quotas in a free immigration system – a restriction policy.

However, our concern here is: to what extent did this «statistically obtained situation» contribute to the “Us vs. Them” polarization, to racial stereotyping and prejudice? Could the ambiguous absence of judgement in a survey whose scientific grounds were doubted by the same authors, the scientific ideology of racial classification, have turned into social ideology?

Those who collected data and wrote the Reports were not a homogeneous group. A cultural anthropologist like Boas must have introduced elements of historical and environmental analysis into the general race perspective: significantly, Boas specified in his Report he had chosen the word type but the Commission changed it into race. This, however, does not alter the perspective. If the new immigrants from Eastern Europe (Hebrews were the “problem”) e from Southern Europe (here the “problem” were Southern Italians) were incapable of proper assimilation and could not become US (American and “us”) they had to be barred. If not, they would continue to be “them”, a threat to the living conditions of the “natives” (i.e. the descendants of 17^th – 18^th century settlers, not “native Americans”). The only alternative was to adopt inclusive and support policies as suggested by Leslie Hayford, the author of the Report on Immigration and crime, who, as secretary of the North American League for Immigrants in Boston, promoted public schools for immigrants’ children to encourage assimilation.

Despite these oscillations, the contrast “Us vs. them” in the Reports generally means that certain races have traits which the writers deemed incompatible with the American way of living to the extent of compromising proper assimilation. So it can justify discriminatory policies, not only, but increase a discriminatory ideology, racist in Van Dijk’s sense, what we can find in the Dillingham Commission and in the contemporary public debates.

A similar approach, albeit without any scientific pretence, can still be found in day-to-day discourse, as well as in the political discourse of those who believe in the superiority, identity and non-equality of US.

How can we react positively? How can we deconstruct the divisive polarization and discrimination? Is it enough to use positive metaphors in order to find the “warmth” Susan Fiske hoped for?

May be something else is required – non-discriminatory ideologies, i.e. systems of thoughts and social practices. Perhaps we should not remove differences, but stop classifying them as values or axiologies. As Baroncelli said in his Il razzismo è una gaffe (Racism is a blunder).

References

Alberti, L.B. (2004 [1434-40]), The family in Renaissance Florence, Waveland Press.

Baroncelli, F. (1996), Il razzismo è una gaffe, Roma, Donzelli.

Amselle J.L. -’Bokolo E.M, edd., (1985), Au coeur de l’ethnie, La Découverte, Paris.

Benton-Cohen (2018), Inventing the Immigration Problem: the Dillingham Commission and its Legacy, Harvard UP.

Boas, F. (1912), Changes of bodily form of descendants of immigrants, American Anthropologist, n.s. 14: 530-562.

Bosco, A. (1891), La studio della delinquenza, Bulletin de l’lnstitut international de Statistique, vi: 167-214.

Canguilhem, G. (1977), Qu’est-ce qu’une idéologie scientifique? [1969], in Ideologie et rationalité dans l’histoire des sciences de la vie, Librairie J. Vrin, Paris.

Devine, P. et al. (2012), Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention, Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, 48: 1267-78.

Duckitt J. – Sibley Ch.G. (2007), Right Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation and The Dimensions of Generalized Prejudice, European Journal of Personality, 21: 113-130.

Fiske, S.T. (2000), Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination at the seam between the centuries: evolution, culture, mind, and brain, European Journal of Social Psychology, 30: 299-322.

Forscher P.S., Mitamura C., Dix E.L., Cox W.T.L. and Devine P.G. (2017), Breaking the prejudice habit: Mechanisms, timecourse, and longevity, Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, 72. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316874118_Breaking_the_prejudice_habit_Mechanisms_timecourse_and_longevity.

Pratto F., Sidanius J., Stallworth L.M., Malle, B.F. (1994), Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67.

Reports of the Immigration Commission (1911), Government Printing Office, Washington:

vol. 1: Abstracts of Reports of The Immigration Commission, with Conclusions and Recommendations:

https://archive.org/details/reportsofimmigra01unitrich/page/n5

vol. 5: Dictionary of races or peoples:

https://archive.org/details/reportsimmigrat02croxgoog/page/n6

vol. 36: Immigration and crime:

https://archive.org/details/reportsimmigrat08dillgoog/page/n6

vol. 38: Changes in bodily form of descendants of immigrants:

https://archive.org/details/reportsofimmigra38unit/page/n5

Sergi, G. (1901), The Mediterranean race: A study of the origin of European Peoples, London.

Sidanius, J. – Pratto, F. (1999), Social Dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression, Cambridge UP, Cambridge.

Smith, J.A. (2013), What does prejudice reveal about what it means to be human?, Greater Good Magazine, october 21:

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_does_prejudice_reveal_about_what_it_means_to_be_human.

Stapinski, H. (2017), When America barred Italians, The New York Times, 2017/06/02.

Van Dijk, T. (1985), The Role of Discourse Analysis in Society, in Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Academic Press, London, 4: 1-8.

Van Dijk, T. (1995), Discourse Analysis as ideology analysis, in C. Schäffer-A.Wenden (eds), Language and Peace, Routledge, Aldershot.

Van Dijk, T. (1998), Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach, SAGE Publications, London.

Zeidel, R. (2004), Immigrants, Progressives and Exclusion Politics, Northern Illinois UP.

An Introductory Note

24/09/2018Introductory noteDemocracy, Migration, NSU, Nordic countries, Scandinavia, governance, human rightsMogens Chrom Jacobsen

This special issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum contains selected proceedings from three research circles within the Nordic Summer University (NSU): Human Rights and International Relations, Understanding Migration in Nordic and Baltic Countriesand Patterns of Dysfunction in Contemporary Democracies; Impact on Human Rights and Governance. The meetings took place in Saulkrasti, Latvia, from 29/7 to 2/8 2017 and in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 2/2 to 4/2 2018.

The program of the research circle, Human Rights and International Relations, ran from 2015 to 2017. This circle explored how human rights militancy and more generally the protection of human rights are affected by the international human rights regime and the way this regime enters state relations, and it also examined how the international human rights regime modifies the relations between states and how this is explained in international relations theory.

Understanding Migration in Nordic and Baltic Countries runs from 2017 to 2019. This circle addresses contemporary migration through the lens of representation. Interpreted broadly as various means of capturing, contextualizing, interpreting, and defining people, institutions, politics, and histories, representation should encompass both tangible renderings – such as photographs and films – and also a wide range of practices and processes whose representational forms serve in specific ways to produce the subject matter itself.

The study circle about the Patterns of Dysfunction in Contemporary Democracies; Impact on Human Rights and Governance runs from 2018 to 2020. This circle endeavours to study different patterns of dysfunction in contemporary democracies and in particular the insidious processes which undermine the traditional canons of liberal democracy, notably encapsulated in the rule of law and human rights. Many factors are involved in these insidious processes and the state of the various democracies can be seen as nodal points between different factors that are criss-crossing and thus creating a unique constellation: populism, nationalism, corruption, fear, social isolation, ignorance, poverty, luxury, injustice, rootlessness in its various forms are signs of unbalances within democracies on both the global, national and local levels.

The contributions from these circles evolve around the issues of human rights, democracy (including citizenship) and religion.

Jean-Pierre Cléro approaches democracy from the perspective of generational justice. Acquired pensions rights collide with the constraints of democracy and create dilemmas. Lucas L. O. Cardiell addresses other kinds of dilemmas when measures of citizen deprivation send the international protection of citizens’ rights on collision course with citizenship as the domaine réservé of states. Eyassu Gayim studies the contentious issues behind and between democracy and human rights and considers the possible conflicts involved in using the Human Rights-Based Approach to measure democracy.

Julio Jensen examines the origins of human rights and points at the important work of Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria as initiators of a certain kind of resistance against state power. Marianna Barchuk-Halyk approach human rights from the increasingly important notion of human security and the new UN doctrine about the Responsibility to Protect. Magdalena Tabernacka examines the human right of freedom of religion, and emphasizes the discrepancy found in Poland between the formal adoption of relevant legal measures and the effective protection of the right.

Giorgio Baruchello addresses religious and philosophical beliefs about abortion and their relation to claims about human rights, and how possible conflicts spell out in various social contexts. Welfare provisions and positive attitudes to pregnancy tend to make abortion less necessary. Magdalena Tabernacka discusses the implementation of religious freedom in Poland and how circumstances and will impact the effective implementation of this freedom. Julio Jensen considers how an egalitarian tradition within Judeo-Christian thinking has inspired resistance against state power.

The special issue contains the following papers

Jean-Pierre Cléro

University of Rouen, France

Democracy Put to the Test of Age

A Case Study Concerning the Dysfunction of Modern Democracy

Abstract: After having defined with some degree of precision the concept of a dysfunction which has a very particular meaning within politics, since a regime – be it democratic – can bring forth situations which over time will not be sustainable, we will analyse the case of the retirement pension system in which the generation at work takes care of the generation not working any more. This care meets with some particular difficulties linked to inequalities in what regards economy, politics (resulting from demography), health and social conditions. Certainly, these inequalities can be covered up for some time by a play of fictions which is partly analysed here. A situation seemingly without future considering the age pyramid is strangely enough viable in fact as certain sociological studies have shown, and we endeavour to find a clue to this fact in a dialogue between two persons, who separated by about forty years cross their points of view on how contemporary relations between generations play out. However, we are not quite sure that this play between fictions is a full substitute for the economic realities. We outline here some first steps in an area rich with contradictions, which we endeavour to illuminate by some elements of a theory of fictions.

Julio Jensen

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

A Note on the Origins of Human Rights:

Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria

Abstract: In the wake of the Spanish arrival in America, a controversy arose with respect to the legitimacy of the conquest and the colonial rule. This debate was started by the Dominicans in the New World, who denounced the oppression of the native population. The most renowned participants in these discussions were Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria. The former received the title of “Defender of the Indians”, while the latter is remembered as a central figure in the foundation of international law. Through the debates concerning the conquest of America, one precondition – noted by Habermas – for the emergence of human rights is explored namely resistance against state power on the basis of the egalitarian tradition belonging to Judeo-Christian thinking.

Lucas L. O. Cardiell

Migration Institute of Finland

Citizenship Deprivation: A Violation of Human Rights?

Abstract: In the past few years, the issue of citizenship deprivation has risen considerably on the agenda of the international community following the recent terrorist attacks in many States. Many citizens have been deprived of their nationality based on involvement in terrorist activities or possibly on the ground of national security. In consequence, an increasing body of legal and political discourse on citizenship deprivation has been added to the literature and the academic discussions on the topic at hand. This paper argues that despite the progress in IL/IHRL, which usually creates limitations in the attribution and deprivation of citizenship, the right to citizenship falls within the domaine réservé of states. It also argues that even though there are certain legal instruments that prohibit nationality deprivation resulting in statelessness, as of the 1961 statelessness convention, the issue of nationality deprivation most likely creates a legal vacuum for individuals concerned when the acquisition of other rights is necessarily linked to nationality.

Magdalena Tabernacka

Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland

The Human Right to Freedom of Religion in the Polish Education System

Abstract: Teaching religion in public schools has a significant bearing on the implementation of the individual’s right to freedom of religion and belief. Even if the state outlines a model for teaching religion that is compliant with the standards for the protection of human rights, an infringement of these rights may occur due to faulty execution of the existing provisions. The fact that a given belief system obtains the status of a majority religion does not exempt the state from its obligation to ensure the effective protection of the rights of non-believers and members of minority religions.

Marianna Barchuk-Halyk

Precarpathian National University named after

Vasyl Stefanyk, city of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine

Human Rights as a Part of the Human Security of Ukraine

Abstract. The paper is dedicated to questions of human security, the importance of which grows in international relations, yet its legal and political meanings remain ambiguous. The human security concept is about the protection of a human being or a minority group conceived as the responsibility of the states, or the international community, when the national governments cannot guarantee this security or when they consciously violate these rights. The concept of Responsibility to Protect is connected with human security. The concept is about the state’s duty to ensure the security of a person.

Giorgio Baruchello

University of Akureyri, Iceland

Religious Belief, Human Rights, and Social Democracy: Catholic Reflections on Abortion in Iceland

Terms such as “pro-life” and “pro-choice” evoke animated responses in the Anglophone world and can even win, or lose, major elections to political parties, candidates and movements. In the Nordic countries, however, the same terms and related responses are generally perceived as academic, at best, or as American, at worst. The issue of abortion seems to have been settled long ago in the Nordic context, both legally and, above all, socially. Does it mean that it has also been settled ethically? I argue that this is far from being the case and present an Iceland-based approach to the issue that, while leaving women’s rights and freedoms untouched, can accommodate to a worthy extent the defence of Scandinavian-style social democracy as well as the traditional Catholic opposition to abortion.

Eyassu Gayim

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Democracy, Human Rights and the UN Human Rights-Based Approach

Although democracy and human rights are universally shared values, their content has always been contested. The controversy concerns the nature of the human being, how the self relates to the community and the state, and how social and political relations should be formed. The UN followed its own political philosophy regarding this when the international regime of human rights was developed by acknowledging individual and people’s rights and democracy. This study highlights the core contentious issues behind democracy and human rights, how these concepts are intertwined and what the implications of using the Human Rights-Based Approach is to measure democracy.”

Speech of Dr. Luigi Patronaggio, Chief Prosecutor of Agrigento

08/06/2017Conference proceedings (double non-blind peer review)Mafia, Migration, crime, legal rights, multiculturalism, penal justice, restorative justice, retributive justice, terrorism, toleranceLuigi Patronaggio

I wish to express my gratitude to the organizers of this meeting, all belonging to a remarkable psychological field and I apologize to them in advance for the diversity of my language and for the incursion in “other knowledges”, hoping that this diversity could represent a source of mutual enrichment.

Part 1 – From retributive justice to restorative justice.

In more than thirty years long of professional experience, I have often bumped into the shadows of evil: how much vile darkness there is in a raped child, in a colleague magistrate or in some friends, policemen blown up by mafia-related criminals. Orin those innocent victims blown up while they are going to the beach, to a concert or to watch a football match at the stadium, or even in the bodies of young women, children and men floating in the same sea where new slave traders, unscrupulous merchants, have dragged them with the promise of a better life.

After a pistol shot, a burst, after the cries of the shipwrecked victims on a sinking boat … after all … it remains only darkness and quiet. Where there previously was life and joy, now there is silence. Darkness replaced the light.

To continue the metaphor, dear to people who are familiar with symbols, the legal order of a democratic State is a rational construction, and generally an ideal, geometric and illuminated city. Any time this order is violated the geometric shape is compromised and the lights turn off or dim according to the entity of the crime that has violated the law.

Rationality gives way to emotionality.

From the earliest times the violated law, or better the violated order, is restored through the punishment and the expulsion from the civil cohabitation of the criminal.

Since the earliest times,men have always responded to evil with evil: this happened with the vengeful God of the Jews (… it will take centuries until he becomes the Merciful God of the Christians). It happened with the Romans up to the Islamic world. If you do evil you will receive evil.

But be careful: it is a good thing that the order has laid down certain rules to overcome the rupture and go ahead, otherwise, we would still be stuck to the ordeal.

The Western juridical civilization has provided rules with universal validity: “Nullumcrimennullapena sine lege”, stated the Latins, the creators of the principle of the strict legality in the criminal law. This principle is still a pillar of the Western civilization. Likewise, the principle of non-retroactivity of the criminal law and the one corollary to the right to a fair trial,are fixed points in our civilization, codified in the European Convention on Human Rights.

And nonetheless, our human and legal sensibility has been more and more refined to get to understand that the violated order doesn’t always recreate through the punishment and the expulsion from the civil cohabitation.

This is not the place where to reaffirm (something too obvious) the necessary re-educative function of the punishment or the rejection of the death penalty. Or even, the tendential unconstitutionality of thelife sentence with the “never ending serve the term of imprisonment”.

What we want to highlight here, is that there are moments and contexts where it is necessary to go beyond the concept of retributive justice and enter the restorative or reconstructive justice: the so called “Restorative Justice” in the Anglo-Saxon world.

A justice that allows the executioner and the victim to communicate and together overcome evil. Only then, the violated order can be recreatedthrough the germination of healthy cells instead of being mutilated of its sick parts through surgical operations.

There are now many examples of this “other” justice, and all are renowned. The best-known of all is perhaps the one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa.

Where the apartheid was brought to an end not through the victory of a faction against another and with the imposition of the criminal law from the winner, but through a process of voluntary participation where was given voice to the victims;where the executioners recognized their own faults and promptly act to fix them; where everybody made every effort to create a new state and where the prosecution intended as a punishmentremained in the background of this process until it disappeared.

Other examples of restorative justice are found in the juvenile criminal law, in the criminal mediation and now, at a European level and in the international legislation, the principle of a “different” justice is also appealed in official documents (see the Council of Europe Recommendation of 1999 on the criminal mediation).

There are also olderexamples, such as the extended amnesty issued by the Italian Minister of Justice Togliatti that, by the pay off of crimes, committed both by the winners and the losers, allowed the Italians to resume apeaceful and democratic dialogue with each other after the civil war following the 8^th September 1943.

For instance, the latest laws on the matter of stalking, highlight the need to take actionnot only on the victim but also on the stalker in order to understand its push toward violence and to educate him tothe respect for women and more generally for vulnerable people.

Furthermore, family mediation tries to make a couple, facing an hard communicative time, in a dialogue situation in order to help them solve together their troubles, in the main interest of their children, leaving as a last resort, the authoritarian decision of the judge.

Thus, rebuilding starting from the victims, giving them voice and helping them to dialogue with the responsible for the crimes committed against them.

Then, restoring the order not through the isolation or the state violence, but through the restorative reconstruction where the voice of the victim, in a central position, is able to generate a process of reviewing of the evil by the criminal, with the aid of a third impartial mediator.

Certainly, this is an easy-to-apply paradigm in case of less serious crimes, i.e. a paradigm to apply in case of global and complex situations where the basis for the dialogue still exist.

But, is it possible to apply this paradigm against the international terrorism that threats us inside our houses, or against the humanity and war crimes? The most obvious reply is negative: the answer to the most serious crimes can be only a punitive reply, although with the most evolved forms of the international criminal law with which we have hardly endowed ourselves, since the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi war criminals.

Anyway, the choice of a proper international criminal law appeal doesn’t exempt us from the duty to understand and to face the shadow… to keep satisfying the symbolic language, well appreciated in this forum.

This is not the right place where to discuss the matter of the international criminal law, its entitlement as a non-codified right applicable to any person recognized as a guilty of crimes against humanity, regardless of where the crimes have been committed, or to reject the accusation put forward to that punitive claim as the criminal law of the enemy, as the winner’s right.

It must be stressed that, with the creation of the International Criminal Court (The Hague – July 2002), the western society, once again, has tried to overcome the de-structuring of the civil cohabitation through the rational means of the written law, the certainty of the rules and the punishments, by codifying fair and guaranteed procedures, overcoming a principle that had established after the tragedy of the Second World War, according to which “ in delictisatrocissimispotestjudexjuratransgrendi”, i.e. “in delictisatrocissimisjuratransgrendi licet”.

Principles that unfortunately came again to the surface after the 11^th September in USA with the use of legalized torture and the opening of special detention centers, such as Guantanamo.

Moreover, not all States took part to the Rome Convention, and as a matter of fact only 124 States approved the Rome Statute, and 32 signed but not approved the same agreements, such as USA, Russia, China and Israel.

“To Understand” is now then the new imperative to overcome, restart and restore.

Essential condition to face any attack to the civil cohabitation is to nevergive way to irrational and authoritarian temptations. It is also necessary a big effort of all social sciences and the combinationofall methods for the development of a social heuristics.

Who’s then this terrorist that threat us right inside our home, that prevent us from going to a concert, enjoying an exhibition or enjoying the right to democratic participation?

Part 2 – The identity of the terrorist.

Speaking of Mafia, as I already marked before, I defined the mafia-related criminal as an individual without identity who finds it inside the mafia organizationby moving the ideals of this selected group which is in contrast to the others, and whose language is only violence and prevarication. A cooperating witness used to say that before becoming part of “CosaNostra”, he was “nudduimmiscatucùnenti” (Italian translation in the text: I was anyone mixed up with anything).

Likewise, I would like to define the denominational terrorist (and I deliberately adopt this definition, not only to be politically correct) as a weak individual in search of a strong identity.

On the basis of our experience in investigation, we know that the terrorist organizations recruit young people in the occupied territories by the illusion of a status and the flattery of belonging to a selected elite, that the systematic recourse to acts of violence is justified in the name of a higher project; that all those people who don’t belong to the group are considered inferior because they are traitors, unfaithful and corrupted.

They usually wear black uniforms and have a long beard to underline the difference between them and the others. We all know the images of the ISIS troupes on the Internet, with a black background and waving black flags. It’s no coincidence that they choose this color: black is the denial of all colors, as the Nazi aesthetics had already stated about 100 years ago.

Certainly their weak, or better, wounded identity, is the result of centuries of a western ethnocentrism that turns a deaf ear to the claims of the third world countries.

It is no coincidence that terrorism develops in the occupied territories where people live in marginal conditions, but also in the suburbs of the European cities where the cultural integration process hasn’t occurred.

And I want to dispel here a cliché that identifies terrorism with immigration.

And I will dispel it with my long professional experience and the strength of the actual numbers issued by the Italian Ministry of the Interior: the terrorists don’tarrive here with the immigrants on the boats in the Sicilian Canal. Andeven if a terrorist that is running away from the war in Libya, reaches our shores, he doesn’t travel on unsteady boats, but only on comfortable motorboats for deep-sea fishing. It means only under safe conditions.

The terrorists are in our houses, in the suburbs of our cities, in our prisonswhere they often radicalize themselves. Descendants of past immigration,result of the post-Colonialism period, never integrated into the cultures of the host countries, they are often unemployed andexpress their hate towards the West culture through terrorism.A culture thatthey envy for its level of well-being and quality of life; hatedand denied at the same timebecause unreachable.

The terrorist is often formed on the Internet that deliberately provides him theimage of a fake and virtual world, just and ordered, opposite to the real world, represented as corrupted, that for the aspiring terrorist is a source of desire and frustration at the same time. And even the “holy war” is represented on the Internet as a triumphal advance full of violence and cruelty that the Foreign Fighters will experience and that probably theywill never be able to leave.

I would like to make it clear that terrorism has nothing to do with immigration.

The terrorist is in search of a strong identity, the immigrant instead, has a clear and rooted identity and he is only in search of a country where he can express its identity, denied in his own country because of wars, famine and persecutions.

The terrorist exports blind and angry violence. The migrant instead, only uses violence against himselfby putting at risk his own lifeand the one of his family,undertaking journeys under unsafe conditions,during which they are often physically and sexually abused.

We shouldn’t be scared; we shouldn’t fear the immigrant; we shouldn’t fear the cultural influence because it is only a source of enrichment; we should feed from the culture of acceptance; we should have the ability to distinguish between hate and fear, to recognize other people’s roots, to listen to the other: the victims of this epic phenomenon.

I would like to conclude my speech by going back to the need to listen to the others, the victims, and inviting you to listen to these people coming from the other part of the Sicilian Canal and to pay attention to their stories.

Stories full of pain and violence. They travelled thousands of miles through the desert, in the hands of unscrupulous human traders that drive poor people on overloaded old off-road vehicles letting them to die of thirst in the desert.

Stories of human traders that sell these poor people to the best bidder; migrants that are sold to different military factions, raped, divested of their belonging and harassed; traffickers that extort considerable amounts of money from their victims by blackmailing them with their abandonment; traffickers that cram the immigrants inside sheds located along the coasts of Lybia, under the burning sun and in slavery conditions.Stories of migrant women that quietly accept to be constantly raped by their captors, trying only to avoid unwanted pregnancies. The government forces are absent, legality is absent, there are only armed and violent factions and tribes that live by trading human beings.

These are the voices we must listen to, voices that make us act and qualify what happens on the Libyan coasts and in the Sahara desert as crimes against humanity. Those voices must lead us to strongly claim the opening of an humanitarian corridor from Libya, under the ONU signatures, to accommodate and redistribute migrants in Europe.

There is a right that must be affirmed as “Human Right”, and as such protected, and that is the right to migration, the right to escape from wars and deportations, to famines and epidemics. It is mandatory to stop military operations, and its political strategies and reversals between the various European nations committed to governing the Canal of Sicily. Stop with political disputes made of ephemeral and uncertain boundaries to be protected.

Pope Francis said: “it is necessary to become builders of bridges not of walls”.

Let’s just look inside, we should not be afraid, but believe in our Western, lay, tolerant, relativistic culture, produced after the dark years of the two World Wars. A cultural model open to multiracial and multi-confessional society. A cultural model we must insist on building a Europe of Nations, of people, not a Europe of banks and markets.

Tea Torbenfeldt Bengtsson, Morten Frederiksen & Jørgen Elm Larsen (eds.), The Danish Welfare State. A Sociological Investigation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

01/07/2016Book reviewDenmark, Liberalism, Migration, Social Democracy, Welfare, alcoholism, competition, education, flexicurity, globalization, healthcare, risk, social investment, welfare stateGro Hellesdatter Jacobsen

How is the welfare state transforming in an era of globalization, individualization and hence increased competition, and how are the changes seen on a macro and micro level? This is the main question raised in this book, containing 15 chapters, including a thorough introduction and a conclusion. More specifically, it explores how risk concepts and risk thinking transform the welfare state from responding to and from protecting its citizens from threats putting them at risk, to risks being seen as threats to the welfare state itself.

The book addresses a current discussion in Denmark concerning whether the welfare state, instituted to protect its citizens, is developing into a competition state, mobilizing citizens to take part in the struggle for the state to be competitive. In this picture, so-called non-productive citizens such as the unemployed, chronically ill, or newly arrived refugees, are increasingly seen as risk factors or even threats, and not primarily as humans worthy of protection. According to the editors of the book, Denmark as a modern welfare state endorsing both universal welfare and individual responsibility is an interesting case illustrating this development. Thus, they provide a frame for discussing whether it is worth ‘getting to Denmark’, as Fukuyama claimed in The Origins of Political Order (2011) as a metaphor for democracy.

The state increasingly seems to respond to macro-level threats from globalization and economic crisis with micro-level initiatives; hence the anthology focuses on risks both on a macro- and micro-level. In the opening chapter a thorough introduction is given to four sociological approaches to risk, namely risk society (Beck); risk culture/cultural theory (Douglas); risk control/governmentality (Foucault); and risk as uncertainty/managed uncertainty (Luhmann). These theorists, of whom particularly Beck and Foucault are cited in the book, claim in different ways that risks are socially founded. The explanation of this theoretical framework does not only serve a didactical purpose but also helps to underline how a social understanding of the risks of modernity can be used when analyzing welfare states like Denmark. Whereas the competition state is often associated with neoliberalism and deregulation, the social investment state is associated with reregulation, which several of the chapters analyzing policies on a micro level illustrate. Both the competition and the social investment paradigm however rely on a highly educated, healthy and productive workforce. Accordingly, policies of education, activation, and health become important. However, there may be unintended consequences of such risk management policies. As pointed out in several chapters, new risks may occur especially among the poor and poorly educated classes, who do not respond adequately to activation policies and often meet sanctions and cuts in benefits. Thus, the welfare state may end up reproducing rather than overcoming inequalities.

The book comprises three parts. The first part concerns risks at a macro level, mainly explored comparatively. Hence, in chapter 2, “Denmark from an International Perspective”, Peter Abrahamsen discusses the social investment paradigm drawing the traditional Social Democratic Denmark closer to liberal and continental models. In chapter 3, “Social Investment as Risk Management” Jon Kvist compares social investment strategies of Denmark, Germany and United Kingdom. In Chapter 4, “Employment Relations, Flexicurity, and Risk: Explaining the Risk Profile of the Danish Flexicurity Model”, Carsten Strøby Jensen explains how flexicurity presently is under pressure by cuts in unemployment benefits and decreasing support for labor unions. In chapter 5, “Precarity and Public Risk Management: Trends in Denmark across Four Decades”, Stefan Andrade shows that the Danish labor market has not yet become more precarious than in other European countries, though low- and unskilled workers have become more vulnerable to risks of poverty and unemployment. In chapter 6, “Towards a New Culture of Blame?” Morten Frederiksen shows from survey data, that Danes’ attitudes towards social assistance and unemployment surprisingly have changed very little.

The second part of the book is devoted to risk perspectives on the universal welfare state at a micro level. Thus, in chapter 7 “When Family Life Is Risky Business – Immigrant Divorce in the Women-Friendly Welfare State”, Mai Heide Ottosen and Anika Liversage discuss whether new and unintended risks of exclusion follow divorces in immigrant families. Education is the focus of chapter 8, “The Risky Business of Educational Choice in the Meritocratic Society”, where Kristian Karlson and Anders Holm demonstrate how citizens’ ability to risk management in educational decisions is related to inequality in education. Unintended inequality is also the topic in chapter 9 “Health in a Risk Perspective: The Case of Overweight”, where Nanna Mik-Meyer explores the increased focus on health problematizing an already vulnerable group. A similar tendency is seen in chapter 10, “Failing Ageing? Risk Management in the Active Ageing Society”, Tine Rostgaard explains how the Danish ‘active approach’ to elder care problematizes inactive groups unwilling or incapable of change.

The third and last part of the book stays on the micro level and explores the Danish welfare state’s approach to social problems and marginalized groups. In chapter 11, “Controlling Young People Through Treatment and Punishment”, Tea Torbenfeldt Bengtsson shows how the Danish system for juvenile crime is currently strengthening control influenced by ‘fears of “being soft on crime”’. In chapter 12, “Alcohol and Risk Management in a Welfare State”, Margaretha Järvinen argues that the healthcare authorities’ governmentality perspective on alcohol consumption does not reach certain alcohol consumers. In chapter 13, “The Tough and the Brittle: Calculating and Managing the Risk of Refugees” Katrine Syppli Kohl explores how Denmark’s selection of quota refugees has developed from choosing the weakest to picking those deemed most ‘capable of integration’, thus presenting the background for the Parliament’s 2016 suspension of the entire quota refugee program in Denmark. Lastly, in Chapter 14, “Cash Benefit Recipients – Vulnerable or Villains?”, Dorte Caswell, Jørgen Elm Larsen and Stella Mia Sieling-Monas examine the Danish unemployment policy including evermore severe sanctions as means of encouraging job seeking.

To sum up, the anthology offers a comprehensive overview of the Danish welfare state on a macro- and micro level, convincingly applying risk theories and discussing the social investment paradigm. In an era where publishing in journals is given priority over anthologies, this volume demonstrates that the anthology format is still justified. The volume is highly recommendable to students, scholars, and not least, decision makers.

Paul Caruana Galizia, Mediterranean Labor Markets in the First Age of Globalization. An Economic History of Real Wages and Market Integration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

23/03/2016Book review (editorial review)Labour, Mediterranean, Migration, convergencePaolo Malanima

Migratory flows, both legal and illegal, are rising day by day in the Mediterranean countries. This fine book by Caruana Galizia does not deal, however, with today’s recent phase of migration, but with migration of Mediterranean people both within the Mediterranean and beyond between 1820 and 1915.

Continue reading Paul Caruana Galizia, Mediterranean Labor Markets in the First Age of Globalization. An Economic History of Real Wages and Market Integration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) →

A Presentation of IDIN

03/02/2015Introductory noteLiberalism, Migration, Nordic, Scandinavia, crisis, exclusion, inclusion, integration, intercultural, multicultural, pluralism, social cohesion, universalismPaola de Cuzzani

The network has been established with financial support from NordForsk for four years, 2011-2014, and has initiated in the project period several scientific events. Many researchers and PhD candidates have participated in the activities, and the increasingly diversified realities in the Nordic context have been approached from various angles. Contributions have come from a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences, humanities and economics, and from network members as well as invited scholars. Continue reading A Presentation of IDIN →

Nation-building in the Scandinavian Welfare State: The Immigration Challenge

20/01/2015Conference proceedings (double non-blind peer review)Denmark, Migration, Norway, Sweden, Welfare, integration, nation, valuesGrete Brochmann

Introduction

Scandinavia is the area where trust in political institutions and the role of the state is greatest in the world. Political actors in all three Scandinavian countries now compete for the honour of having created and developed the welfare state. It is such a central part of their self-understanding that this political framework can be said to have become a part of the Scandinavian national concept.

Continue reading Nation-building in the Scandinavian Welfare State: The Immigration Challenge →

Pieter Bevelander & Bo Petersson (eds.), Crisis and Migration. Implications of the Eurozone Crisis for Perceptions, Politics, and Policies on Migration (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014)

23/09/2014Book review (editorial review)EU, Eurozone, Migration, crisisGiorgio Baruchello

The volume addresses some of the consequences for the European Union (EU) of the prolonged economic crisis resulting from the 2008 implosion of Wall Street’s financial wizardry. One particular consequence, or area of concern, is at the heart of the essays included in the volume, i.e. migration, meaning chiefly, though by no means exclusively, the movement of people from outside the EU into the EU. Albeit clear, relevant and useful statistics are offered both in the introductory chapter by the book’s editors (pp. 9-24) and in the second chapter, penned by economics professor T. Hatton (pp. 25-47), theoretical issues of socio-cultural perception are given more room in the book’s studies than empirical issues of demographics, econometrics and/or specific legislative acts.

Continue reading Pieter Bevelander & Bo Petersson (eds.), Crisis and Migration. Implications of the Eurozone Crisis for Perceptions, Politics, and Policies on Migration (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014) →

Erik S. Reinert & Francesca Lidia Viano (eds.), Thorstein Veblen. Economics for an Age of Crises (London: Anthem, 2012)

28/01/2014Book review (editorial review)Migration, Norway, Veblen, economicsGiorgio Baruchello

Frequent yet allegedly unexpected crises, the sudden meltdowns of recently praised free-market ‘tigers’, and large-scale social unrest keep surfacing in the post-Thatcherite world of ‘free-trade agreements’, ‘globalisation’, ‘deregulation’, ‘privatisation’, monetary ‘great moderation’ and similar catchwords for the so-called age of ‘neo-liberalism’. Given such circumstances, a few mainstream economists have been willing to reconsider at least some of the premises upon which their discipline has operated and to rediscover the long-forgotten wisdom of a famous but largely uninfluential mind, whose contribution to the discipline’s textbooks has been reduced to a class of odd goods that moneyed people want all the more the costlier they get (i.e. so-called ‘Veblen goods’).

In this perspective, part four (of four) in Reinert’s and Viano’s book contains six exemplary chapters, penned by five seasoned academics and two outstanding young students, that focus upon the usefulness of Veblen’s diverse and different categories of thought for today’s economists, legislators and policy-makers.

Geoffrey M. Hodgson’s “Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics” compares mainstream economics’ current usage of notions that were crucial for Veblen—such as “institutions” and “evolution” (283)—with Veblen’s original understanding of them. His conclusion is that the former, corrupted by rational choice theory and a simplistic interpretation of Darwinism, has reduced these notions to “apologetic” descriptors within a grossly distorted picture of “market competition” that pleases the adherents of “laissez faire” economics (292). On the contrary, Veblen’s understanding of them is much more nuanced, empirically perceptive, open to revision, and disciplinarily ecumenical. He therefore concludes: “We can still learn a great deal from his writings and build on them for the future.” (292)

Paul Burkander’s “Veblen’s Words Weighed” dissects the full complexity of meaning in a famously convoluted passage in Veblen’s essay “Why is Economics is Not an Evolutionary Science”, showing its author’s commitment to replace “neoclassical economics” (297) with a novel approach that may truly “scrutinise the economic actions of man” (300).

L. Randall Wray’s “The Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen’s Theory of Business Enterprise, Keynes’s Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis” brings three heterodox classics into dialogue, highlighting mutual similarities and differences, so as to provide insights in the structural economic conditions that do actually cause financial crashes like the 2007 one.

James K. Galbraith’s “Predation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference” makes use of a largely neglected concept in Veblen’s understanding of socio-economic phenomena, i.e. predation, in order to explain the historical origins and the well-tested beneficial functions of regulation within market economies. As he writes: “A functioning structure of regulation is the instrument… of that part of the business community that wishes, and chooses, to play by a common set of rules” that keep market economies from “predatory self-destruction.” (327)

Sophus A. Reinart’s and Francesca Lidia Viano’s “Capitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste” addresses another economic notion, i.e. “expectations” and how Veblen was capable of explaining its centrality in “systemic financial collapses” as well as “patterns of individual consumption.” (329)

Robert H. Frank’s “Thorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important than Ever” takes its moves from Veblen’s enduring textbook relevance in the very specific field of positional goods. Then it proceeds to emphasising his relevance vis-à-vis the much more general claim that “evaluations of all types depend heavily on social context”, hence on the necessity for “economic models” to stop assuming “that consumption decisions take place in social isolation” and start differentiating amongst the ways in which social factors affect economic evaluations and actual choices. (358)

Elements of the fourth part of the book colour the third one, in which three more social scientists explore in as many chapters Veblen’s importance for the field of politics.

Sidney Plotkin’s “Thorstein Veblen and the Politics of Predatory Power” focuses upon Veblen’s understanding of predation in human affairs and its applicability to phenomena such as social coercion, alienation, instrumental rationality, warfare and institutional development.

Stephen Edgell’s “Veblen, War and Peace” tries to fill a gap in the scholarly literature about Veblen, since the economists interested in his work are said to have largely neglected Veblen’s studies on World War I and the ensuing peace agreements. By doing so, Edgell does not only offer an account of this lesser known component of Veblen’s legacy, but also an application of Veblen’s insights to the contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.

Eyüp Özveren’s “Veblen’s ‘Higher Learning’: The Scientist as Sisyphus in the Iron Cage of a University” approaches Veblen’s research from the perspective of Veblen’s assessment of the history of modern sciences, the development of academic institutions, and the failure of the latter to be truly beneficial to society at large. According to Özveren’s “account, Veblen was highly sceptical of the universities’ ability to produce skilled and constructive minds, because of enduring archaic habits of thought, ritual functions in costly displays of wealth and status, enslavement to short-term business goals, and the prevalence of institutional competition over institutional cooperation. Additionally, Özveren’s account offers a depiction of academics as Sisyphus-like figures, who engage in the production of knowledge and fame that are bound to be overcome by the future academics that they nurture and instruct.

Parts one and two of the book belong primarily to ‘Veblenite’ historiography, as they deal with Veblen’s personal biography, his family and cultural background, his education in the US, and his own controversial teaching experiences. Of the six chapters comprised in these two parts, the readers of Nordicum-Mediterraneum are going to find the first four (i.e. part one of the book) of particular interest, for they focus upon Veblen’s Norwegian and Scandinavian background, especially in the context of late-19th-century Nordic immigrant communities in North America. These four chapters being: Kåre Lunden’s “Explaining Veblen by his Norwegian Background: A Sketch”; Terje Mikael Hasle Joranger’s “Valdres of the Upper Midwest: The Norwegian Background of the Veblen Family and their Migration to the United States”; Knut Odner’s “New Perspectives on Thorstein Veblen, the Norwegian”; and Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley’s “The Physical World of Thorstein Veblen: Washington Island and Other Intimate Spaces”.

The book hereby reviewed is the result of the conference held in Valdres, Norway, upon the 150th anniversary of Veblen’s birth. It contains essays that differ considerably in length, topic, methodology, and reader-friendliness. Most of them presuppose a modicum of familiarity with Veblen’s work. Therefore, this volume cannot be recommended as an introduction to it. Rather, taken together, the book’s essays offer a very interesting token of Veblen scholarship and an eloquent exemplification of the cross-disciplinary appeal of Veblen’s genius. Furthermore, the essays comprised in the first part of the book reflect extensively upon the Nordic elements in Veblen’s life experience and intellectual interests, and should appeal to our journal’s Scandinavian readership, particularly in Norway.

Jan Philipp Sternberg, Auswanderungsland Bundesrepublik. Denkmuster und Debatten in Politik und Medien 1945 – 2010 (Studien zur Historischen Migrationsforschung, Bd. 26, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2012)

27/01/2014Book review (editorial review)Germany, Migration, mediaMarkus Meckl

Even for me, a migrant from Germany: when I saw the title, I have to admit, I misread it and assumed that immigration would be the topic of the book. German emigrants do not play a big role in the public perception compared to other European countries like Italy or Ireland. Moreover, in Germany, if one does speak of emigrants, then it refers mainly to Germans fleeing from Nazi Germany – as symbolised through Thomas Mann and Berthold Brecht – or, to a far lesser extent, the 19^th-century adventurer leaving for the new World.

The nearly 800,000 Germans leaving the Federal Republic of Germany in the years between 1949 and 1961 do not belong to either of these categories. Sternberg, in his well-researched study, looks at the changing public image of emigrants in Germany and the political discourse around their emigration. He covers the year from 1949 until 2010, but his main focus are the years until 1961. After 1961, the numbers of emigrants drop significantly, since in 1961 full employment had been reached in Germany and only after Germany’s reunification in 1989 the numbers rise again.

Sternberg observes that in many respects immigration and emigration are treated in Germany as the two sides of the same medal. For a longer time both emigration and immigration were ignored or even denied as a political reality and, if spoken in the public discourse, treated as a fearful threat to Germany.

Sternberg contributes with his work to a cultural history of West Germany. The changing public discourse on emigration reflects the changes within society. The debate in the 1940s and 1950s was dominated by the notion of loss of human capital. In the new century, we speak instead of the “brain drain”, whereby the “most valuable members” of the German people are turned by the media into a sort of soap opera, since a documentary on emigration has all the dramatic ingredients that a program director could dream of. As Sternberg quotes the woman in charge for “Deutschland ade”: “Where else you find so much interest in adventure, daring and longing for happiness? What else provides stories like this, which carry a risk of failure in itself, tell of sorrow, hope, fear and happiness? All reasons why the SWR [the television channel] is enthusiastic about emigration as a subject. It is material for a serial par excellence.” (p.222)

One just wishes that historians and social scientists may realise this as well and start doing more research on it.

Philip J. Anderson and Dag Blanck (eds.), Norwegians and Swedes in the United States: Friends and Neighbors (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012)

25/12/2012Book review (editorial review)Darwinism, Lutheranism, Migration, Norway, Sweden, USA, integration, nationalismAlina Romo

The collection is divided into four distinct sections—Context, Culture, Conflict and Community—each undertaking a thorough examination of the relationships and interactions between the largest immigration populations from Scandinavian to the United States. As the subheadings suggest, a comprehensive study of the relationship between Norwegians and Swedes in the United States cannot be sustained on comparison alone. Indeed, as Donna R. Gabaccia outlines in the very useful foreword to the book, the narrative of this relationship continues to develop new strains due in part to increasing attention to “inter-ethnic perspectives” concerning American immigration history in general and Scandinavian interactions in particular. It is the developing story of Scandinavian “inter-ethnic perspectives” that the collection aims to uncover and narrate and as a whole this aim is successful. As Gabaccia rightly points out, however, the collection downplays the “importance of contention” between the two groups, by choosing to highlight “the Americanization that brought both groups of immigrates closer to each other.”

The first section on context contains two substantial introductory chapters: “Friends and Neighbors? Patterns of Norwegian-Swedish Interaction in the United States” by co-editor Dag Blanck and “Norwegians and Swedes in America: Some Comparisons” by H. Arnold Barton. The opening chapters strive to broadly describe the identities of each group and the patterns of interactions between them. Blanck develops a useful chronology for grappling with the complex issue, dividing recognizable patterns of interaction into three periods. Blanck emphasizes that although there has yet to be a systematic and comprehensive study of the history of the Scandinavians in the United States, certain patterns emerge from the studies that do exist. When division did occur between Norwegian and Swedish immigrants it was along religious lines, more so than national ones. In matters of the heart, however, Norwegians and Swedes found each other the most desirable and within the political sphere they were each others’ closest allies. Barton’s comparative study of the two groups is admittedly more speculative in nature, but no less productive in results by focusing on the differences between the groups. Some of Barton’s findings are less surprising than others. That the Norwegians were the more nationalist of the two immigrant groups makes sense in term of Norway’s political development over the nineteenth century ending with its independence in 1905. That Norwegian Americans wrote more novels than Swedes was unexpected. As was the conclusion that Swedish Americans generally outpaced their Scandinavian neighbors in the sciences and technology, the visual arts and business. As Barton states, differences such as those I have pointed out are compelling and open new lines of investigation for further research. How to assess why these differences occurred, however, is not as easy or apparent.

The second section examines the central position that diverse aspects of culture held in the Norwegian and Swedish immigrant experience. The following three chapters stood out: Odd S. Lovoll’s opening chapter, “Preserving a Cultural Heritage Across Boundaries: A Comparative Perspective on Riksföreningen Sverigekontakt and the Nordmanns-Forbundet” skillfully depicts how even as societies were started in both Norway and Sweden to promote home colonization, the two societies mentioned in the title were founded to cope with expanding populations outside the nation state. Lovoll’s explanation of how each society aimed to create a notion of worldwide nationality founded on the promotion of cultural retention within emigrant populations is thought provoking, particularly regarding the underlying conservative politics at its core, a point I would have liked to see more thoroughly developed. In “Freedom, Identity, and Double Perspectives: Representations of the Migrant Experience in the Novels of Vilhelm Moberg and O.E. Rølvaag,” Ingeborg Kongslien illustrates that although each author penned works of historical fiction and not historical accounts per se, due to the authors’ personal experiences the novels nevertheless provide ample and reliable insights into Scandinavian emigration, including those historical, psychological, sociological and existential. James P. Leary’s “Är Du Svenske?”–”Norsk! Norsk!”: Folk Humor and Cultural Difference in Scandinavian America” is the highlight of the section as it is rich with familiar jokes that become compelling examples of the development of cultural difference between Norwegian and Swedish Americans. Leary convincingly maps how “Scandihoovian” humor is more about negotiating relationships between Norwegians and Swedes in the United States than about any actual reference to the homeland. Indeed, he illustrates that what often appears as insider teasing is in reality a way to communicate cultural difference to the wider, and often undiscerning, American public.

The third section of the collection identifies areas where conflict arose between the Scandinavian immigrant groups. The first two chapters examine how Norwegian independence affected relationships between Norwegian and Swedish Americans, while the second two chapters scrutinize the complex divides, factions and mergers within the varying denominations of the Lutheran Church in the United States. Jørn Brøndal’s “We are Norwegians and Swedes Now, Not Scandinavians”: The Impact of Norwegian Independence on Scandinavian American Politics in the Midwest” and Ulf Jonas Björk’s “An End to Brotherhood?” Swedes and Norwegians in America Discuss the 1905 Union Dissolution” are complimentary chapters that detail the ramifications of Norway’s independence on political and social alignments between Norwegian and Swedish Americans. The conclusions of both chapters reflect back to my earlier statement concerning the collection overall: conflicts were limited and those that arose were short-lived. As each chapter suggests, pan-Scandinavianism seems to have post- dated any animosity, albeit at varying levels across time and place. Kurt W. Peterson’s “A Question of Conscious: Minnesota’s Norwegian American Lutherans and the Teaching of Evolution” is the stand out piece of the collection. Peterson targets the imperative position that Norwegian American Lutherans held in early twentieth century debates concerning the status of evolution in public schools and by doing so, places current discourse on the subject into a new, and nuanced historical context. The chapter is filled with—what was for me at least—compelling insight into how Lutheran history supported the separation of church and state, thus ultimately rendering null the scheme to legislate the exclusion of evolution in Minnesota’s public schools and universities. Peterson asserts that, “many Lutherans wanted nothing to do with [legislation] because they wanted nothing to do with the Reformed tradition. Their fight was not simply over the teaching of evolution; for them, the heart of their Lutheran theological heritage was at stake.” Equally compelling is the way in which Peterson details the close ideological ties between Norwegian American Lutheranism and the broader Evangelical movement.

The closing section of the collection is a fitting bookend to a study that casts a wide net as it examines both distinct features and broad trends within the Norwegian and Swedish American community. That this section is the largest reinforces the collection’s unifying intentions. Each chapter features a case study of a specific cluster of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants within the United States. The section is rich with description and details, demographics and specifics, whether investigating the nontraditional immigrant position held by many Norwegian and Swedish engineers and architects, as in Per-Olof Grönberg’s contribution, or chronicling the narrative of an insulated Scandinavian enclave on the shores of Lake Superior, as in Philip J. Anderson’s piece. All but one chapter, however, focuses on Scandinavian communities in the Midwest. The exception being Jennifer Eastman Atterbery’s “Scandinavian’s in the Rocky Mountain West: Pragmatic and Programmatic.” Atterbery’s very interesting examination of Scandinavian settlements in Montana and LDS Utah (touching only briefly on California) broadens the scope of what is an otherwise very regional-specific section. In fact, the exclusion of the West is one of the shortcomings of the collection as a whole and I would have liked the same rigorous scholarship that pervades the collection applied to Norwegian and Swedish communities in California, Oregon and Washington, or for that matter, to those in New York and the East. One of the most outstanding features in this section is the way in which personal narrative and family history interjects into large-scale and oftentimes characterless demographic statistics. In more than one instance, particularly in Byron J. Nordstrom’s “Norwegians and Swedes in Willmar, Minnesota, in the Early Twentieth Century,” general and sweeping statistical information is transformed from the tedious to the compelling by granting the dates, numbers, and anonymous names on the page, a narrative. By fleshing out both the communities under study and particular individuals within those communities, the closing section is a fitting end to what is a comprehensive, informative and insightful study of Norwegians and Swedes in the United States. The information presented in this study will most certainly fuel and encourage subsequent research and publication in the field.

Ernesto Kiza, Tödliche Grenzen – Die fatalen Auswirkungen europäischer Zuwanderungspolitik (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2008)

22/02/2010Book review (editorial review)Emigration, European Union, Immigration, Migrants, MigrationMarkus Meckl

The author structured his work in four parts in order to offer a systematic analysis of the victimization of illegal immigrants. The first part gives an introduction to the theme of international migration, by providing an historical and empirical overview. The second part is dedicated to the theoretical explanation of the empirical facts presented in the first part. The third part examines the reason for international migration and the reaction to it in European countries. In the last part of his 410-page tome, Kiza discusses the impact of the European Union’s immigration policy, by emphasizing its effects on the migrants and, in particular, their victimization.

It is a pity that the author is hiding behind the abstruse jargon of much contemporary political science in order to do something very important: to understand the actions of the different actors in the European immigration policy and the very impact that this policy has on the refugees trying to enter Europe. There is no necessity describing the fact that the nation-state is the actor in the international system with a phrase like: “Zum einen handelt es sich dabei um die Verfasstheit des internationalen Systems, die auf der Westfälischen Ordnung basiert und als zentrale Prämisse die Existenz souveräner Nationalstaaten postuliert. Somit ist der souveräne Nationalstaat der zentrale Akteur im internationalen System und nimmt daher eine zentrale Rolle bei der Beeinflussung und Formung internationaler Migrationsströme ein.” (p. 17) What has the Westfälische Ordnung to do with migration, except sounding very academic?

Neil Postmann pointed out that that “elite trades — physicians, lawyers, teachers, and scientists — protect their special status by creating vocabularies that are incomprehensible to the general public. This process prevents outsiders from understanding what the profession is doing and why.” Postmann himself did not really oppose this; he saw it as a necessity. In this case, unfortunately, does the “technical gobbledegook” (Postmann) prevent the very people who should be interested in reading about it from getting the message.

It is not understandable why the author is hiding behind a technical language that makes the text inaccessible. It may be a sign of knowledge at the University of Kassel, where the author handed in his work, to be able to describe migration as an “ubiquitäres biologisches Phänomen” (p. 324), but for me as a reader it sounds just ridiculous. I still see the task of political science as to describe complex political phenomena in an understandable way, so as to provide politics with information and notions whereby to develop policy. It is a pity that the author did not make an effort to turn his PhD thesis into a readable text for its publication as a book. The topic and all the hard work invested into the research would have deserved it.