Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention by Stephanie Malia Hom

Author:Stephanie Malia Hom [Hom, Stephanie Malia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Italy, Social Science, Emigration & Immigration, Political Science, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, General
ISBN: 9781501739910
Google: ag2QDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell
Published: 2019-09-15T14:02:30+00:00

Daily Life in the Village, or 22.5 Square Meters

The history of the Roma in Europe is one of perpetual exclusion and violence. Many scholars, activists, and filmmakers have brought this history to light and continue to expose the unsettling conditions of the nomad camps and the container villages in which many Roma in Italy still live today.39 Of the eight thousand Roma and Sinti who live in or near Rome, for example, more than 60 percent live in settlements built and paid for by the municipal government (map 3).40

There are fine gradations in terminology for such settlements not unlike the system of Italy’s migrant detention centers. Villaggio attrezzato (equipped village) is the most common term to describe the current container parks; it evolved from the so-called campo attrezzato (equipped camp) of the mid-1990s. Another term is villaggio di solidarietà (solidarity village), which came into use around 2013 after the center-left government came into power. Beginning in 2009, the Roman municipal government also funded the creation of centri di raccolta Rom (Roma collection centers). Like the sea of rubbish surrounding La Barbuta, the very name of these places links Roma with refuse, for the phrase centri di raccolta (collection centers) in vernacular Italian is typically associated with waste management. The name implies that Roma are to be collected, and disposed of, like trash. The intention behind these centers was to rehouse Romani families whose homes had been razed during the so-called nomad emergency in 2008. In practice, however, the centers function to further segregate the Roma by ethnicity and isolate them from the rest of society, according to a report by Associazione 21 Luglio.41 Whether village or collection center, government-built settlements for Roma share a single objective: to create a space where a distinct set of “undesirables” who threaten the Italian state with their unsanctioned mobilities can be contained and governed by law.

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