Migration and Race in Europe

Martin Bulmer, John Solomos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429787799
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Immigration Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Migration and Race in Europe covers various facets of the interplay between migration and race in Europe. Over the past two decades there has been a growing public policy and political debate about questions linked to migration and refugee movements across the borders of Europe. This has been evident in countries such as the UK, France, the Netherlands and Germany that have had long-established experience with questions about immigration and race. But what has also become clear is that these debates have also become an established part of political and civil society discourses across both Southern and Eastern European societies and beyond. The contributions to this volume draw on the latest research in order to provide an insight into the changing dynamics of migration and race in a number of European societies.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Dominant or subordinate? The relational dynamics in a protest cycle for undocumented migrant rights

Nicola Montagna

ABSTRACT This article investigates an undocumented migrants’ protest that took place in Italy in 2010–2011 and examines the relational dynamics within the movement behind this mobilization. Although there is growing literature exploring different aspects of migrant activism and border struggles, the binomial migrant and politics has mostly been interpreted in terms of migrants as the objects of politics rather than the subjects. During the nine-month protest a similar argument was used by authorities who recurrently stated that the migrants were remotely controlled and manipulated by their Italian advocates. Without underestimating differences in social and cultural capital and power relations within the movement, this article seeks to challenge this approach and problematize the relationship between the actors who organized and participated in the protest. Drawing on 27 in-depth interviews with documented and undocumented migrants and migrant rights activists, the article aims to show how relational dynamics go beyond the subordination–domination dichotomy.

Introduction

A significant body of literature has emerged, inspired by the border struggles of the last decade. In particular, research has focussed on migrants as agents of political transformation while border struggles have been framed as “acts of citizenship” (Anderson 2009; Chimienti and Solomos 2011; Isin 2009; Isin and Nielsen 2008; Monforte and Dufour 2011; Nyers and Rygiel 2012; Però and Solomos 2010; Pojmann 2008; Squire and Darling 2013; Tyler and Marciniak 2013). According to Balibar (2004) these struggles bring to the fore a “new” figure of citizen who, although without a formal legal status, participates in public affairs and develops a form of active citizenship. Isin (2009) also assumes a relevance for the struggles of the undocumented, distinguishing, however, between active citizenship and acts of citizenship. The former includes routinized social actions such as voting, taxpaying or enlisting and is implied by legal status and, therefore, belongs only to those who are already considered citizens (Isin 2009, 383); it is only with the latter that a new actor, the activist citizen, and a new scene are produced. Acts of citizenship are unexpected and disrupt the established political patterns, enabling the actor to establish new rights. They call the law into question and sometimes break it. These, therefore, are not “bare lives”, vulnerable to the arbiters of sovereign power and trapped in zones of indistinction (Walters 2008). Rather, border struggles turn irregular migrants into agents of political transformation who disrupt the exclusionary logic of migration policies and reflectively recognize their own potential as political actors (McNevin 2013; Monforte 2015).

While these analyses of border struggles put the emphasis on citizenship, as defined in its relation to the territorial state, others examine some of the ambivalences of these struggles. In particular, they are understood as acts of desertion (Squire 2015) that challenge the limits of liberal citizenship and enact new rights, including the right to mobility. However, acts of desertion and citizenship should not be conceived of as being in opposition. As noted, migrants often work with citizenship and against it in resisting relations of power (McNevin 2013). By claiming the right to mobility and freedom of movement, the acts of desertion “remain immanent to citizenship but at the same time temporarily exceed citizenship” (Squire 2015, 505). They challenge the limitations of the rights and responsibilities associated with liberal citizenship within that framework. The status that undocumented migrants claim is part of the same order they contest.

Another strand of research has focussed on the way undocumented migrants reclaim agency. It has been argued that a condition for any social movement to emerge is the presence of pre-existent organizational structures, often latent and unnoticed but ready to activate at any time (Diani and McAdam 2003; Melucci 1996; Tarrow 1998). Similarly, migrant mobilizations are not simply the result of frustration linked to economic exploitation and social marginalization, but emerge out of the capacity of migrants and their supporters to mobilize the organizational structures available to them. Several studies have investigated the nature of mobilizing structures involving migrants and migrant rights advocates and have raised important questions of power, access to valuable resources and information control (Nicholls 2013, 2014). Even whendecisions and interactions are not structured in acentralized manner, some groups may assume a dominant role. Real tensions exist and contribute to the emergence of hierarchies based on race, ethnicity, gender and the availability of resources such as social and cultural capital. Some particular groups become empowered and assume crucial positions while others remain marginal within the decision-making processes.

In particular, undocumented migrants have long been represented as lacking the essential cultural and social capital needed to generate mobilization and represent their own cases. As Nicholls (2013) argues, migrants need to ally with native supporters who not only provide solidarity and contribute to expanding the undocumented struggle (Mantanika and Kouki 2011), but also possess the knowledge required to act and advance claims in a restricted political field (Bourdieu 1991). Within these structures, invisible hierarchies easily form in relation to the possession of symbolic and cultural resources. Native supporters who possess these scarce resources are likely to assume a dominant position that involves the framing of claims, their representation and their legal negotiation; this introduces a division of labour whereby natives assume the dominant role of representational broker. The asymmetric distribution of power within these structures is not necessarily a deliberate outcome of migrant advocates’ support, but might be a contingent result. A lack of cultural capital (language and knowledge of legislation), the hostility of the political environment and uncertain legal status put undocumented migrants in the unavoidable position of allying with native organizations to obtain indispensable forms of support (Nicholls 2013). Therefore, although asymmetry may not be the intention, it exists and produces tensions between migrants and their supporters, with native activists playing a dominant role.

Focussing on an eleven-month cycle of protest that took place in Brescia, the Italian city and province with the third highest migrant population, between 2010 and 2011, my article seeks to examine the role of undocumented migrants and how they reclaim agency. The aim is to problematize the type of relationship between the actors, migrants and solidarity activists, who organized and participated in the protest. This article is not a network analysis of the protest; that would require other analytical tools. Rather, it investigates how different roles and power relations between migrants and their supporters have evolved and whether possible asymmetries have been addressed. It will be argued that relations between migrants and their advocates have transformed during different phases of the protest and that the complex web of relations that developed during the protest’s cycle went beyond the sub-ordination –domination dichotomy. The first section describes the methodological approach used for this study. The second explores migration policies in Italy and the characteristics of the regularization that triggered the cycle of protest. The third, which is made up of different sub-sections, investigates the protest by focussing on its dynamics and on how the relationship between the different actors changed over the nine-monthlong mobilization. The fourth section discusses some possible outcomes of the cycle of protest.

Methodology for this study

This article draws on 15 in-depth interviews with documented and undocumented migrants, and 12 in-depth interviews with migrant rights activists and members of immigrant rights associations who took part in the protest, as well as interviews of key informants such as union members, priests and NGOs who did not take active part in the protest but did witness the progress of events. The detailed interviews addressed three major issues: (1) the evolution and dynamics of the protest; (2) mobilization strategies and (3) forms of participation. In addition, the interviews with key informants addressed some broader issues about the context in which the protest took place, and attitudes towards the protest. The interviews with migrants also addressed issues related to their participation in the protest, such as how they joined it, the effects it had on their daily lives and some questions about their migratory experience, such as how long they had been in Italy, how they arrived, their occupation, their status and its impact on their lives. Both documented and undocumented migrants were chosen according to whether they participated in all three phases of the protest, their role in the protest and the degree to which they were sufficiently fluent in Italian or English. With some I conducted a second round of interviews and further conversations after the protest ended.

My personal biography has facilitated access to the sources. I am from the town where the protest took place and lived there for 40 years before moving to London. For many years I have participated in and supported migrant rights mobilizations. While my former activism may be seen as biasing my perspective and analysis of the protest, it has facilitated communication with my interviewees. Migrant rights activists were willing to put me in contact with migrant activists to whom I was often introduced as “a friend who is conducting a research project into our protest”. This facilitated an open dialogue of mutual trust between myself and my interviewees, and allowed me to gain a deeper insight into the reasons for their protest. All the interviews were carried out between November 2010 and December 2011 and their narratives inform much of the empirical aspect of this article. I use pseudonyms to maintain interviewees’ anonymity and refer to the position they held at the time of the protest. Such exhaustive interviews have been combined with conversations with activists involved in the protest, participant observation at demonstrations, meetings and other events, particularly in the first and second phases of the protest, and documentary sources including printed leaflets, magazines and electronic communications such as websites and e-journals. The use of some local newspapers has been useful in reconstructing the key protest events, assessing the wider political context and examining the dynamics of the protest.

Regularization as an exclusionary tool to control migratory flows

The protest’s trigger was the decree of regularization passed by Berlusconi’s government in August 2009, which selectively regularized the undocumented migrants who were working as so-called “colf e badanti” – carers providing assistance to elderly people – and excluded those who did not belong to these categories. In the 1990s and early 2000s Italian governments frequently used regularizations to control migratory flows and to assuage growing anti-migrant rhetoric and the public demand for control over illegal immigration (Ambrosini 2013; Dines, Montagna, and Ruggiero 2015). Between 1986 and 2012, seven regularizations were passed affecting over 2,100,000 foreigners who were given residence permits. These regularizations were directed at all the migrants and aimed at managing the large strata of irregular – albeit employed – migrants attracted by a large informal economy sector (King 2002).

The rationale of the 2009 “selective” regularization was twofold. First, it addressed the needs of several thousand Italian families, many from middle-class backgrounds based in the North, the electoral constituency of government parties, who were left without caretakers by the “security packet” approved in July 2009 and the introduction of the offence of undocumented migration. Simultaneously, the selective character of the regularization aimed to reassure them that it was not an “open door to all” policy.¹ Secondly, it would have brought some money into the state coffers. The Home Office calculated that the regularization would have meant revenues of €600 million for the Work and Pensions department, to which applications were to be made. The “selective” character of this regularization led thousands of migrants employed in different sectors to try to bypass the law by looking for people who acted as “employers” and were willing to sponsor their applications in exchange for money. A survey carried out in Milan showed that the average tariff illegally demanded from migrants was €3,027 and that most of the employers – either real or fake – disappeared once they received the money (Naga 2011).

In a further complication, in February 2010 the government issued a revision of the law that prevented those who had received a deportation order, either before or after the 2009 decree, from applying for regularization. However, the initial formulation was very ambiguous. It did not clearly state that undocumented migrants who did not leave the country following a deportation order would be excluded from the regularization. As we will see, this ambiguity left some room to appeal to the national and European courts against this revision and the offence of undocumented migration.

On these bases, in Brescia a group supported by the activists of the Associazione Diritti per Tutti and the local self-managed Social Centre Magazzino47 chose to protest in favour of the undiscriminating “regularization of all” those who applied for it, including the victims of “fraud” and those who received deportation orders.

Ethnography of a struggle

The making of an undocumented migrant movement

While the amnesty and the following decree were crucial in triggering frustration and anger among migrants, they are not enough to explain why the protest developed in Brescia while other places remained quiet. Despite being a stronghold of the Northern League – a party with a strong antimigrant attitude – Brescia has a long tradition of migrant mobilizations that had built over time the organizational structures, social trust among migrant communities and cultural capital employed during the course of this protest. The first migrant struggle dates back to autumn 1990 and summer 1991 when hundreds of homeless migrant workers, supported by migrant rights activists, squatted in several buildings in the centre of town and turned them into hostels. Collaboration between foreign migrant communities and migrant rights activists continued in subsequent years, and in May 2000 several thousand migrants mobilized again and occupied the main square, Piazza Loggia, calling f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Migration and race in Europe
• 1 Dominant or subordinate? The relational dynamics in a protest cycle for undocumented migrant rights
• 2 Do non-EU immigrants exhibit different patterns of participation in voluntary associations from those of natives and EU immigrants?
• 3 "I don't mean to sound racist but..."Transforming racism in transnational Europe
• 4 Performing whiteness: racism, skin colour, and identity in Western Switzerland
• 5 The relation between religiosity and Muslims' social integration: a two-wave study of recent immigrants in three European countries
• 6 The "migrant with poor prospects": racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates
• 7 Public attitudes towards support for migrants: the importance of perceived voluntary and involuntary migration
• 8 The experience of discrimination among newly arrived Poles in Ireland and the Netherlands
• 9 "Your name does not tick the box": the intertwining of names, bodies, religion and nationality in the construction of identity within the UK asylum system
• 10 Right choice, wrong motives? Narratives about prestigious educational choices among children of immigrants in Norway
• 11 Guest, trader or explorer: biographical perspectives on the experiences of cross-border mobility in Europe
• Index