Реферат: Film Flow And Globalisation Essay Research Paper

First, differences are denied by concealing ?the substantive difference it makes when one is forced to cross borders, of when one cannot return home? (Ahmed 2000: 81). Italian-British culture, to be sure, is a migrant culture where the Italian homeland remains a ?spiritual possibility? (Salvatore in Caccia 1985: 158). Historically specific conditions of the diasporisation of Italians support a kind of imagining of Italy not as a mythical homeland, nor as a land of expulsion. It manifests itself in Italian ?migr? culture not in terms of rupture, uprooting, or discontinuity, but rather, as continuity, as a place where one can return. So even if the return to Italy is difficult, and the place of origin no longer feels like home, the deterritorialisation of ?home? surfaces from the possibility of moving between ?homes?. Italians can, and many do, move between Italy and the UK. Their refusal of fixing a home within the glorified migrant identity is formulated from a position of access to multiple spaces that could be called home; to put it bluntly, it’s easy to refuse ?home? when you’ve already got one (or more). In this respect, the ontologisation of migration as transcendence (of borders, of differences, and so on) denies the multiplicity of experiences of ?homing desires? (Brah 1996).

Second, a tension emerges between wanting to be visible and the suspicion for the surveillance that visibility allows. While the project of recovering the Italian presence in Britain conceals important differences by assuming the universal experience of migration-as-estrangement, it raises important anxieties about what it means to be a ?stranger? for those who are in that position. Being at home in migranthood is not a project shared by all members of the Italian ?community?. When I discussed the Scalabrinian identity politics with members of the Italian Women’s Club (Club Donne Italiane; CDI), who meet at the Centro Scalabrini, many resisted the labels ?immigrant? or ??migr?. ?I don’t consider myself an immigrant. I live here, I’m English.? ?I’m just an Italian who lives in London, I feel at home here and in Italy. I’m not an immigrant, and I’m not an emigrant?. ?But we are immigrants, whether we like or not!? ?But why do they [the Scalabrinians] spend so much time fighting for our voting rights in Italy anyway? I’d like them to fight for our rights here, in Britain. I’ve been here 20 years and I still can’t vote.? At this point they all agreed.

As I listened and engaged with the women, it seemed to me that in the midst of the animation surfaced an anxiety to belong. The energetic rebuttal of ?emigration? as a defining trait of collective identity goes hand-in-hand with a fear of being marginalised. In a country and continent where ?immigrant? means black, minority, and foreigner, these women refused to be pushed to the margins of belonging in Britain. As Europeans who move freely between two countries, who cross borders without hassle (in theory), who are organically integrated in the British social and economic fabric, these women’s experience of migration is not that which is associated with ?immigrants? or ?emigrants?. At once ?foreigners? ? culturally and politically (for example, many have no voting rights in the UK) ? and no-longer-immigrants, they are searching for a vocabulary that would adequately define their modes of living, their senses of identity, and, more importantly, that would not emphasise their marginality in British society.

The concern of some of these women is to go unnoticed and to be included within the white British majority. As Antonia (not her real name) once told me: ?We’re not a minority. We’re well integrated, we speak English, our children studied here, we’ve got good jobs. We’re not a minority.? Being defined as ?minority? is equivalent to being marked as cultural and economic ?outsider?. Whereas to be an unmarked ?invisible? white Italian, a non-?ethnic?, is to assume a mobile identity that can move without notice or effect. To be ?minority?, to be ?ethnic?, is to be hindered in that movement, to become visible and potentially open to surveillance (Gray). This is indeed a tension inherent in the Italian identity project: recovering the Italian presence in Britain and creating a ?new identity? inevitably allows for the construction of terrains of belonging through which the social dynamics of inclusion/exclusion are delineated. Who is included and who is not? What does it mean to be Italian, or of Italian cultural background? Likewise, what does it mean to be a (im)migran