Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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Ilva

Ilva was the name given in 1987 to the reorganized public sector steel-operating company

after the liquidation of Finsider and Nuova Italsider. The original operating arm of

Finsider from 1937 until the formation of Italsider in 1959 was also called Ilva. Ilva is

also the Latin name for Elba, the island facing the Piombino integrated plant in Tuscany.

The island had Italy’s only substantial iron ore deposits upon which the earliest steel

efforts were based. Ilva originally had plants at Piombino and Bagnoli (Naples) but

ironically, in the restructuring that saw the re-emergence of the name Ilva, neither of

these two plants was included. The company was again reorganized as Ilva Laminati

Piani (flat-rolled products) in 1994, in a form ready for privatization (see privatization

and nationalization) but there was considerable controversy surrounding this

restructuring as the European Union’s Commission and the Italian government fought

over the size of the required trade-off of state aids for a substantial reduction in

productive capacity. In 1996 the company was finally sold to the Riva group.

Further reading

Masi, A.C. (1996) ‘Steel’, in H.Kassim and A. Menon (eds), The European Union and National

Industrial Policy, London: Routledge (a comprehensive survey of restructuring and

privatization efforts of the Italian steel industry in the 1990s).

ANTHONY C.MASI

immigrant literature

1990 marks an important moment in the development of immigrant literature in Italy for

in that year the Martelli Law gave a large number of undocumented immigrants legal

status in Italy. Subsequently, many immigrants began to make their stories public, some

even achieving publication by major Italian publishers. The resulting Italophone

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literature—in this context, literature written in Italian by immigrants—tells of the

complex lives of people from many different countries and cultures who migrated to

Europe for economic and political reasons.

The first group of Italophone writers, mainly male, originated largely in the

Francophone areas of Africa and created autobiographical texts written in collaboration

with a linguistic expert. However, this co-authoring was often problematic, being an

uneasy collaboration between Western and non-Western writers. An example is Salah

Methnani and Mario Fortunato’s Immigrato (Immigrant), written in 1990, which tells of

a man from Tunisia as he struggles to find work and eventually turns to drugs.

Published in 1990, Pap Khouma’s Io venditore di elefanti (I, Elephant Seller) became

a bestseller in Italy. Written in collaboration with Italian writer and journalist Oreste

Pivetta, Khouma’s auto-biography supplies a model of immigrants’ life stories in Italian.

Khouma came to Italy from Senegal and began to write his life story while

simultaneously teaching himself Italian with a French—Italian grammar. Thus French,

the colonial language, became for Khouma, as for many other immigrants, the element of

mediation that allowed the acquisition of a new language which, in turn, allowed

Khouma to reject his ex-motherland and choose another country of migration.

This ideological motivation behind the choice of another country and another romance

language is shared by Saidou Moussa Ba, another Senegalese writer living in Italy, who

expressed his resentment against the ex-motherland in a 1995 short story entitled Nel

cuore di un clandestine (In the Heart of an Illegal Immigrant). In La promessa di Hamadi

(Hamadi’s Promise), written in 1991 in collaboration with Alessandro Micheletti, Ba

experimented with the genre of autobiographical narrative. His semi-autobiographical

text recounts the fictional story of two brothers who migrate to Italy, where one of them

is killed. The book begins with a chant that connects Western and non-Western traditions;

in this way, Ba narrates the hybridizing effects that migration has both on the

mother/father culture and on the culture of the country of migration.

Mohsen Melliti’s Pantanella: Canto lungo la strada (Pantanella: A Song along the

Road) narrates community life in the Pantanella, an immigrant squatter community living

in an abandoned pasta factory in Rome. Where Khouma’s Io venditore offers an

optimistic vision of the future that finds redemption in the very act of narration, by

contrast Melliti’s novel ends with the suicide of one of the main characters and the

destruction of the Pantanella, strongly suggesting the impossibility of constructing a

future within Italian culture and society.

With his 1995 novel I bambini delle rose (The Rose Children), Melliti moves from

autobiographical writing to a fictional narrative that focuses on immigration but places at

its centre other immigrants, in this case two children. This is an example of the second

phase of Italophone literature, which contains fewer autobiographical texts and is rarely

written in collaboration with a linguistic expert. These narratives often look at the future

and at the concerns of other generations. Tahar Lamri’s Solo allora, sono certo, potrò

capire (Only Then, I’m Certain, I’ll Understand) tells of a second-generation Algerian

man who returns to Algeria to discover the culture and language that his father had

always tried to repress in the name of assimilation.

Second-generation concerns are also at the centre of Nassera Chohra’s Volevo

diventare bianca (I Wanted to Become White) (1993). In this autobiography, Chohra

narrates her secondgeneration Algerian childhood in Marseilles and her eventual

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migration to Italy. This text, which tells of repeated migrations, is the first autobiography

in Italian by an immigrant woman published in Italy, and epitomizes the fact that

women’s testimonies surface later than men’s. Immigrant women’s texts, always in a

minority with respect to men’s, also discuss gender issues. The Somalian Shirin

Ramzanali Fazel’s Lontano da Mogadiscio (Far From Mogadishu) (1994) is, together

with the Eritrean Ribka Sibhatu’s Aulò, one of the few texts to mention Italy’s colonial

past and to discuss the deliberately repressed memory of colonialism in Italy.

Cristiana de Caldas Brito’s Ana de Jesus (Ana of Jesus) was published in the

anthology Le voci dell’arcobaleno (The Voices of the Rainbow), a collection of the

pieces submitted to the first literary prize for immigrant writers held in 1995. Brito’s Ana

is not an autobiographical short story: a deliberately grammarless monologue, it

introduces the grammar of immigration, the grammar of silence that fills the domestic

space in which Ana, the protagonist, is trapped.

The volumes, Le voci dell’arcobaleno (The Voices of the Rainbow), Mosaici

d’inchiostro (Mosaics of Ink), Memorie in valigia (Memories in a Suitcase), Destini

sospesi di volti in cammino (Uncertain Destinies of Transient Faces) and Parole oltre i

confini (Words Beyond Borders), collect the short stories and poems presented at the

subsequent 1996, 1997 and 1998 literary awards in Rimini. These collections allow a

plurality of voices to become published and therefore public, documenting both the

history of immigration and the history of immigrant literature in Italy. Published by a

small company, Fara editore, these anthologies are just one example of the role that small

publishers are playing in the dissemination of immigrant writings. Another publishing

company, Sensibili alle Foglie (Sensitive to Leaves) has published a number of

controversial texts such as Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque and Maurizio Jannelli’s

Princesa, an account of Fernanda’s experience as a transsexual prostitute in Italy, her

incarceration and her discovery that she has AIDS.

This wealth of first-hand testimonies of the immigrant experience have been echoed

by a number of texts by Italian writers about immigrants in Italy, such as Marco Lodoli’s

I fannulloni (The Layabouts), Giulio Angioni’s Una ignota compagnia (An Unknown

Company), Emilio Tadini’s La tempesta (The Tempest) and Giorgio Saponaro’s Il

ragazzo di Tirana (The Boy from Tirana). The considerable, and growing, number of

texts exploring the migrant condition in contemporary Italy have succeeded in

establishing a dialogue between the self-representation of immigrants and the portrayal of

otherness by established Italian writers. Such a dialogue is profoundly significant, and is

likely to revise fundamentally the very concept of Italian culture at the end of the

millennium.

Further reading

Parati, G. (1997a) ‘Strangers in Paradise: Foreigners and Shadows in Italian Literature’, in B. Allen

and M.Russo (eds), Revisioning Italy: National Identity and Global Culture, Minneapolis, MN:

Minnesota University Press, 169–90.

——(1997b) ‘Looking Through Non-Western Eyes: Immigrant Women’s Autobiographical

Narratives in Italian’, in G.Brinker-Gabler and S.Smith (eds), Writing New Identities: Gender,

Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Europe, Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University

Press, 118–42.

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GRAZIELLA PARATI

immigration

Historically, Italy has been a country of outward migration, but by the mid-1990s foreign

residents in Italy numbered more than one million, representing nearly 2 per cent of the

Italian population (see also emmigration). Such a figure may both overstate and

understate the actual volume of Italian immigration, if ‘immigrant’ is interpreted in the

most narrow sense of persons seeking to establish themselves in a foreign country for

economic reasons or for safety. In fact, nearly 14 per cent of foreigners residing in Italy

come from other countries in the European Union, and more than 8 per cent of those

origination from non-EU countries come from developed economic areas. US citizens,

for example, represent the fourth foreign national group. On the other hand, the official

figures cannot give any account of the overwhelming presence of undocumented people,

who may represent a further 30 to 50 per cent of the legal resident population.

The disproportionate percentage of undocumented foreigners is one of the peculiar

features of Italian immigration. This peculiarity derives from two other specific

characteristics of Italy as a country of immigration: the fact that it was for a long time a

country of emigration, and the fact that the immigration process started quite late. Italy

still has more emigrants abroad than foreigners at home; four and a half million Italians

live abroad, and Italians still represent the third largest foreign national community in

Europe and Japan, and fourth largest in Oceania and America. The net migration flow

was reversed at the beginning of the 1970s, but the perception of Italy as a country of

emigration continued. This misperception explains why, for a long period, immigration

caught Italian policy makers unprepared. They tended to be deeply understanding of

immigrants’ reasons for coming to Italy, and even turned a benevolent blind eye to

clandestine entries and overstaying. The latecomer position of Italy and its role as a

subsidiary destination of flows diverted from economically more appealing European

countries such as France, which shut their borders after the second oil shock, saw the

peak of Italian migratory inflows in the mid-1980s coincide with high rates of

unemployment in the country. Residence permits issued by the Home Office totalled

298,749 in 1980, 423,004 in 1985, 781,138 in 1990 and 991,419 in 1995.

By contrast with Italian emigration to Central and Northern Europe during the 1950s

and 1960s, or with southern Italians moving to the industrial triangle of northern Italian

cities during the ‘economic miracle’, foreign immigration into Italy from the 1970s

onward was not drawn by economic growth and job opportunities in the ‘visible’ labour

market. In fact, since the 1980s Italian unemployment rates have been relatively high (see

unemployment), with a resulting high unemployment rate for foreign workers as well.

Thus it is likely that increasing immigration flows have been pushed more simply by the

increasing economic and demographic gap between developed and developing countries,

namely between the northern Mediterranean countries on the one hand and those of the

south and east Mediterranean on the other. Some of these flows are undoubtedly also due

to administative collapse, political turmoil and civil war in Eastern Europe after the fall

Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 394

of the communist regimes. The largest foreign community in 1996 was the Moroccan

(10.91 per cent), while the second largest was the Albanian (5.84 per cent). Residents

from the former Yugoslavia numbered 67,850 in 1993, and 89,444 in 1994, though

numbers dropped to 51,973 in 1995 and 44,821 in 1996 after the peace process. Since

1990, flows from Eastern Europe have begun to overtake those from North Africa.

There have been few pull factors on Italian immigration. At least until the mid-1990s,

Italian policies treated immigrants largely as foreign workers. The first substantial

immigration law (December 1986) gave priority to Italians and EU citizens in placement

while introducing the principle of equal pay and equal access to social rights for national

and foreign workers. The second important law, the so-called ‘Martelli Law’ (February

1990), named after the deputy prime minister and minister responsible for immigration

policy at the time, confirmed the mild and ‘labour’-oriented attitude of the Italian

government. To overcome the positive discrimination in favour of national labour and to

respond to a lack of specific types of labour, in 1993 a special provision made it legal to

hire housekeepers individually from abroad. Domestic labour is one of the main

components of foreign employment (40 per cent of undocumented alients legalized by the

1996 provision were domestic workers), made up largely of Filipinos and, increasingly,

Peruvians. Nevertheless, the overall national composition of Italian immigration is

extremely fragmented, and many communities only comprise around 1–2 per cent of the

total. According to a typical ‘globalized’ syndrome, recent flows tend to both reinforce

regional character (with the top two sources of immigration being Mediterranean

countries) and to widen the scope of flows (Filipinos are now the third largest immigrant

community).

The prohibition against hiring foreign labour when national or EU labour is available

(with the exception of domestic workers mentioned above) was reaffirmed by law in

1998 but is likely to have little effect given the extent of the ‘submerged’ economy. A

survey by the Ministry of Labour in 1995 of a large sample of Italian firms showed the

presence of 2.2 per cent of foreign workers, 37 per cent of whom were hired illegally.

Besides a consistent demand for domestic servants (Italy is the Western country that

makes the greatest use of this kind of labour) and some gap in the availability of labour in

areas like agriculture, the building industry and health services, it is the huge submerged

economy, especially in southern Italy, that functions as the most relevant pull factor in an

immigration process which, all things considered, is mainly driven by push factors.

The three most important immigration laws (1986, 1990 and 1995) also included

measures for the legalization of undocumented foreigners. 118,349 aliens were made

legal after the 1986 law, 234,841 after 1990. The 1995 decree resulted in 248,501

requests for legalization. However, the third legislation provision was inspired by a new

and more severe political attitude towards illegal entry and overstaying.

In fact, Italian policies of immigration had begun to change as early as 1993. This

change was mainly due to the necessity of complying with the requirements of stricter

border controls and more active repression of international crime imposed by the

European partners for Italy’s participation in the free circulation space defined by the

Schengen Treaty of 1985. Italy signed the Schengen Treaty in November 1990 and

ratified it in September 1993, but was only allowed to join the free circulation area in

October 1997. In addition to the pressure exerted by the European partners, Italian

governments also faced a growing intolerance on the part of Italian public opinion

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towards petty crime and illegal stays, which in the minds of many Italians were closely

associated with each other. According to surveys conducted in the late 1990s, Italians

scored highest among European populations in believing that immigrants in their own

country were ‘too many’ (in spite of Italy having one of the lowest ratios of immigrants

to total population of any European country), and they were in the middle rank among

European countries in terms of racist attitudes.

These converging pressures from the European partners and domestic public opinion

for border control and repression were able to influence Italian policies, although these

were never guided merely by repressive goals nor simply followed the severe pattern

prevailing abroad. The first bill of the ‘new wave’ was prepared by the Contri

Committee, named for the then Minister of Social Affairs, Fernanda Contri. Appointed in

October 1993, the committee presented a complete immigration reform bill by the end of

February 1994. Because of the fall of the Ciampi government in March 1994 the bill was

not passed, but eventually the ‘technical’ government led by Dini (January 1995–April

1996) introduced part of the Contri proposals by decree. Livia Turco, Minister for Social

Affairs in the Prodi Centre—Left government (April 1996—October 1998), appointed

more or less the same experts that had served on the Contri Committee and these

presented a new bill in February 1997, which became law in 1998. The strategy of all

these bills consisted of two parallel strands: implementing repression of illegal and

criminal behaviour on one hand, and improving immigrant rights on the other hand.

Expulsion of illegal immigrants was facilitated by introducing the possibility of confining

them in ad hoc buildings. By the same token, illegal immigrants who cannot be expelled

will not be deprived of all rights. In particular, public health facilities (emergencies,

maternity, prevention and basic care) as well as education are also made available by law

to undocumented immigrants.

Italian immigration policy also diverges from the prevailing European trend with

respect to political rights. The 1998 law originally made provision for voting rights in

local elections to be extended to immigrants holding a regular permit for five years.

Although this article was subsequently expunged because it appeared likely to create

constitutional problems, articles 2 and 7 of the 1998 law still refer to political

participation and the local vote ‘in accordance with our legal system’, thus devolving the

provision to a constitutional reform. Also in contrast with official attitudes in other

European countries, family reunification is facilitated and reunited relatives are allowed

to work. The measure is not only aimed at providing immigrants with basic living

conditions and the possibility of integration, but also at the elimination of those legal

constraints and prohibitions that can force immigrants to break the law. To prevent

overstaying and to make employment in the submerged economy less convenient, the

1998 law also allows a six-month legal residence in Italy to foreigners who can rely on a

sponsor, a documented immigrant or an Italian citizen, who will support them while they

are searching for employment. According to Italian policy makers, detaching the

residence permit from employment will also make the immigrant labour market more

flexible and able to respond to unforecast needs.

However, the most recent law regarding citizenship (February 1992) does not follow

the universalistic pattern of other laws. It is more generous towards foreigners of Italian

origin and EU citizens, but less generous than before towards other categories of

foreigners. Previously, the period of residence required was five years for all, but the

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1992 law raised it to ten years for non-EU citizens and reduced it four years for EU

citizens and three years for people of Italian origin. In this respect, Italy is now in step

with other European countries.

Thus by the late 1990s, Italian immigration policies are converging with European and

other traditional countries of immigration like the USA and Australia on the one hand

(repression of criminal and illegal behaviour, more strict border control) but also

diverging to the extent that Italy is actually increasing immigrants’ rights. The more

liberal attitude towards immigrant rights has so far been made possible by several

specific factors, including the near-uninterrupted stay in government of Centre—Left

coalitions and the responsible attitude of the main right-wing party, the Alleanza

Nazionale (National Alliance). However, both these factors are susceptible to change,

and accordingly Italian immigration policy may become less liberal in the future.

Further reading

Birindelli, A.M. and Bonifazi, C. (1993) ‘Italy’, in L.A. Kosinski (ed.), Impact of Migration in the

Receiving Countries, Geneva: CICRED.

Heckmann, F. and Bosswick, W. (eds) (1994) ‘Immigration Policies in Italy’, in Migration

Policies: A Comparative Perspective, Stuttgart: Enke.

Perlumtter, T. (1996) ‘Immigrant Politics Italian Style: The Paradoxical Behaviour of Mainstream

and Populist Parties’, South European Society and Politics 1 (2).

Veuglers, J.W.P. (1994) ‘Recent Immigration Politics in Italy: A Short Story’, West European

Politics 17 (2):33–49.

Zincone, G. (1983) ‘Immigrants in Italy: The Three Dimensions of Political Rights’, New

Community 20 (1):131–45.

GIOVANNA ZINCONE

L’lndice dei libri del mese

Disillusioned with the widespread Italian practice of parochial and partisan book

reviewing, a group of intellectuals turned to the New York Review of Books as their

model, underlining the shift in cultural gravity that had taken place as English replaced

French as the principal foreign language of the Italian intelligentsia. The founding editor

of L’lndice dei libri del mese (Index of Books of the Month), Gian Giacomo Migone, was

himself an Americanist, and the declared wider mission of L’lndice was to create a

critical culture based on pluralism and accountability. At the outset it presented itself as

an astringent voice, with elegant layout and reviews of fiction and non-fiction, arts and

sciences that cut across genres normally kept segregated. However, in spite of firmly

establishing itself as an indispensable and authoritative source of information about

publishing in Italy, its circulation never rose above 15,000 and its readership has

remained limited mainly to the academic community.

Further reading

Ambasz, E. (ed.) (1972) Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Branzi, A. (1984) The Hot House: Italian New Wave Design, London: Thames & Hudson.

Fossati, P. (1972) Il Design in Italia 1945–72 (Design in Italy), Turin: Einaudi.

Gregotti, V. (1982) Il Disegno industriale italiano: Italia 1880–1980 (Italian Industrial Design,

1880–1980), Milna: Electa.

Sparke, P. (1988) Italian Design: 1870 to the Present, London: Thames & Hudson.

PENNY SPARKE

industry

Italy underwent a late and uneven industrial development, and its relative backwardness

in the process led the state to play a much more direct and active role than was the case

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among most other countries in Western Europe. One of the most decisive factors in

establishing its pattern of industrial development in the period after the Second World

War was the role played by one of fascism’s ‘leftovers’, namely, the State Participation

System. Banks, of course, financed industrial growth in the boom after the First World

War (see banking and credit system). In an early example of a ‘bubble economy’, banks

took equity in productive enterprises as collateral for loans, but when the depression

forced firms into bankruptcy, Italian banks were left holding these companies’ paper.

When the banks themselves were threatened with failure, the Italian state, under

Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship, nationalized several important banks (in the name of

national interest), and therefore found itself as the ‘owner’ of a considerable industrial

base. These holdings were organized and reorganized under IRI (the Institute for

Industrial Reconstruction) and its various financial holding companies. Originally viewed

as temporary institutions, these soon became permanent. IRI usually organized its

financial holding companies by type of enterprise. After 1945, these enterprises played a

vital, and in some cases decisive, role in Italy’s reconstruction and its emergence as a

worldclass industrial economy.

The process of late industrialization in Italy had two other important contributors to its

industrial patrimony. On the one hand, a series of entrepreneurs, mostly from the

northwestern regions, founded large firms in a broad spectrum of sectors that to this day

continue to be dominated by family capital. The Fiat motor company of the Agnelli

family, Pirelli rubber and tyres, Olivetti office machinery and electronics are the best

known. The appearance of these firms guaranteed that Italy’s growing internal market

would be provided with modern goods. On the other hand, the north-eastern and central

regions of Italy came to be dominated by a patchwork of small to medium-sized

enterprises that developed around textiles, clothing, and footwear as well as in precision

machining operations and mini-mills in the steel sector. An important characteristic of the

small to medium-sized firms was that their growth depended on exports in highly

competitive world markets. In the reconstruction period following the Second World

War, the three mainstays of Italian industrialization came together. The state participation

sector provided valuable input into both of the other ‘pillars’ of Italian industry, thus

laying the groundwork for the country’s ‘economic miracle’ and its continued growth to

become, by the end of the 1980s, the world’s fifth largest economy.

From its very beginnings, however, industrialization was not evenly distributed across

Italy’s regions (King, 1986). Early recognition of the disadvantages to the South that

either resulted from, or were exacerbated by, the unification process led to national

inquiries and state attempts to address the problem. It was not until the early 1950s,

however, that systematic efforts were undertaken to close the gap in productivity and

living standards between the two Italics. The most significant programmes, under the

auspices of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Southern Development Fund) followed a

tripartite logic. First, they called for the establishment of infrastructures that would lay

the groundwork for industrial development. Next, incentives and subsidies designed to

encourage plant and factory location in the South were implemented. Finally, state

participation firms were required to locate specific percentages of new and total

investments in the depressed regions. One of the consequences of these initiatives was

that the South found itself with a considerable proportion of Italy’s heavy and/or capital-

intensive industries (such as steel and petrochemicals). Unfortunately, the South also had

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