Sonia Castro, Michele Colucci (a cura di), Dossier: L’immigrazione italiana in Svizzeradopo la seconda guerra mondiale / Italian immigration in Switzerland after World War II (Introduzione / Introduction, pp. 771-782), pp. 771-896

It seems particularly appropriate today to dedicate a monographic issue to Italian emigration in Switzerland after World War II. On June 7, 2010 has fallen the 40th anniversary of the Schwarzenbach initiative, that goes by the name of its promoter, the first and most known among the anti-foreigner popular referendums presented during the1960s and 1970s in Switzerland, lately revived by the racist campaign against the Italian “rats”, the Italian cross-border workers, by the political party Lega dei Ticinesi, which accuses the workers from Como, Varese and Verbania of “stealing jobs from Swiss citizens”. After all, as Schwarzenbach used to say: «They are dead arms that weigh on our shoulders …We must get rid of this burden…We must, first of all, turn down from our communities those immigrants whom we have called to do the lowest jobs and in a few years (…) have improved their social status. They climb to the more comfortable positions, they study and strive to do their best: they even put a strain on the quietness of the average Swiss worker who remains nailed to the stool with in front, perhaps sitting on a armchair, the Italian ex-destitute».

Nicola Lavigna, L’emigrazione italiana in Svizzera dal 1948 al 1970 attraverso le fonti statistiche / Italian emigration in Switzerland from 1948 to 1970 through the statistical sources, pp. 783-800

The statistical sources available to evaluate the weight of Italian emigration after Second World War are fragmentary and difficult to compare, especially until the end of the 1950s, when the authorities of both nations understood the importance that the phenomenon of migration had taken on by then. Consequently they started to take a census of its flows. After having screened the available sources for the period from 1948 to 1970 and having provided their characteristics, the article offers a quantitative analysis of the evolution of the Italian presence in Switzerland with a particular attention to the regional origin of the migrants, the cantons of destination and the workers’ professions.

Martin Kuder, Emigrazione ed economia: flussi di uomini e rimesse tra Italia e Svizzera dal 1945 al 1970 / Emigration and economy: flows of people and remittances between Italy and Switzerland from 1945 to 1970, pp. 801-811

From 1946 to 1970 Switzerland was the main destination of the Italian emigration flow. In fact, about one third of the population that migrated from Italy would go to Switzerland during that period. The Swiss Confederation was most probably also the main country where the remittances came from, although the Italian statistics highly underestimate their value. The reason of this underestimation lies in the illegal Italian capital flight towards Switzerland, a phenomenon that became huge in the 1960s. This flight was combined with the repatriation of the savings of Italian workers outside the official channels. According to our estimates, in the years 1963-1970 the Italian remittances from the Swiss Confederation were 50% higher than the official Italian data. Therefore the remittances have to be considered an issue of great importance in the broader framework of Italian emigration in Switzerland after World War II.

Anna De Bernardi, Sul confine del lavoro. I frontalieri italiani in Ticino nel secondo dopoguerra / On the border of work. The cross-border workers in Ticino after World War II, pp. 812-827

The flow of cross-border workers between Lombardia and Canton Ticino has assumed extraordinary proportions after the Second World War, stimulated by the post-war economic growth, the occupational shortage in the Italian border areas, and the Swiss immigration policies. The Italian border residents who emigrated daily to the nearby Canton Ticino have represented for a long time an anomalous category, without a well defined status, considered by many a privileged category because of the undoubted wage advantage they enjoyed, but behind which was hidden a condition of extreme precariousness and the lack of most of the rights and protections that were already solidly recognized to other workers in Italy and Switzerland.

Francesco Scomazzon, La Svizzera, gli emigrati italiani e l’associazionismo laico: storia della Federazione delle Colonie Libere Italiane (1943-1973) / Switzerland and Italian emigrant’s non-denominational associations: history of the Federazione delle Colonie Libere Italiane (1943-1973), pp. 828-845

The research aims to analyze development and actions of “Federazione delle Colonie Libere Italiane in Svizzera” since its inception in November 1943 to the economic crisis of the Seventies. In particular it seeks to identify those actions that made “Federazione delle Colonie Libere” one of the most important Italian immigrant associations in Switzerland after World War II. The “Colonie Libere”, born between the 1930s and 1940s as a barrier to the interference of Fascism among the old emigrants’ communities, soon became an instrument of aggregation and social protection for the new migrants who came to Switzerland in search of employment. Wage demands, retirement concessions and other actions promoted by the “Federazione”, were welded together with the objectives of new associations, with which they signed agreements of mutual cooperation to protect an ever growing mass of immigrant workers.

Fabrizio Panzera, Le prime presenze delle ACLI nel Canton Ticino (1962-1965) / The first appearances of the ACLI in the Canton Ticino (1962-1965), pp. 846-852

The ACLI (Associazioni cristiane dei lavoratori italiani) founded in the summer of 1944 in Rome, immediately after the Second World War in a Europe journeying toward renewal, established ties with the international Confederation of Christian labor unions. The commitment to the problems of Italian emigrants compelled them to extend, through charitable institutions, secretariats and local correspondents, their action there where the needs of workers were greater. Then, in 1961 were officially born the ACLI in Switzerland and the first circles were open. In 1962 is constituted the first organizational secretariat, and by the following year the ENAIP (the agency for professional formation) starts operating, while the Patronato sets up, with the collaboration of local agencies and institutes, office in the whole Confederation.

Mattia Pelli, Condizione migrante, lotte e sindacati nella Svizzera degli anni 1970. Il caso Monteforno attraverso le fonti orali / The migrant condition, struggles and labor unions in 1970s Switzwerland. The case of Monteforno through the oral sources, pp. 853-871

In 1970 erupted in the Monteforno, a steel plant located in the Canton Ticino, the first violent strike that opened a two-year period of very tough struggles in the factory to the point that it became a proper “university of unionism on the move”. Violent strikes broke out in the whole country during the 1970s and often the protagonists of these unusual struggle in the Swiss context were the immigrant workers, and especially the Italian workers, who in 1970 had reached the record number of 500,000 people. Through the study of the Monteforno event, whose body of workers was made mostly of immigrants, thanks to the oral sources and on the base of the indications emerged in the studies dedicated to that hot Italian fall, we deal in this article with the hypothesis of a relation between the factory struggles in the 1970s and the immigrant status of these workers. We examine, particularly, the relation between discrimination (those were the years of the Schwarzenbach initiative) and the political and labor union commitment of the immigrants.

Toni Ricciardi, I figli degli stagionali: bambini clandestini / The children of seasonal workers: clandestine children, pp. 872-886

After the Second World War Switzerland became a main destination for Italian immigrants: just in 1970, 500.000 people arrived in this country from Italy. Turnover was high as well as the number of seasonal workers, the so-called guestworkers (Gastarbeiter). Treated just like “arms” and numbers by Swiss statistics guestworkers were needed by Swiss economy, but were living in deplorable conditions. Guestworkers wanted to be joined by their relatives, but family reunification was limited and restricted by the law. Despite these restrictions, wives and children arrived anyway. Illegal children, in particular, had no rights, and lived in a country where there was no room for them: they could not leave their homes, which were hovels intended for the Italian immigrants, and could not go to school.

Nicoletta Solcà, Da Per i lavoratori italiani in Svizzera a Un’ora per voi. La radio e la televisione svizzera al servizio dell’immigrazione italiana / From Per i lavoratori italiani in Svizzera to Un’ora per voi. The Swiss radio and TV at the service of Italian immigration, pp. 887-896

The paper proposes a first overview of two specific programs that the Swiss Radio and Television RSI dedicated to the Italian immigrants in Switzerland, with a short bibliographical information and references to the archives of the institution.

Domenico Verdoscia, Alcuni simboli dell’islam: da significanti polisemici a concetti monolitici. Qualche spunto per decostruire l’islamofobia / Some symbols of Islam: from polysemous terms to monolithic concepts. Ideas to deconstruct islamophobia, pp. 897-912

The symbolic basis of hostility towards Islam, which has been historically sedimented and stratified, nowadays is reactivated thanks especially to the mediatic surfacing of the so-called radical Islamism that has monopolized the public rhetoric in reference to the Muslim world, starting from the attacks of September 11, 2001. This kind of topics generally tend to occult the complexity and the multiplicity of lifestyles and historical and social dynamics that concern numerous countries with Muslim majority. The common sense then universalizes and arbitrarily absorbs some local expressions and practices. It is rarely possible to circumscribe and criticize them while, vice versa, they are associated to the migrants, discriminating them a priori. Some symbols of Islam like the “veil” (hijâb), the “holy war” (jihad), the “law of Islam” (shari’a) and the “school” (madrasa) are part of this kind of identity manipulations. These polysemous terms undergo a semantic sliding that not only reduces their historical and social complexity and variability, but also ends up confirming the idea of the migrants as backward and fanatical people. In criticizing this trend contributions can be made in order to attenuate the spreading islamophobia.

Piero Dragan, Donauschwaben, Svevi del Danubio, dalla colonizzazione alla diaspora / Donauschwaben, Danube Swabian people: from colonization to diaspora, pp. 913-931

Danube Swabian people (Donauschwaben) is a German-speaking ethnic group that can be included in the category of the landless or exiled peoples. This people is the result of an encouraged migration and eventually of a forced migration. The first migration, ordered by the Austrian government, moved 150-200.000 German-speaking settlers during the 18th century. Its purpose was the defence from the Turkish army at the new southern border of the Habsburg Empire in the depopulated Danubian regions. The second migration wave interested 1,2 million Swabians and it can be considered part of the large relocation process of the defeated populations during and after the last part of the Second World War. The first migration and the following principal traumatic processes changed the former German settlers into the Danube Swabian people, a collective term created in 1922 because the greatest part of first-comers were of Swabian origin. The second migration and the consequent definitive shock (exile, expropriations, genocide) radicalized the self-perception of this landless people urging it to build a new ethnic identity, partly different from the original German one. Therefore, on one side there were the same German mother-tongue, a similar national feeling, and sometimes the same region of origin as their foreparents; on the other a different homeland (the six Danube Swabian regions), a different flag (in 1950), a peculiar kind of history, dialect and traditions, and the genocide experience. All this brought at first the need to collect elements of identity and then to create refugee associations, ethnologic research institutes, and migration museums with all the related activities.

Michele Strazza, Una rivista per gli emigrati negli anni Venti: «La Basilicata nel Mondo» / A magazine for emigrants in the 1920s: La Basilicata nel Mondo, pp. 932-944

Between 1924 and 1927 the magazine Basilicata nel mondo (Basilicata in the world) was printed in Naples. It wanted to build a bridge between the emigrants from Basilicata and their mother country. Basilicata was in fact among the Italian regions that played an important part in American emigration. The Fascist regime was attracted by this publishing venture and used it for its propaganda campaign in the USA.

Barbara Petrini, Lo spazio, luogo antropologico e decodificatore della complessità culturale. I luoghi abitati dalla Comunità nigeriana di Roma / Space: anthropological locus and decoder of cultural complexity. The dwelling places of the Nigerian community in Rome, pp. 945-966

Space, intended as an anthropological locus can become a decoder of cultural complexity. It represents a vision, a certain way of looking that, in this case, has been adopted to understand those parts of the social fabric that dwell the places of the city of Rome re-inventing and re-contextualizing them culturally. Places where the social actors are the Nigerians residing in Rome. This essay wants to examine the bases on which the cultural diversity of the Nigerians is generated; the realities that generate these places in the territory of Rome and their meaning for the Nigerian immigrants; the change of perception in our way of living and dwelling in the places generated by our culture that inevitably coexist with those of the Nigerians. All this starting from a perspective that has oriented the research on the Nigerian community in Rome: that of the networks.

Franco Ramella, Per una lettura critica di alcuni lavori recenti sulle migrazioni straniere in Italia / Toward a critical reading of some recent works on immigrations in Italy, pp. 967-973

Giovanni Pizzorusso, Blandina e le sue sorelle. Emigrazione, americanizzazione, modernizzazione: note sul ruolo delle religiose italiane in America / Blandina and her sisters. Emigration, Americanization and modernization: notes on the role of Italian religious sisters in America, pp. 974-990

Matteo Sanfilippo, Profughi europei del secondo dopoguerra (e di oggi) / European exiles after the Second World War (and today), pp. 991-1000