One of the group’s main achievements to date, according to Beatrix Nagy, a Romanian and one of the group’s founding members, is ‘getting everyone around the table, talking. Getting lots of different people and communities participating and stimulating ideas.’ The meetings, however, are chaotic affairs and progress has so far been slow, because the central aim and obstacle of their work are inseparable. Trust between communities has been variable, hindering agreement on a number of issues. At present the group’s objectives are more theoretical than practical, resulting in many individuals supporting the more vocal members of their community, in the absence of any concrete policies on which to base a decision. The Moroccan community in particular, the longest established and, following a series of arrests in the region related to terrorism, the most persecuted, is hesitant about participating in an organization likely to rouse the attention of the authorities, which as yet promises no concrete benefits. ‘Our first goal is quite simply to find a room where we can start to discuss these things,’ says Beatrix.
Italy’s late and limited attempt at colonization has resulted in what for a Western European state is an unusually high degree of insularity, and a media almost exclusively concerned with domestic issues. Immigration is a relatively recent phenomenon here, and consequently integration has barely begun. This is especially noticeable in smaller communities, whose social structure is, as always, more rigid than their metropolitan counterparts. The concept of the bella figura (‘good impression’) is central to Italian society, and is, at least partly, responsible for Italy’s aesthetic pre-eminence, its people’s physical attractiveness, and its society’s polarized and sluggish politics. The right is far right and the left is far left; there appears a certain void between regression and revolution – both sides’ beliefs are inexorably galvanised around immovable, outdated images of themselves, rather than ideas, resulting in a political mentality analogous to an affiliation to a football team. No matter how disastrous its results, duty and tradition demand unmitigated support.
Silvio Berlusconi, though carved in a Thatcherite mould, would never dare to suggest that there is no such thing as society. Community ties in Italy are very strong; every mother is a reincarnation of the Virgin but is obeyed with a devotion that the Madonna can only envy. Between Italians no relationship is solely economic; the grocer is also a valued friend. The significance of personal relations is a thoroughly endearing, human quality, yet it is part of the same societal stasis that breeds organised crime and the deployment of war ships to sink boats overloaded with refugees.
The Catholic mistrust of individualism binds communities with such a powerful, censorious adhesive, so that any rebellion takes on the status of gesture, such as one frequent visitor to the Rovigo social forum, who ‘ran away from home’ when he was twenty-four. There are few examples of this kind of act; those within the community experience only its benefits, which as previously stated, are not without their charm, whilst outsiders are excluded from the communities that reap the rewards of their labour. As immigrants gradually and inevitably establish themselves, an inevitability generated not merely by global inequality but by local economic imperatives, these bonds will have to be loosened in order to avoid creating a dangerously divided society and a repetition of the race riots sadly familiar in Britain.
In March Associazione di Immigranti finally managed to hold their long-promised elections, essential under Italian Law for the validation of the association without which it is not eligible to apply for state or EU funds. The complex voting system for the directive committee, designed to ensure the representation of as many immigrant communities as possible, was explained slowly and patiently in several languages but the room was stuffy and tempers flared when latecomers were denied voting slips, threatening to destabilize the meeting once again. Finally, however, the votes were cast, collected and counted, and a committee of nine plus a president were elected as, with a certain auspicious improbability, a folk band struck up a triumphant song in the piazza.