Anti-racist research and practice in Italy

The topic of my paper is the relation between anti-racism research and practice in Italy, from the point of view of the kind of knowledge this relation has produced and is producing on the emerging of new forms of racism in Italy – and in Europe. The European framework – the framework of a new European citizenship in the making – is indeed from my point of view crucial in order to understand the new configurations of racism that are emerging in single European countries. An electoral poster of the post-fascist party Alleanza nazionale during the 2006 electoral term said: “we were few to call Italy our motherland. Now we are the majority”. In a way, this electoral slogan contains – as every effective ideological statement – a grain of truth. We are indeed facing a new kind of nationalism in Italy, particularly aggressive in front of the social consequences of the global economic crisis in the country, and this is not something limited to the political right. But it is precisely the articulation of this new nationalism with the post-national assemblage that is in the making within the framework of the European integration that needs to be addressed and understood. On the one hand the new nationalism is a symptom of the limits (of the pathologies) of this very process of integration; on the other hand the articulation of nationalism and post-national assemblages of power points to a context within which a new, post-national and “post-modern”, form of racism is emerging.