‘That neighbourhood is an ethnic bomb!’ The emergence of an urban governance apparatus in Western Europe

Towards an ‘urban governance apparatus’

After the 1970s global change from social to market-led entrepreneurial forms (Harvey, 1979), and past the 1980s and early 1990s downward rescaling of state powers (Brenner, 2004; Jessop, 2002), urban governance over the last 20 years seems to have gained conventional agreement. A mainstream conceptualization of governance in Europe combines three main elements, namely (1) coalitions of local authorities and private actors, such as private experts and other social groups, as the main drivers of governance; (2) the temporary and ad hoc character of their actions; and (3) the collective and relatively non-hierarchical setting of goals (Bagnasco and Le Galès, 2001: 26; Giersig, 2008; Imrie and Rako, 1999; Le Galès, 2002). These three elements are at the core of local regulatory mechanisms that, although soft, fragmented and not always tightly coordinated, have social cohesion and development as two of their main goals. Further discussions have given analytical importance to situating processes of urban governance within the local context acknowledging that ‘governance is of course an ideal type, of which only variations exist in reality’ (Vranken, 2008: 34). Some of the most significant factors influencing the working of urban governance are local socio-political regimes (Seixas and Albet i Mas, 2010); national political and fiscal regimes (Leach, 1996); and previous and current urban policies (Imrie and Raco, 1999).

However, there are two major lines of criticism of urban governance. The first, which could be named ‘contextual’, suggests that urban governance cannot properly account for regulatory mechanisms in certain contexts, for instance in Southern Italy with regards to the participation of local social groups (Governa, 2010: 674–675) and in the UK concerning the lack of a strong hierarchical organization (Davies, 2002). The second, which could be called ‘epistemic’, indicates a tendency in recent studies of urban governance towards understanding economic success as synonymous with overall successful governance. This is described as a ‘New Conventional Wisdom’ (Buck et al., 2005), and, since it is not easy to find empirical basis for its claims, it is advised that ‘in a local scale it would be more appropriate to revert to consider the (very real) social and personal impacts of inequality, disconnection and disorder rather than being diverted by New Conventional Wisdom arguments into focusing on hypothetical economic effects’ (Buck et al., 2005: 281).

Both advocates and critiques of urban governance accept that urban governance is a multifarious dynamic happening in the formal realm of urban politics and society. By contrast this article shows that it is necessary to look at the specific forces and dynamics that produce social order beyond the official and public realm of urban life. Indeed, Pescara authorities have never constructed an official discourse on Rancitelli Roma, let alone on Roma altogether. In order to account for this tacit type of governance, one of the possible theoretical conceptualizations of urban governance is Osbourne and Rose’s (1999) designation of a process of ‘reduction in the scope of direct management of human affairs by state-organized programmed and technologies of relation, and an increase in the extent to which the government of diverse domains is enacted by the decisions and choices of relatively autonomous entities […]’ (Osbourne and Rose, 1999: 751; emphasis added). As I will discuss in this article, the ‘domain’ upon which governance in Rancitelli is enacted is social deviance, and the ‘entities’ enacting it are not only social actors and institutions, but also deep-rooted and ‘relatively autonomous’ processes of stigmatization and control, which work through Foucauldian ‘technologies’ for the sake of identification and control.

Stigmatization is the essential background against which the urban governance of Rancitelli works, and it has two main declinations. First, the stigmatization of Pescarian Roma that, following Goffman (1963), can be called ‘tribal stigma of race, nation and religion’ (Goffman, 1963: 4), namely ‘expectations regarding individual behavior and evaluations of a person’s moral worth are extrapolated from impressions of the larger group to which the individual belongs’ (Adams, 2003: 3); this is what I will in particular discuss in the section urban Roma stigma. Second is the stigmatization of Rancitelli that, following Wacquant (2007), can be called ‘territorial stigma’. Territorial stigma is close to Goffman’s ‘tribal stigma’ insofar as it is usually hereditary, but, unlike the Goffmanian category, ‘it can be quite easily dissimulated […] through geographic mobility’ (Wacquant, 2007: 215). In the case of Rancitelli residents, however, geographic mobility is almost absent, and therefore, the two sides of stigmatization happen almost simultaneously. This is what I will discuss in the next section and in the sections Urban II: public policy in the neighbourhood, Local politicians’ representations and Local media discourse: a striking symbiosis.

In line with Osbourne and Rose’s (1999) conceptualization of urban governance, I will argue that, due to the lack of an official discourse and policy explicitly addressing Roma, the classic notion of governance cannot fully grasp the subtleties continually imposing social order in Rancitelli. As an alternative, I put forward the concept of ‘urban governance apparatus’ defining it, with Paul Rabinow, as a heterogeneous ‘device targeting the members of a population that is constituted by a disparate set of ‘technologies’, which work by ‘first specifying (and to that extent creating) those targets [i.e. the members of that population] and then controlling (distributing and regulating) them’ (Rabinow, 2003: 50–51; emphasis added). It is heterogeneous inasmuch as it consists of ‘discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions - in short, the said as much as the unsaid’ (Foucault, 1980: 194; emphasis added). Accordingly, the ‘technologies’ of the ‘urban governance apparatus’ in Rancitelli are six, namely (1) one European Union (EU)-funded public policy in Rancitelli; (2) urban Roma stigma in Pescara at large; and (3) surreptitious gazing in Rancitelli; the three social phenomena are (a) police enforcement in the neighbourhood; (b) local politicians’ representations of Rancitelli and of Roma; and (c) local media discourse on Rancitelli and on Roma.

As I will demonstrate in the article, all six ‘technologies’ serve the apparatus’ twofold function of ‘specifying (and to that extent creating) those targets [i.e. Roma] and then controlling (distributing and regulating) them’. However, since Roma in Pescara do not have an institutional voice, primarily because they lack the minority status, the process of specifying who is and who is not Roma occurs more explicitly in the context of the only public policy – and in particular, in one policy text, of local authorities’ representations of Roma and Rancitelli – in order to identify whether institutional power could bring any change to the current marginalization of Roma, and of local media discourse – defining who Rancitelli Roma are. Therefore, while police enforcement in the neighbourhood (a) and surreptitious gazing (3) have a more ‘controlling’ function, the EU-funded public policy (1); local politicians’ representations (b); local media discourse (c); and urban Roma stigma (2) have a more ‘specifying’ function.

Neoliberal measures and the making of territorial stigma

The origins of the ‘urban governance apparatus’ in Rancitelli are to be found in the last 35 years of neoliberal measures, including social and administrative services withdrawal alongside police enforcement, leading to the formation of a twofold stigma, that is, the ‘decay stigma’ and the ‘Roma stigma’. From 1976 to 1980, district councils (consigli di quartiere) functioned as the main political assemblies at the neighbourhood level. ⁴ Members were selected by municipal elites, and served as the main interface between Rancitelli inhabitants and the local council for problems ranging from infrastructural to social issues. However, in the mid-1980s councils were dismantled due to the excessive expense for the local council. This abrupt end of civic participation created the conditions under which ‘territorial stigma’ became rooted in everyday life. A 1988 journalistic inquiry described how the neighbourhood was perceived:

‘Risk neighbourhood’ (quartiere a rischio). This is the way Pescarians call the areas where Gypsies found abode [i.e. primarily Rancitelli]. The more Roma who arrived, the higher the tensions became in the neighbourhood. In a couple of streets, which were anyway already disreputable, the presence of Gypsies gave rise to some clash. (Villoresi, 1988)

In 1992 this twofold stigma intensified, as 40 Romani families fleeing Yugoslavia’s fragmentation found precarious and improvised shelter in Rancitelli. In 1995 the mayor ordered their eviction (Molinari and Sabatini, 1996), and the local council shut down its services in Rancitelli, including a primary school, the National Pension System front office (INPS), the municipal Registry Office and the Chamber of Commerce (Pescara Vicina, 2005: 21). Soon after, a building hosting a secondary school and a day nursery was converted into a Carabinieri barrack. ⁵

‘Decay’ progressively became the idiom for describing Rancitelli. From 1998 the municipal council shut down other welfare offices in the neighbourhood, moving them to other districts. The community policeman (poliziotto di quartiere), a traditionally friendly security figure close to the local community, was removed along with other public front offices. In July 2002, the municipality ceased financing the major local Romani association, which could not go on with its activities. ⁶ In 2008 the six municipal districts were merged into three circumscriptions, and all the public offices, which had remained in Rancitelli, were moved to the circumscription’s headquarters about two kilometres away from Rancitelli. In order to understand the general meaning of Rancitelli’s ‘decay’ stigma, it is meaningful to consider the findings of a survey carried out in 2004 by a group of Rancitelli residents in the neighbourhood:

Rancitelli residents complain about the absence of community life and about the lack of services at various levels, such as street lighting, signposting, general lack of cleanliness, and inadequate public transport. The amount of police forces are considered to be scarce. Relationships with Gypsy residents (zingari residenti) are difficult. Further problems are: youth unrest, the presence of asbestos in several buildings; acoustic and air pollution, which are also provoked by the presence of the nearby airport; and finally, the lack of green areas. (Pescara Vicina, 2004: 21)

This excerpt clarifies the everyday meaning of ‘decay’ (degrado) and its tight links to ‘Gypsies’. The ‘territorial stigma’ of ‘decay’ does not only refer to material deprivation; rather, it has to do with a more comprehensive dysfunction of human and institutional mechanisms of caring about the neighbourhood. In order to tackle Rancitelli’s degrado, from 2000 to 2006 the local council implemented the first, and to date the only, public policy in the neighbourhood. This is the urban governance apparatus’ first technology, which I am now going to discuss.

Urban II: public policy in the neighbourhood

In 2000 Pescara was among the cities that passed the selection for the EU Urban II tender, an EU-funded rehabilitation programme involving 70 marginal urban areas in Europe, ⁷ one of which was Rancitelli. In Pescara the programme was entirely managed by the local council, and it is crucial to focus on the programme, because it account for the only policy texts that account for the municipality’s views about Rancitelli Roma. With the final aim of tackling infrastructural underdevelopment and social distress, the municipality used the ‘territorial stigma’ of ‘decay’ as the main conceptual standpoint, attaching two meanings to it. The first meaning was ‘physical decay’ (degrado fisico), relating to ‘abandoned industrial areas and isolation of socially disadvantaged groups’; and the second meaning was ‘urban decay’ (degrado urbanistico), pertaining to ‘bad housing conditions and vandalism by marginalised social strata, the members of which have problems in living together’ (Città di Pescara, 2006). While the first meaning is clearly related to material bad conditions, the second one underlines socially deviant behaviours and directly relates them to marginality.

This is also evident in the programme section on ‘social distress’ (disagio sociale), in which Rancitelli’s socially vulnerable groups are listed, including ‘immigrants, old persons, people on social benefits, high number of Romani communities (sic) with serious social integration problems, minor aged persons in danger, and criminal subjects’. ‘Romani communities’ are described thus:

The Romani community’s condition of social distress is linked to Roma’s strong attachment to certain ethno-cultural traditions, such as strong identity feeling; nomadism, and the centrality of extended family. These traditions badly match with the lifestyle that this community was forced to adjust to. In addition, living together with the local population proved difficult, due partly to reciprocal hostility, and partly to the lack of trust vis-à-vis Roma, that is caused by Roma’s recurrent illegal behaviours. (Città di Pescara, 2006: 5; emphasis added)

In the quoted excerpt, Roma are depicted as responsible for their own ‘social distress’. This implies that if there are social integration problems between Roma and non-Roma in Rancitelli, the document seems to suggest the main reason is linked to Roma people’s ‘ethno-cultural traditions’ and ‘illegal practices’. However, while the ill-fit of ‘ethno-cultural traditions’ is explained as a consequence of the fact that Roma have had to adjust to the majority society’s lifestyle, Roma’s illegal behaviours are left unexplained. These behaviours are described only as the reason for the lack of trust by the majority vis-à-vis Roma. Roma therefore are not only exclusively viewed as others ‘ethno-culturally’ and fundamentally deviant socially, but they are also considered as responsible for the lack of trust vis-à-vis themselves. In line with this representation, from 2002 to 2007 the budget that was allocated to the only measure promoting ethnic minorities’ integration – that is, measure 3.2 concerning only Roma – was drastically reduced from 250,000 Euros in 2002 (Città di Pescara, 2002: 5), to 80,000 Euros in July 2007 (Città di Pescara 2007: 6), effectively amounting, in September 2007, to only 51,000 Euros (Comune di Pescara, 2007: 16).

Urban II’s very scarce results are summarized by Anna, a Rancitelli social worker that I interviewed in 2008:

… we set up this front office in this community centre, in order to welcome people living in all sorts of ‘social distress’. They [Urban II managers] created this very beautiful structure, but never advertised it to the local population. Nobody knows it, and it’s already three years that it’s been open!

Anna’s words indicated a general lack of effort by Urban II managers towards social integration, privileging instead infrastructural issues. With regard to Urban II programmes in Italian cities, Mingione and Nuvolati (2003) pointed out that ‘notwithstanding its novelty and positive impact on local administrators’ competences, Urban II did not sufficiently help the real re-qualification of the cities in social terms but in infrastructural terms’ (Mingione and Nuvolati, 2003: 116; emphasis added). In sum, being the only official document revealing the municipality’s views on Rancitelli Roma, and considering its very scarce results in terms of social integration, Urban II contributed to what can be seen more as a specifying technology, rather than having a controlling function.

Police enforcement in the neighbourhood

Against the background of the quite unsuccessful Urban II project, police enforcement in the neighbourhood stems as a relatively more effective technology, serving the function of control over Rancitelli and its Romani population. From 2005 to 2011, 320 police raids per year were carried out in Rancitelli, namely one per day, excluding Sundays; ⁸ this intensive wave of state repression culminated in 2011, as the municipal assembly passed an ordinance imposing the presence of 30 National Army soldiers in the neighbourhood (Il Pescara, 2011), showing similarities with militarized marginalized neighbourhoods across the world (Maneri, 2010: 85–92; Wacquant, 2008). Within this context, in summer 2011 I interviewed Adriano, the chief police officer in charge of urban peripheries, who explained to me that the main problem in Rancitelli was the presence of drugs, and that Roma were involved in the drug market:

They [Roma] have a no-work culture [cultura del non lavoro]. They are Pescarians now, but they do not ask for integration. Many of them do not send children to school. The average Pescarian is prone to social integration, but the… they are not. A large number of those living in Rancitelli do not want to integrate, and think that they are the boss there [in Rancitelli].

He was pessimistic about the possibility of Roma’s social integration, and confided to me that ‘If they do not want to step back into legality, by sending children to school, no solution [i.e. social integration] will be possible’. And speaking of Roma’s neighbours, he told me that ‘For the good Rancitelli residents [residenti per bene] there are big problems, such as the very high volume of music played in cars. For them, living together with Roma is in general very difficult’. I asked him, what the police’s main strategy to cope with this was, and he replied that ‘Since the problem is their [Roma’s] no-work culture, the only thing we can do is a containment action [azione di contenimento], by constantly patrolling the neighbourhood’s streets and periodically intervening with raids’.

My encounter with Adriano highlights three main issues. Firstly, in police representations Rancitelli almost equals ‘Roma’, as Adriano’s first statement about Rancitelli immediately referred to Roma; secondly, the main strategy of police action in Rancitelli is containment, since social problems in the neighbourhood derive, according to Adriano, exclusively from an unchangeable factor, meaning Roma’s ‘no-work culture’; finally, deviance is the pivotal dimensions within which the police view Rancitelli Roma. Adriano’s representations of Rancitelli and of Roma directly relate to the next two technologies, namely local politicians’ representations and local media discourse.

Local politicians’ representations

Local politicians’ representations of Rancitelli and of the relationships between Romani and non-Romani Pescarians further account for the same process of attributing to the Roma the main responsibility for social disorder that was explicit in the Urban II project. This was the view of Rancitelli that most of the local politicians I interviewed shared:

In that area [Rancitelli] there is a high concentration of Roma, and we know that when there is a high concentration of a different ethnie [etnia], difficult situations occur. In the case of the relationships between Pescarians and Roma (sic), the situation becomes ever more difficult because today they [Roma] are not recognised by the Pescarian citizenry.

This was the most widespread view of Roma living in Rancitelli among local politicians:

Rancitelli Roma are people outside of the rules, and forced to live in conditions that belong to the civil [majority] society; for example, living in houses. […] They are dirty, they keep music at a loud volume, they have arrogant ways of behaving and are often angry, they are involved in criminal activities, and therefore the police search their house. ⁹

The same politician articulated his own view on the roots of the problem:

Racism is not the problem. The problems are some attitudes that some Roma have that don’t get accepted by the population. Consequently, Roma are homogenized and directly identified with those attitudes. Thus, this is bad also for those normal [Romani] persons, who do not commit crime, who are educated, and so on […] Since it is impossible to find a living together, politics should find the ways towards social integration, because [referring to Rancitelli] that neighbourhood is an ethnic bomb! And it could explode at any given moment.

Here again, as was the case of the Urban II programme’s description of Pescarian Roma, and of Adriano’s views of Rancitelli, according to local politicians responsibility for Roma’s social exclusion lies with Roma themselves. Politicians’ representations of Rancitelli depict an urban condition of permanent tensions between, on the one hand, social deviance, exclusively identified in Roma’s illegal and often criminal behaviours, and on the other, a non-Romani local society in which citizens and institutions do what they can to contain a social disorder entirely deriving from Roma. In order to further delve into the ways in which Rancitelli has been represented and governed over previous decades, it is important to look at the local media discourse. According to local politicians, Rancitelli Roma are generally deviant subjects, who are responsible for their own condition, which is the cause of tensions with non-Roma.

Local media discourse: a striking symbiosis

From the previous analyses of Urban II, police actions and strategies, and local politicians’ representations, it emerges that in all cases Rancitelli is portrayed as ecologically and socially decayed, and governed only through infrastructural and ‘containment’ measures, the former enacted by Urban II managers, the latter by the police. No other local authority is active in the neighbourhood, and the only other local actors producing a discourse on Rancitelli and Roma are local media. The local media discourse is a technology serving the function of specifying Roma and Rancitelli, articulating a strikingly perfect juxtaposition between the two that rests solely on social deviance. This explains, to a large extent, the condition of possibility for territorial stigmatization to become rooted in town. I conducted two thematic analysis, one on the ways in which Rancitelli is portrayed in the most locally read news website, Prima da Noi, ¹⁰ and the other on the representation of Roma from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s in the two most locally read newspaper, Il Messaggero and Il Centro.

From October 2005, when the website Prima da Noi was set up, to May 2012, there were 93 articles mentioning the neighbourhood, within which I detected five main themes. ‘Handcuffing’ was the most widespread theme, occurring in 41% of the articles; the second was that of ‘Drugs and drug dealing’, occurring in 30% of the articles; the third theme was that of ‘Nomads/Roma’, occurring in 17% of the articles; the fourth, ‘Police blitz/raids’, occurred in 6% of the articles, and the fifth, ‘Robbery’, also occurred in 6% of the articles. The image of Rancitelli that the local media produce is one of social deviance. Handcuffing regularly occurs, due to drug-related crimes, which are often committed by ‘nomads/Roma’. The juxtaposition between Rancitelli, criminality and ‘nomads’/’Roma’ can be said to be related to the neoliberal governance over Rancitelli in the last 35 years.

The second analysis showed that the territorial dimension of local press discourse on Roma has progressively narrowed down to Rancitelli. From the mid-to the late 1990s, such discourse was related to two main geographical areas, namely Rancitelli and the rest of the Pescarian province. The distribution of the actors involved in that discourse followed a very clear order. In Rancitelli, the police and the inhabitants played the two major roles, followed by civil society groups and association; on the other hand, in the rest of the Pescarian province civil society associations were the only protagonists. Finally, in the early 2000s local media discourse on Roma, the juxtaposition between Rancitelli, criminality and ‘nomads’ was established (see also Picker, 2010: 220-221).

Media representations seem to be in line with local politicians’ ones, depicting a deviant population living in a neighbourhood that requires major police enforcement to be governed. They also highlight the striking symbiosis between the ‘territorial’ and the ‘tribal’ stigma, meaning between ‘decay’ (degrado) – overwhelmingly mentioning criminality, and the array of negative labels that non-Roma usually attach to Romani Pescarians. Having accounted for politicians and media representations’ of Rancitelli and its Roma, I now turn to discussing the last two technologies of the urban governance apparatus, namely urban Roma stigma and surreptitious gazing.

Urban Roma stigma

Urban Roma stigma, which, as I discussed in the first section, can be seen as an instance of Goffman’s (1963: 4) ‘tribal stigma’, is a technology serving the function of specifying, consists of one stigmatizing expression and three main stigmatizing devices for identification. The main stigmatizing expression used for identifying Roma in Pescara is ‘pigri’, which, coming from the Latin ‘pingus’, namely ‘fat’ or ‘heavy’, in Italian literally means ‘the lazy ones’. However, in town this word is attached to a different set of meanings, ranging from social inappropriateness to social deviance. For example, a person driving a convertible listening to high-volume disco music is considered a pigro (feminine pigra), as is a man or a group of people (including women) walking down a street dressed in dark leather clothes with big golden necklaces. Yet, also a person involved in robbery or other similar illegal actions is considered to be a pigro/a. Therefore, this expression does not seem to come from the Italian ‘pigro’. Rather, the origins of the expression seem to be Spanish, having the everyday function of social control. In Spanish the word ‘picaro’ means ‘type of cunning person, belonging to lower social strata, who lives from trickery and similar actions’. ¹¹ Rather than addressing Roma’s allegedly laziness, pigri refers to a more comprehensive domain of borderline social and legal actions. The use of pigri is widespread in urban life, and it is usually coupled with three main devices of stigmatization, namely (1) reference to clothing, (2) social uses of surnames, and (3) skin colour.

In the eyes of non-Romani Pescarians, Pescarian Roma generally wear several earrings and may have a peculiar haircut. This emerges far more often with regards to women, wearing traditional long skirts and veils, than men. In this respect Romani women are considered to be more easily recognizable than Romani men in public spaces. In 2008 Carlo, a 40-year-old non-Romani resident of Rancitelli, explained to me the extent to which a person’s outfit was a rooted symbolic device for identification:

Romani women wear long dresses, the classic female dress is a long one, with much gold on it, bracelets and so on, […] They have their own way of dressing, finally. Yet a little part of them [of Roma, i.e. Romani women and men] has adjusted to the others [non-Roma] […] and we call them ‘svestiti’ [lit. the undressed ones]. We say ‘she has undressed’, meaning she gradually took distance from her own traditions, and now she wears normal clothes as a normal citizen. Yet the majority of them still wear long dresses.

Svestiti might be seen as an additional stigmatizing expression, but I witnessed it in no other encounter. However, what emerges from Carlo’s description is that clothing is seen as a ‘bodily extension that cannot be removed without transforming one’s lived sense of embodiment […] Clothing through habituation is no longer seen as an object apart from the body, but comes to form an integrated part of one’s body schema’ (Orega and Arcoff, 2009: 78). What gives authority to this interpretation of clothing as a clear marker relating to body are Carlo’s views about Roma as a group:

These people [Roma] now live here, and it has been like this for years. They settled down in Pescara. Due to this fact, they have remained traditional exclusively as stock, as race [come ceppo, come razza]; also in the uses of their traditions and in the language they speak. Traditional Roma were a group that used to move from place to place.

During fieldwork, one of the most prominent everyday discourses on Roma was exactly Carlo’s historical narration articulating rigid dichotomies, such as lost authenticity versus contemporary impurity. The second most widely widespread device of identification was surname. In summer 2011, while talking to Mario, a Romani man, age 39, living in Rancitelli, he explained to me why he was unemployed: ‘It’s now been two years since I asked the municipality to buy a space for opening my shop. However, as soon as they heard my surname […], they refused to sell me the space’. In Pescara surnames are one of the most powerful devices of identification of Roma in media accounts as well as in everyday knowledge. On another occasion, while talking to a social worker, she confided to me:

Only from the surname you cannot one hundred per cent be sure whether someone is Roma or not. This has an exception, namely the ‘historical’ surnames such as Rini, Giorelli, Ranieri. ¹² There are many surnames that you would never associate with Roma, but we cannot be sure about how to decide whether someone is Roma or not. ¹³

The third stigmatizing device of identification in everyday life is skin colour. While talking with a social worker working with children in Rancitelli, she was explaining me that ‘the ways to know whether a person is Rom is the surname, because, anyway, children’s skin is anyway white, very white’. As may be noted, the three stigmatizing devices of identification outlined above – reference to clothing, social uses of surnames and skin colour – revolve around the idea of ancestry. Since clothing is part of a hereditary condition of being ‘nomad’, and surnames and skin colour are easily understandable as marking the biological boundaries of kinship, the domain within which everyday Roma stigma was articulated was that of racialization. This phenomenon, together with the stigmatizing expressions pigri and nomadi, seems to be able to keep the acceptable social order in Rancitelli. However, there is an additional technology providing an even stronger basis to the architecture of control over Rancitelli – a dynamic of surreptitious gazing.

Surreptitious gazing in Rancitelli

Although this technology has the main function of controlling Roma in Rancitelli, its articulation is more complex, as gazing is not a one-way process targeting Roma, but, as I will show, a multidirectional one. In summer 2008 Renzo, a 50-year-old Rancitelli resident, was a wholesale trader. One afternoon, while we were standing in one of the neighbourhood’s main streets, talking about the local association I was volunteering in, he pointed at a car which was parked some 20 meters from us, and told me, ‘You see there, that car? Those are policemen in plain clothes. Everyone knows they are policemen, and they know that everyone knows. They stay there hours and hours waiting’. ‘What for?’, I asked. He replied:

For drug pushers. They wait for those who are not living in Rancitelli and thus cannot recognize them. This is our everyday life here. And you know, people know, everyone knows here that Zingari are the problem, but nobody will ever tell you that… because people are worried about retaliation. Here it is hell (è n’inferno). Here you are lucky if you move out!

Renzo’s words account for a diffused and pervasive sense, in the neighbourhood’s public spaces, of collective suspicion and constant tension related to eye-contact games, appraising and sizing up. During a late summer afternoon I was sitting, chatting with a Romani family in a little park in the centre of the neighbourhood. One of them pointed at a man walking nearby, telling me: ‘Do you see that guy? He is a Carabiniere in plain clothes, you can see from the way he walks: very fast and not looking around at all!’. Both the gaze of my interlocutor and the Carabiniere’s deceptive attitude were signs of a surreptitious control, which anyone could easily perceive in the neighbourhood. This continuous gazing dynamic makes it difficult to escape from social control in Rancitelli’s public space. Indeed, as I showed in the previous sections, this feeling of being under control is provoked by a whole set of discourses, policies, attitudes and ideas that contribute to inform a functional urban governance apparatus that is able to keep social order in the ‘decayed neighbourhood’.