‘New Italians’ and intercultural citizenship: Challenging hegemonic visions of migration,childhood and identity through fiction

Challenging multiculturalism in a globalized world: Sumaya Abdel Qader’s Porto il velo, adoro i Queen: Nuove italiane crescono

Sumaya Abdel Qader’s Porto il velo, adoro i Queen: Nuove italiane crescono offers an interesting starting point because, as the title already reveals, this autobiographical work engages with notions of identity and multiculturalism in a globalized world, and its characters ‘act as means for understanding the accelerated process of change when cultures come into close proximity with one another’ (Burdett, 2016: 155). Abdel Qader focuses in particular on the process of growing up and how the individual is shaped by the environment in which he or she lives. Sulinda, the book’s protagonist, is a Sunnite Muslim of Jordanian origin who, despite being born in Perugia, at the age of 30 years is still fighting to get her Italian citizenship. Like the author, Sulinda wears the headscarf out of personal choice, and yet she sends her two young daughters to a convent school and is not afraid of being singled out as different. She uses her difference to challenge Christian stereotypes about Muslims and vice versa and to show how these preconceived ideas are the product of ignorance and lack of communication. The novel’s title, with its multiple cultural references, is intended as a provocative statement about Italian Muslim women. It challenges the common stereotype of Muslim women as ‘desperate housewives’; not like those of the TV series, as Sulinda points out, but rather

‘delle vere e proprie disperate, diciamo pure sfigate, con abiti lunghi (per non dire tende), ciabatte sdrucite, un velo legato dietro la nuca (anche tra le mura domestiche), 5–7 figli da rincorrere (magari uno attaccato al seno), un mestolo in mano e la casa sottosopra’. (real losers, actually, misfits, with long dresses (more like curtains), torn slippers, a head scarf tied behind their neck even within the confinement of their home, 5–7 kids to run after (perhaps one breastfeeding), a ladle in one hand and a very messy house) (PVAQ: 111).

Sulinda instead, like Sumaya, is a product of her era. She is well-educated and her cultural framework is the same as that of all other Italian girls born in the 1970s. It is therefore no surprise that she enjoys Queen, one of the most iconic bands of the 1970s, famous for the heterogeneity of their music and their ‘desire to fragment genre conventions by fusing elements of glam and progressive rock with those found in musical theatre, opera buffa and vaudeville’ (Promane, 2009: iii and 26). Moreover, the band’s androgynous image (which they embraced as early as 1974) helped problematize notions of gender and sexuality, something that Abdel Qader is also interested in as we can see throughout the book, but particularly in the chapter entitled ‘Uomini e donne’ [Men and Women]. Here, Abdel Qader tries to look at the Italians from an Arab perspective, and vice versa, parodying the dynamics of couples in both cultures, and concluding with an appeal to all women (regardless of their background) to get together to fight gender inequalities and challenge the myth of the alleged superiority of men. From East to West, she argues, even the nicest of men, deep down, are convinced of their gender superiority. Abdel Qader, however, is very aware of the unproductive nature of discourses of victimization, so she concedes that women have partially contributed to the perpetuation of the myth and that the best way to change this is to work together with men, not against them, as change can only be achieved through dialogue and education (PVAQ: 165–174).

If we think of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, we also see that the identification with this band is linked to some of the other main themes in the book: the problematization of ethnicity, ⁵ its impact on the individual’s identity and the dismantling of the myth of immigrants as uncultured and uneducated. Freddie Mercury, in fact, was born in Zanzibar (an island renowned for its multi-ethnic population) to Parsi Parents. Before settling in the United Kingdom, Mercury lived in Zanzibar and India where he attended an English-style boarding school. However, his biographers point out that Mercury was very secretive about his background and reluctant to reveal his real name as he probably felt that his English fans in the 1970s ‘were not ready for a rock star with African and Indian roots’ (Jones, 2011: 28). Sadly, even in 21st-century Milan, ethnic prejudices are extremely common. Every time Sulinda travels by bus with her two young daughters some passengers with a traditionally monolithic sense of Italianness inevitably assume that she is the nanny and not the children’s mother and seem surprised when she engages with them in perfect Italian (PVAQ: 51–55). People’s resentment is even stronger when Sulinda and her husband, who like most parents want to give their children the best education in a safe environment, despite, being Muslim, decide to send their daughters to a private convent school, no matter how hard it may be to find a school willing to accept them and how sceptical their friends are (PVAQ: 117–118).

The second part of the novel’s title, ‘Nuove italiane crescono’ (New Italian women are growing up), however, represents an homage to two 19th-century classics by the American writer Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888): Little Women (1868) and its sequel Good Wives (1869) (in Italian Piccole donne crescono (Little Women are Growing up)), later collected in a single volume (1880) under the title Little Women. Despite Alcott’s reputation as a writer of classic children’s fiction featuring slightly rebellious but ultimately tamed characters, recent scholarship has shown that she was far less conventional than previously thought. Influenced by her father’s transcendental ideals of self-expression, self-reliance and self-exploration and by his circle of friends, Alcott argued in favour of extending those ideals to women. In a letter to Maria S. Porter, for instance, Alcott asserted ‘a woman’s right to an identity and a life of her own by calling for an exploration and a redefinition of a “woman’s sphere”’ (Estes and Lant, 1989: 98–99). As previously seen in the aforementioned chapter entitled ‘Uomini e donne’, questions of gender roles and identity are extremely important in Porto il velo, adoro i Queen.

Another important facet of identity that emerges throughout the novel is the sense of belonging. For migrants, this is particularly problematic because, as Sulinda explains, migrants are constantly faced with the difficult choice of having to decide whether to stay in their host country or to go. Often the situation is further complicated by bureaucratic obstacles. In Sulinda’s case, for instance, bureaucratic hurdles prevent her from obtaining Italian citizenship. Given the dialogical nature of identity, having an official document stating one’s nationality is extremely important for an immigrant, and not just for practical reasons. As Sulinda tells us: ‘posso sentirmi italiana quanto mi pare, ma se gli altri non mi riconoscono come tale la faccenda si complica’ [I can feel Italian as much as I like, but if others don’t perceive me as such, things get complicated] (PVAQ: 20). Sulinda’s words are in line with Chamber’s idea of citizenship as an additional border that immigrants have to negotiate. Chambers (2008) adds that ‘human rights go largely unrecognized in the elaboration of juridical confines and citizenship’ (p. 4). Yet, ‘it is these that establish the borders between “inside” and “outside,” between belonging and expulsion’ (Chambers, 2008: 4). As argued by Parati (2005: loc. 136), narratives are essential tools to articulate identities. However, in legal and bureaucratic worlds, there is no space for narratives: identity is stripped of its complexities and is reduced to an ‘administrative game of multiple choice’ (Parati, 2005: loc. 142).

Abdel Qader’s book challenges traditional notions of identity as something stable and innate. In line with recent discourses on migration (Laoire et al., 2016; Probyn, 2015), Porto il velo, adoro i Queen seems to favour the notion of belonging as more dynamic and suitable to capture ‘the lived realities of longing’ that characterize the lives of migrants (including children) and a performative notion of identity. As various scholars have shown (Laoire et al., 2016: 8), ‘migrant children’s negotiations of identity and belonging involve intersecting relations and identifications at different scales, and they may develop feelings of multi-belongings [. . .] perhaps simultaneously’ ⁶ (see also Bushin and White, 2010). One of the common misconceptions about migration is to consider origins and destinations as the primary sites of belonging. Olwig (2003, in Laoire et al., 2016: 5) instead argues that the interconnected spaces of everyday life are much more important in migrant children’s lives – Sulinda’s story being a case in point – ‘can be embedded in local places as well as in global and transnational spaces’. As an adult with two young daughters who are about to face many of the problems she experienced when she was growing up, Sulinda is aware that our biggest challenge as individuals is to actively embrace the complexities of identity: ‘la vera sfida è vivere un’identità complessa e ricca che verrà continuamente sottoposta a riassettamenti e modifiche’ [the real challenge is to live a complex and rich identity that is bound to constantly undergo changes and adjustments] (PVAQ: 22). Sulinda is also aware of the impact that migrants have on Italian society and the role they can play in changing people’s attitudes towards ‘the other’: ‘Il mio – il nostro – è un ruolo importante sulla strada della comprensione, in una società che è in divenire e che, a livello più macroscopico, è anch’essa alla ricerca di una nuvoa identià e di una nuova interdipendenza’ [I – we – have an important role to play when it comes to promoting understanding, in a society that is in flux and that, at macro level, is also looking for a new identity and new interconnections] (PVAQ: 23). Sulinda’s words (in particular the reference to interconnections) seem to echo Prato’s views concerning the need to go beyond multiculturalism as a possible model for bringing together different ethnic groups. According to Prato, the problem with multiculturalism is that it is based on an idea of ‘closed’ and self-perpetuating cultures. Sulinda, like Prato (2009), favours cultural pluralism as a model that recognizes ‘the positive value of diversity in conjunction with overarching common values that connect different groups’ (p. 27). While multiculturalism at its best can only foster toleration, cultural pluralism can more easily generate intercultural dialogue and tolerance.

Although Sulinda does not pass judgement on her Italy, it is clear that she remains sceptical as to whether her country will ever be able to embrace difference and value cultural diversity (PVAQ: 177). The protagonist of Porto il velo, adoro i Queen, however, is determined to keep working towards the creation of a more tolerant society and so is Sumaya Abdel Qader through her political activism and position as local councillor. ⁷ At the end of the book, despite the electoral success of the xenophobic Northern League, who used to argue that anything south of the river Po was not to be considered truly Italian, Sulinda retains her sense of humour and ends her story with an example of resilience. She laughs at the thought of probably having to apply for Milanese citizenship, and having to officially reject her southern origins: ‘dovrò anche dichiarare de vess pentì de vess un terun (Perugia è sotto il Po, la Giordania e la Palestina ancora più giù!)’ (I will also have to declare that I apologize for being a southerner (Perugia is South of the river Po and Jordan and Palestine even further south!)).While fantasizing about the need to register for a course on Milanese language and behaviour she looks at herself in the mirror: she arranges her headscarf, her jacket and her trousers; she polishes her shoes and listens to a song by Giorgio Gaber, taking pride in the fact that everything she is wearing is rigorously made in Italy (PVAQ: 177–78). The reference to ‘made in Italy’, of course, has more than one connotation. Apart from indicating the origin of Sulinda’s clothes and her attachment to the country where she was born, ‘made in Italy’ is also a global/transnational brand (Paulicelli, 2014). Through this detail, Abdel Qader reiterates the complex nature of identity and Sulinda’s ability to feel at home in local, global and transnational spaces. Moreover, by using the word ‘terun’ (the derogatory term used by the Milanese to refer to those people who after the Second World War had left rural Southern Italy to settle in the industrialized cities of the north), Sulinda reminds us that migration can take different forms and is not a recent phenomenon.

The reference to Giorgio Gaber (1939–2003) is also significant. Like Freddie Mercury, Gaber had an unusual background. Despite being born in Milan, the musician’s father came from Trieste, at a time when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his mother came from Veneto, thus showing migrancy as a condition of life, and challenging notions of cultural purity. Finally, the song Sulinda listens to, ‘Io non mi sento italiano’ [I don’t feel Italian], ⁸ is part of the eponymous album released in 2003, shortly after the singer-song writer’s death. Consisting of a monologue in five stanzas addressed to the president of Italy, the song warns us about the dangers of nationalism, highlights Italy’s struggle to develop a national identity and challenges foreign stereotypes about Italians as all-singing and all-dancing people. In so doing, it brings together all the themes already flagged up in the novel’s title. The implicit irony of an Italian not feeling Italian versus Sulinda’s Italianness, despite not being officially recognized as an Italian citizen by the state, reminds us that, as argued by Zapata-Barrero (2016: 59–60) ‘we cannot force people to self-identify with a fixed category of cultural identity according to their nationalities and culture of origin’, that ‘the problem of diversity is ideologically constructed, since it seems that the definition is dominated and controlled by the majority [. . .]’, and that ‘people have multiple identities without really being willing to rank them in a decontextualised manner’.

Promoting interculturalism through story telling: Giuseppe Caliceti’s Italiani, per esempio

The question of multiple identities is also relevant to the second of our case studies, Caliceti’s Italiani, per esempio. In his work as a teacher, Caliceti, like Abdel Qader, stresses the importance of promoting activities ‘che favoriscano l’ascolto e il rispetto’ [that encourage listening and respect] given that ‘nel mondo dei bambini non ci sono differenze culturali impossibili da comprendere e accettare. E c’è sempre grande disponibilità al confronto, tolleranza, rispetto degli altri, anche se ‘altri da sé’’ [in the world of children cultural differences are never impossible to understand and accept. They are always willing to draw comparisons; they are tolerant and respectful of others, even when ‘alien’ to them] (ItPE: 18–19). If we learn to treat each child as a person, rather than a problem, Caliceti argues, we will learn to appreciate how stimulating and valuable their presence can be (ItPE: 19). Caliceti works in Reggio Emilia, the fourth largest Italian city in terms of numbers of immigrants. Despite the excellent infrastructures and services provided for the immigrants by the Council, Caliceti informs us, the media in Reggio Emilia are also quick in criminalizing migrants who are often depicted as a threat to national identity, rather than as a resource (ItPE: 21). Caliceti, however, is aware of the difficulties anyone wanting to discuss migration is going to encounter, particularly if children are involved. On one hand, as various sociologists have already pointed out, the migrant child can easily be reduced to a defenceless victim or can be criminalized, but even the best of intentions, such as the desire to document the plight of migrant children, can easily lead to exoticist representations. As a teacher, Caliceti also reflects on the meaning of interculturalism and on his role as an educator in helping his pupils to develop intercultural competencies. Like Abdel Qader, Caliceti favours interculturalism rather than multiculturalism as the latter ‘places too great an emphasis upon differences and diversity, upon what divides us more than what unites us, but also ignores the needs of the majorities. It thus encourages resentment, fragmentation and disunity’ (Meer and Modood, 2016: 42). For Caliceti, instead, what matters is insisting on what we all have in common:

Forse l’efficacia di un autentico progetto educativo interculturale sta nel porre al centro dell’approccio didattico la metafora del viaggio, archetipo trasversale comune a diversi contesti culturali – sia a livello di produzione artistica e letteraria, sia nella quotidianità della psicologia collettiva. [ . . . ] E nel caso del piccolo migrante il viaggio non è solo figura metaforica ma esperienza reale. (ItPE: 21)

[Perhaps, for a truly intercultural educational project to be successful, the metaphor of the journey needs to be at the core of the pedagogical approach, as a universal archetype common to different cultural contexts – both in terms of literary and artistic production, but also, daily, in our collective psychology. [ . . . ] And in the case of a young migrant the journey is not just a metaphor but a concrete experience.]

According to Caliceti, the metaphor of the journey will help us develop a sense of kinship with the migrants, and as fellow travelers, we will be less judgemental and more ready to redefine our role as citizens and our sociocultural identity. (ItPE: 21). In order to give his pupils a voice, Caliceti organizes the first part of his book as a dictionary where each entry is written by one of the children. By organizing each entry in alphabetical order, Caliceti eliminates all hierarchical tensions so that each contribution can be valued in its own right. The overall outcome is a kaleidoscopic, and often humorous portrayal of Italy and Italians in the 21st century, but we also encounter insightful comments on questions of race, gender, violence, culture, and migration.

Some of the children’s observations, despite their apparent naivety, seem to capture the essence of interculturalism and display a better understanding of the problems of living in a globalized world than that of many adults. As regards ethnicity and identity, for instance, 10-year-old Damien from Rumania says ‘Secondo me i bambini, se non sapessero che erano nati in paesi diversi, era più facile andare d’accordo. Anche da grandi’. [According to me children, if they didn’t know they were born in different countries, they would find it easier to get on. Also as grownups.] (ItPE:119). Apart from confirming one of the key principles of interculturalism, namely that in order to live together in super-diverse societies we need to emphasize what we have in common, rather than what sets us apart, this statement also reminds us that ethnicity is not necessarily the most important marker of identity. When reading Damien’s reflections on ‘knowledge’, we are immediately reminded of Zapata-Barrero’s (2016) idea of personal identity as something that is ‘much more connected to how people relate to each other, rather than the traditional “Who am I?” based on where I was born (territory) or who my parents are (descent)’ (p. 61). Zahira, 11 years old from Egypt, is also critical of concepts like fatherland and national identity:

La patria è il paese dove sei nato, non dove sei andato a vivere. [ . . . ] Io questo l’ho capito benissimo. Una cosa che non ho capito bene è cosa sono io, però. Per esempio, io ho i miei genitori che sono nati in Tunisia e io sono nata però in Italia, allora qual’è la mia patria? Sempre l’Italia oppure è la Tunisia anche per me? Oppure tutte e due? Oppure nessuna patria? (ItPE: 97)

[Fatherland is the country where you were born, not where you went to live. [ . . . ]. I fully understand this. What I don’t understand, though, is who I am. For instance, my parents were born in Tunisia but I was born in Italy. So, which is my fatherland? Still Italy, or Tunisia for me too? Or both? Or, no fatherland?]

Like Sulinda in Abdel Qader’s book, Zahira seems to implicitly suggest that although we live in super-diverse societies, language and legislation lag behind and are failing to capture the complexity of our world. As noted by Meissner and Vertovec (2015: 3), this is one of the challenges of super-diverse environments as policymakers need to acknowledge the new conditions created by global migration and the importance of paying greater attention to matters like legal status, instead of focussing exclusively on community-based policies.

When it comes to stereotypes and racism, Caliceti’s pupils are also quick in challenging common beliefs. Genti, for instance, who is 8 years old and from Albania, when confronted with the racial prejudice that all Albanians are thieves, argues that the myth is a reflection of the insecurities of rich people who are always afraid to be robbed by those who are poor. However, if all Albanians and all the poor were stealing, he concludes, the world would mostly consist of thieves (ItPE: 93). Similarly, when Tong, a 7-year-old boy from China, hears the derogatory expression ‘muso giallo’ (literally, ‘yellow snout’) aimed at Asian people, he comes to the conclusion that either people are really nasty or are colour blind as his skin is not that different from that of many native Italians: ‘ho gli occhi diversi, più lunghi, ma la pelle è italiana’ [my eyes are different, more elongated, but my skin is Italian] (ItPE: 86–87). ⁹ Also 9-year-old Nabil from Morocco considers racist attitudes as an example of ignorance and of some people’s misplaced sense of superiority (ItPE: 112).

The second part of the book, instead, consists of longer stories, and here, Caliceti alternates between the children’s tales and some reflections on his own journey as a teacher but also on the inadequacies of national/regional policies in supporting migrant children (but also local children), particularly when a problem arises. Not all problems are real though, Caliceti argues. Some are ‘created’ by the authorities who are performance and efficiency driven, not because they really believe in ‘meritocracy’, but as a way of hiding or justifying a lack of adequate resources. Caliceti is very critical of the state’s neoliberal obsession with numbers and statistics and is keen to challenge the reliability and fairness of this kind of data. ¹⁰ When confronted with the frequent complaint that at middle school more than 50 percent of foreign pupils are failing in most subjects, and the inevitable assumption that this is due to the excessive number of foreign children admitted to primary schools, Caliceti is determined to show the absurdity of some of the parameters used to determine the pupils’ success (like the timing of some of the in-class tests), and the inadequacy of some of the alleged support mechanisms in place to enable the pupils to learn Italian and integrate in the Italian school system:

La verità: non potendo conciliare qualità dell’insegnamento con i tagli selvaggi, il ministro fa retorica d’attacco senza ritegno: invece di parlare di fallimento, parla di merito, di selezione della specie. Ma la meritocrazia di cui parla è solo un bluff, un riflesso condizionato di un’impostazione di società e di scuola sempre più economicista: lo stato-azienda, la scuola azienda. (ItPE: 202)

[The truth: unable to reconcile the quality of teaching with the wild cuts, the minister shamelessly uses an aggressive rhetoric: instead of acknowledging failure, he talks of merit, of natural selection. But the meritocracy he is so keen on is just a bluff, the Pavlovian reflex of a society and a school system that are more and more business-driven: the business-like state and the business-like school.]

This very rhetoric is also the reason why in some cases disabled children, or children with learning difficulties, do not even get the minimal support they would be entitled to by law, and teachers are faced with increasingly absurd demands, like having to decide among the eligible children which should be allocated a support teacher and which should be left to his or her own devices, despite being officially entitled to additional help (ItPE: 163–166).

School as the ideal platform for developing intercultural citizenship: Fabrizio Gatti’s Viki che voleva andare a scuola

The inadequacies and contradictions of the legal and bureaucratic systems are also illustrated in Fabrizio Gatti’s Viki che voleva andare a scuola. At the end of the book, for instance, we discover that while national legislation stresses the importance of guaranteeing an education to all children, regardless of their status, municipal legislation does not do the same. So, while Viki is allowed to attend primary school, his little sister Brunilda is denied access to the nursery, as nurseries are controlled by local authorities. Despite the intervention of Viki’s primary school teachers, the nursery’s director refuses to help, using the local council’s legislation as a shield to cover her racist attitudes, as the following quote demonstrates: ‘«Sentite» sbuffa la direttrice e si risiede. «Voi siete dipendenti del ministero, io del Comune. E so che il Comune non desidera spendere soldi regalando servizi ai clandestine . . . »’ [«Listen» the head teacher grumbles and sits down again. «You are employed by the ministry and I by the Council. And I know that the Council does not wish to waste its money providing services for illegal immigrants . . .»] (VVAS: 253). However, as in Calieti’s book, school plays a very important role in fostering intercultural citizenship, to be understood, as Zapata-Barrero (2016) explains, as ‘a technique of bridging differences, bonding and promoting social capital in public spheres of people’s everyday’s lives’ (p. 57).

With its insistence on routines and shared experiences, school functions as a contact zone and ‘promotes interaction between people across different religions, languages, and so on’. (Zapata-Barrero, 2016: 57). And indeed, it is through school that Viki is able to develop a sense of belonging and his ‘Italian’ identity. When Viki’s father is stopped by the police and detained because of his lack of a valid residence permit, his sister Brunilda hopes that the entire family will be sent back to Albania and that she will be reunited with her grandparents. Viki, however, despite living in a horrible slum surrounded by mud, rats and piles of rubbish, does not want to return to his country of origin. Having struggled to learn Italian, he wants to continue to go to school. School provides him with anchorage and a place where he feels safe because, as he explains to Brunilda, there nobody asks him whether he is an illegal immigrant: ‘«Ai bambini italiani non interessa se siamo clandestini: nessuno di loro me l’ha mai chiesto. È una cosa che interessa solo ai grandi»’ [Italian kids don’t really care if we are illegal immigrants: no one ever asked me that. It is something only adults are interested in] (VVAS: 190). Viki’s schoolmates show a high degree of tolerance and intercultural competence and are genuinely interested in understanding Viki. When asked to draw a field, for instance, most children object to the white wall that Viki had painted around his orchard, but when they discover that he was inspired by his grandparents’ tomato field, most of them apologize, admitting that they had never seen a tomato field before (VVAS: 181).

However, while the children are willing to embrace the other and reconsider their views to enable Viki to express himself, the world of adults is more problematic. During the first year of middle school, for instance, the history teacher asked her pupils to think of a possible solution to help children living in countries affected by war. To Viki the obvious answer was: run away. This, however, was interpreted as a sign of laziness, and Viki failed the assignment (VVAS: 17–18). To make matters worse, after a geography lesson, when Viki struggled to understand why, if Albania is geographically in Europe, some Albanians are forced to hide and are labelled as clandestine, once again, the teacher provided no support. ¹¹ She simply reiterated her idea that only criminals are forced to run away, thus indirectly contributing to the criminalization of migrants, and leaving Viki perplexed (as none of his family members were either thieves or bandits, and yet some of them were forced to hide).

The themes of Europe, migration and mobility in a globalized world featured also in an assignment the children had to complete over the summer at the end of their first year of middle school, with the rather pompous title of ‘Vecchi e nuovi mondi: gli europei nel mondo, gli stranieri in Europa’ [Old and new worlds: Europeans in the world, and foreigners in Europe] (VVAS: 17). Apart from being too ambitious for 11/12 year olds, its wording is extremely problematic, particularly the term ‘stranieri’ [foreigners] with its connotations of otherness and non-belonging. Needless to say, even after the summer break, Viki was still unsure whether Albanians could be considered Europeans or just foreigners. What his experience taught him was that in Europe justice and legality do not always coincide because what is legal is not necessarily fair (VVAS: 258). In other words, Viki is confronted with an issue scholars have been discussing for years, namely the fact that ‘European projects of politics of belonging and identity far too often exclude migrants who thus also develop, at best, a very ambivalent stance towards different forms of membership in Europe’ (Krzyżanowski, 2010: 26). As for the teacher, apart from revealing a high degree of ignorance, her attitude is an example of the difficulties many people have in understanding and defining Europe in terms of its geographical versus political boundaries, its identity and culture.

According to scholars (Fligstein, 2009: 133), however, this kind of inability to understand the European project is less common among educated people and white-collar workers. ¹² It could be argued that the teacher’s attitude also shows how an excessive emphasis on integration in Europe has done very little to bring people together (Checkel and Katzenstein, 2009: 23). If anything, it has reinforced national narratives (Favell, 2009: 172–175). According to Jones and Graves-Brown (1996: 12), for instance, ‘the construction of European identity shares many features with that of the nation state, including the tendency to exclude those aspects of the multiplicity of European histories which are not conducive to a linear narrative’, and this inability to embrace multiplicity is likely to have contributed to some of the hostile attitudes towards migrants that are so common today. More importantly, what Viki’s experience seems to emphasize is that it is not sufficient to set tasks that are supposed to encourage intercultural communication because unless the people setting those tasks are interculturally competent, we run the risk of reinforcing old stereotypes and hegemonic visions of childhood, migration and identity.

Learning from the past: Carmine Abate’s La festa del ritorno

Finally, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the last case study is slightly different as it does not engage with the recent flow of migrants settling temporarily or permanently in Italy in the hope of constructing a better future for their families, but concentrates on those Italians who in the 20th century (and particularly after WWII), unable to find viable work in their country, moved abroad. The inclusion of this text is important for two reasons: first of all because, as argued by various scholars (Ballinger, 2016; Bouchard, 2010; Pugliese, 2008), the history of Italian emigration provides a useful tool for understanding contemporary immigration; second, because any narrative about emigration challenges a monolithic notion of Italy and Italianness (Ballinger, 2016).

Through the semi-autobiographical story of a father and son, Abate focuses on the impact of migration on those left behind, in this case Marco, a boy who grew up torn between longing for his father’s return and fearing his next departure. ¹³ As in the previous texts, the metaphor of the journey seems to be a useful tool through which to look at migration, as departures and arrivals are part of everyone’s life. Like the author, the protagonist’s family belongs to one of the historic Albanian communities of Southern Italy. Apart from reminding us that migration is not a new phenomenon, such communities offer an interesting example of plurilingualism, and consequently, of cultural diversity, as they happily alternate between arbëreshë, the local dialect and standard Italian. As Luzi (2008: 91) points out, from an anthropological perspective, belonging to an ethnic enclave means belonging to two worlds, being open to interchange and confrontation as a space where multiplicity is a genetic trait of an identity that is constantly in flux. Plurilingualism becomes the symbol of this identity, both for Abate and the protagonists of his books: ‘questo modo di scrivere [ . . . ] mi serve per raccontare il sentimento sotteso alle storie con una lingua che sia il sangue dei personaggi’ [this way of writing enables me to express the underlying feelings of my stories, in a language that is the very blood of the characters] (FdR: 171–72).

Living across different worlds and cultures, however, is not always easy as homecomings and departures are two sides of the same medal for migrants. The journey is always circular (Luzi, 2008), and with no single point of origin, the distance from ‘home’ is never bridged (p. 95). Displacement and migration become conditions of life, as the ending of the book reveals. As soon as Christmas day, Marco’s father declared that with the money he had set aside in France, he wanted to open a small cement factory, so that his son would not need to emigrate, but Marco realized that his destiny would also take him elsewhere: ‘un giorno avrei comprato una valiga di finta pelle. A diciott’anni e sette mesi, per essere precisi’ [one day I would buy a fake leather suitcase. At the age of eighteen and six months, to be precise] (FdR: 166). When questioned by his father about the suitcase, Marco pointed two fingers at his temples, repeating the same gesture his father made every time he left, as if to stress the inevitability of the journey. Departures and homecomings denote the lives of most characters in the book, including Marco’s half sister Elisa, who is ‘toing and froing’ between Hora (where the family lives) and Cosenza (where she studies) and eventually moves to France where she was born, and her mother died; Elisa’s lover, a married man who, when he is not busy taking Elisa to Cosenza or back to Hora, likes wandering aimlessly through the countryside, guided only by his feet (FdR: 22); and even Marco’s dog, Spertina, who is hardly ever still and, like Marco, likes exploring the ‘varrónche’ [the gorges] surrounding the village. Since the notion of homeland cannot coincide with a fixed territory, it needs to be constructed through memory, through the accumulation of enough material to enable the individual to identify with it (Luzi, 2008: 97), hence the importance of storytelling and the significance of the book’s title. The homecoming celebrations provide what Zapata-Barrero (2016: 57) calls a contact zone, an opportunity for people to talk and get to know each other. As Abate explains in the afterword to the 2014 edition of his book, as regards the meaning of la festa del ritorno:

Da una parte richiama una festa reale che si tiene ogni anno al mio paese e che abbiamo organizzato la prima volta con un gruppo di amici vent’anni fa, con lo scopo di far incontrare e dialogare il paese che resta e il paese che parte; dall’altra, se è vero che il ritorno è anche dolore, il titolo ne mette in luce il lato gioioso e festoso: così era per me da bambino quando rientrava mio padre dall’estero, così è oggi quando dal Nord rientro al mio paese. In fondo, il ritorno è un modo per non perdere un pezzo importante di noi, quello in cui sono racchiuse le nostre storie la nostra memoria più profonda. (FdR: 173)

[On the one hand it refers to a real celebration that takes place in my village every year and which we first organized, some friends and I, twenty years ago with the intention of providing an opportunity for the section of the village that stayed behind and the section that left to meet and talk; on the other, if it is true that going back is also painful, the title highlights its positive and joyous side: this is how I felt when I was little and my father would come back from abroad, this is how I feel today when from the North I go back to my village. After all, going back is a way of not losing an important part of ourselves, the one where our stories, our most deep-seated memories are stored.]

The homecoming celebrations coincide with Christmas and take place around a huge bonfire. Bonfires in folklore represent the myth of the rebirth of a larger family and community spirit (Luzi, 2008: 100) that are essential for people to develop a sense of belonging in the absence of a single, physical place to call home. Even though this ‘rebirth’ can only happen in the utopian sphere, the regular repetition of the ritual is what matters, hence also the importance of food prepared for special occasions, or according to the seasons, throughout the book (Luzi, 2008: 95). Christmas represents an ideal moment for the homecoming celebrations not just for practical reasons (the construction yard where Marco’s father worked in Northern France would close in winter due to the cold), but also because of its symbolic value. If despite the trauma of separation from his father (FdR: 45), Marco is fundamentally a happy child, Abate argues, it is because, through his father’s stories, he is able to recover the family memories, and this solid connection to the past enables him to face the future with optimism and determination (FdR: 170).

Conclusion

To conclude, what all the aforementioned case studies have in common is an idea that ‘the “perfect” human beings are those who can see the whole world as a foreign land, a land of surprise and marvel, bound to enrich more than to impoverish them’ as suggested by Ferme (2006: 156) in his study of Abate’s works. However, to foster openness, we need to create contact zones for people to meet and share their everyday experiences, as the way people interact and relate to each other is extremely important in the construction of personal identity (Zapata-Barrero, 2016: 61). This is why, despite its administrative shortcomings, the role of school in promoting intercultural citizenship is extremely important. What emerges from the books we have analysed, particularly Caliceti’s and Gatti’s works, is that while many Italians are changing and willing to embrace the other, the language and rhetoric of institutions lag behind, unable to accommodate people’s complex identities. As discussed by Meissner and Vertovek (2015: 3), this is a typical feature of super-diverse societies, as policy makers are still struggling to grasp the impact of the new migratory trends and adapt their policies accordingly. Building on the work of Jane Jacob, White (2018: 24) argues that what we are experiencing is a gap between policy and practice. While trust among neighbours can gradually be developed and foster a sense of community, concepts like trust and togetherness cannot easily be transferred to the bureaucratic and legal spheres, which is why White advocates the need to create an intercultural policy framework to help governments (whether national, regional or local) to address this gap.

What emerges from the works studied is that national ethnicity narratives are extremely resilient even though, as Favell (2009) argues, this ‘nostalgia for contained, culturally secure citizenship and nation-based societies’ clashes with the needs of our globalized world where the labour market seems to ‘demand an almost endless reserve army of flexible foreign workers’ (p. 172). Finally, all the case studies have shown that the journey leading to the formation of intercultural citizens should begin during childhood because most children are naturally curious and drawn towards the other, displaying a level of intercultural competence far superior to that of many adults. Moreover, these texts are an example of how literature and storytelling can function as contact zones and contribute to the promotion of intercultural communication by challenging stereotypes and common beliefs. Also, as Parati (2005: loc. 935) would put it, they contribute to the construction of a new fragmented frame in which Italianness is inscribed, a frame that, owing precisely to its fragmented nature, ‘blurs the boundaries between sameness and difference’, thus negating ‘the possibility of a singular imagined Italian community’.