If observed through history’s complex lens, this relationship seems very different to the Christian way of welcoming the poor and the destitute. It is instead closed to the multiplication, in modern times, of “processes involving the exclusion and elimination of all that seemed impossible to assimilate, such as political rebels, determined heretics, Muslims, cannibal and immoral South American Indians”.
Immigrants, those in exile, vagabonds and beggars: figure on the outskirts of society have always attracted the attention of those governing. Who were the “immigrants” of the past, those like modernity’s illegal immigrants, what threats did they appear to pose and how were they judged socially?
The list can only be a superficial one. One should follow the meanings of words. The Greeks differed from barbarians, the Romans distinguished between citizens and non-citizens; during the Middle Ages the distinction was between Christians and infidels, and when America was discovered pagans and savages appeared. Migrations were seasonal – the transhumance of flocks and herds; people moving down from the mountains in the winter to work here and there and then return home. These became definitive at times of great devastation, such as the barbaric invasions and the implementation of the rule “cuius regio eius religio”. The barbaric invasions destroyed the integration model of the Roman Empire which had been amazingly effective. New models were established, depending on power and cultural relations with previous populations and with existing civil and religious leaders: fusion or a clear division and the imposition of new power and new rules.
Within the framework of medieval Christian Europe, phenomena concerning the movement of individuals or groups were numerous, and included the medieval immigrations from the feudal countryside to the cities, encouraged by a law that freed from slavery (“city air makes people free”). On the other hand defeated political enemies were expelled and this was used as a weapon in the battle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. In those days danger came from within. The exterior brought commerce and wealth to medieval cities and hence cities originally experienced a layout organised according to places of origin. Venice had its German area, the Lombards had their districts in Bruges and in Paris. There are places of worship distinguished by their origins, such as the brotherhoods of various groups coming from different places (Saint John of the Florentines in Rome for example). Systems for welcoming travellers, pilgrims and those on journeys linked to business or devotion, led to the creation of hospitals along the most important routes and stimulated the creation of religious orders and brotherhoods specialised in hosting people and taking care of them. The kiss Saint Francis gave the leper was the mark of Christian brotherhood for an extreme form of evil seen as a danger and a curse.
When did cities become instead a symbol of protection from a threatening exterior?
Famines and great epidemics in the 14th Century marked a turning point. Death came from the exterior. So the cities were organised so as to control foreigners with quarantine in ports, health regulations, and goods inspections that resulted in a different relationship with those arriving from the exterior. The poor were no longer seen as the figure of Christ but as a threat to the order and the possessions of citizens. The crowds of beggars abandoning the countryside where people died of hunger due to famines or wars, tried to take refuge in the cities where food-rationing laws guaranteed survival. These crowds were frightening and resulted in projects to create institutions where they could be locked-up. These kinds of projects also affected the presence of the Jews, with whom interreligious marriages were strictly forbidden as were relations involving conviviality. The Jews too provided financial activities that helped the economy in cities.
The privileges bestowed upon them by princes and sovereigns however, stirred the propaganda of Franciscan preachers who blamed epidemics on their presence. This resulted in a generalised expelling of the Jews from Christian states, or, as an alternative, in rules that isolated them in ghettoes, starting with the venetian one dated 1425. This coincided with the arrival of gypsies in Italian cities and the beginning of their long history of relations with the law and the mentality of the local inhabitants. The criteria involving religious diversity was the fundamental one for a long time and enacted against Muslims, Jews, and heretics and resulted in witch hunts and persecuting heretics: Later, after the Protestant Reformation, it resulted in a tendency to close borders with any country having a different religion. Merchants and travellers returning to Italian states from non-Catholic countries were interrogated by the Inquisition.
When was the religious criteria replaced by one based on nationality?
The new reality of the modern territorial state, with its administrators and soldiers, marks the transformation of natural or cultural borders into state frontiers. From that moment onwards immigration and emigration have been governed by laws. Emigrants and immigrants were identified and controlled social figures, just as their goods were inspected and populations tended to remain where they lived and increase in numbers as a potential military power, and forms of lifestyles were inspected and studied during periodical visits by civilian and/or religious authorities. Tax collection and control over religious and political loyalty was exercised over a well-defined territory. The state had only one ruler, one law, one religion; those who did not accept this had to leave.
It was also due to these restrictions that the 17th century was dominated by the spreading of fear of foreign presences; thieves and beggars, fake poor people, organised in gangs with a communications system based on jargon (the “zerga” language studied by Piero Camporesi). Hospitals became institutions for imprisoning people and keeping them out of sight as well as locations used for re-education and forced labour. The mentally ill were totally excluded from society. The creation of institutions for separation and control experienced an intense season. Cities became divided into separate districts based on religion in Holland and Germany, and on social-political diversity in countries dominated by only one orthodoxy. Ethnic pluralism and division based on jobs was replaced by a geography of diversity, with high-class districts and ghettoes. Concern about security resulted in the police force being founded as an institution for controlling those at the borders of society (such as the famous force set up in France under Louis XIV). In England, the arrival in new industrial cities of desperate people coming from the countryside, emphasised social fear caused by the new proletarian classes perceived as dangerous.
Compared to these examples, when and why has the pendulum swung now towards attempts to integrate them and then instead towards alienating these people even more, making them innocuous and above all invisible?
Very roughly, one could say that during the Middle Ages the dominant principle was that of charitable help for the poor and the outcast who were considered an unavoidable presence and one wanted by God. In modern times conflicts between states and between churches resulted in the multiplication of processes involving the exclusion and elimination of all that appeared to be impossible to assimilate (political rebels, tenacious heretics, Muslims, cannibal and immoral South American Indians), and even more in the creation of institutions homologating those who were ‘different’, such as hospices, institutes for juveniles and those who had converted, as well as missions. The most important among these institutions were schools which, thanks to literacy and the teaching of social rules, also reached out to those who were illiterate, the lower classes and American Indians.
How does the scapegoat phenomenology form in your opinion, and in modern and contemporary history which fears resulted in those who are different being hunted down? Were these fears above all economic and social ones (for example a lack of resources) or rather are they psychological and linked to identity?
The creation of a “scapegoat” is something that lurks inside us all, but requires a particular effort to be undertaken by those in power and by organised forces so as to succeed. One fundamental condition for success is extremely elevated state and institutional unity, such as French and German nationalism, which managed to use the Jewish scapegoat previously predisposed in history and turn it into popular anti-Semitism, thanks to the existence of a powerful national identity, to frustration over a lost war, to fear of inflation, and the threat posed by communism. This experiment did not work in Italy, or at least not completely, because in this country traditional individualism, localism, and cosmopolitanism as well as the solidarity network of peasant society prevented this infection from taking root.
In some ways Italy is a country with traditions of tolerance. How is it then that solidarity for those who arrive here, or are different, is increasingly less of a shared value both in society and in politics?
Economic uncertainty resulting from the passing from an industrial era to a post-industrial one, the fragility of fundamental institutions perceived as the other aspect of a “miracle” resulting from uncontrolled individualism with no progress made at a cultural level or by civil awareness were the pre-conditions that on one hand resulted in the manifest non-existence of an adequate political project backing vacuous calls for solidarity coming from the Left, and on the other, the terrorist campaigns coming from the Right.
Recent provisions against immigration adopted by the government now characterize underground life, a tragically necessary condition, as a real crime. In observing this neo-moralism from a historical viewpoint, do you believe it is possible to see a return to the old ideologies of the past, in which poverty and nomadism were considered sins of individuals or divine punishment?
Hostility felt with regards to nomads is an ancient and deeply-rooted feeling; what is new is that increased levels of consumption and wealth and the vanishing memories of our own emigrants, have increased the gap with the gypsies and abolished tolerance and solidarity for those who are the most poor. Anyone threatening the safety of property causes extremely violent reactions. In a Catholic country the religious ideology of poverty seen as divine punishment has no foundations. If anything, the Catholic world can provide solutions for the ferociousness of governments of the rich and the police forces. Social voluntary work, parishes and associations are some of the energy reserves that have allowed immigration issues to be addressed, and provide answers that are not exclusively those of policing and prisons.
If one also considers the past, could one say that the civilisations with the most vitality are those that integrated diversity? Or does a disintegration of identity undermine in some way these same civilisations? What is the “immunity” balance between welcoming and rejecting diversity?
Our societies seem to be blocked as far as their social set-ups are concerned, in which the gap between an extremely wealthy minority and an impoverished middle class increases frenetically, and these extremes share the same lack of solidarity as far as those less fortunate are concerned. These are culturally repetitive and not very creative societies, capable only of exploiting the legacy of the past’s historical and artistic creations, treated like stocks and shares; not to mention Italy where the landscape is destroyed as are natural resources, and great wealth consisting in research and universities is wasted. The winds of conservationism and fear blow in Europe. The phenomenon of hatred felt for the Romas is only the tip of a hidden and dangerous iceberg as far as this fear is concerned.
Is there another path to follow for the hoards we see entering the European area, differing from blind exploitation masked as a defence of “identity”? We shall see if there is an answer, and what that answer will be. One thing is clear. To address this problem one would need to see improved social institutions and individual guarantees to raise our current standards, such as schools, health services and protection of the territory. We desperately need policies looking to the future, investing in research, attacking corporations and providing solidity and hope for the younger generations, instead of obliging them to emigrate or experience flight, isolation, temporary and non-constructive jobs.
Translation by Francesca Simmons