However, in the Scalabrinian project of recovery, ?invisibility? is not figured in terms of this history of discrimination and ostracism. Invisibility, rather, is deployed in discussions about multicultural Britain, and about the organic integration of Italians in the British social landscape. Italians represent themselves as ?invisible immigrants? to emphasise the political indifference they come up against in their country of settlement, as well as to describe what they view as the quiet, non-disruptive nature of their insertion within the British social fabric; as one community leader put it, ?this community lives and often solves its problems without making a din.? (LV 898, November 1993: 1) Tassello’s re-appropriation of the phrase ?invisible immigrants? thus forecloses the possibility that invisibility might have been desirable for some Italians. Consequently, a shift in meaning has occurred: from constituting a ?passing? strategy, invisibility is now perceived as the undesirable result of assimilation that causes the loss of an original ?ethnic and national identity?. ?[T]here lies within you a legitimate fear about the future of Italian emigration in Great Britain: the fear of losing your own ethnic and national identity.? (LV 831, October 1990: 15)
The issue at stake, for the Scalabrinians, is the loss of ethnic difference. The project of ?visibility? is thus couched in a politics of difference that both mimics and calls into question the ?invisibility? of whiteness (Dyer 1997). Calling for the recognition of Italians as immigrants challenges established conceptions of ?ethnic minorities? in Britain, and states that whites too can be immigrants, hence ?ethnic?. At the same time, rendering Italians ?invisible? allows them to be ?absorbed into the authoritative “norm” ? if no one looks black, everyone is white? (Fraser 1999: 112). As Breda Gray notes, ?[i]n a racially structured society in which categories of ?visibility? largely establish identity, looking “white” offers the possibility of “passing” and thereby exceeding the categories of “visibility”?. At the same time, when the identity of Italians is questioned, and the project to make them visible is raised, the idea of a ?totalising? whiteness begins to be challenged. The latter results in part from the British state’s response to immigration in the late 1950s, which reinforced a black-white dichotomy in terms of ?race?. But the Britain of the late 1950s and 1960s also witnessed the systematisation of a new racism where culture, rather than skin colour, became the key principle of differentiation: in this discourse, the naturalisation of culture diffuses ?race? and racism in ethnic-related discourses of differentiation. The re-configuration of ethnic identity in terms of cultural rather than racial difference may have provided the discursive backdrop against which the project of retrieving Italians from their invisibility became feasible. (10) Hence the Italian project of visibility walks the fine line between cultural-ethnicity and race, which constantly slide into each other in contemporary British discourses of multiculturalism. While the idea of ?invisibility? racialises Italians as ?invisible whites?, their project of visibility ethnicises them by seeking to create a distinct ?cultural-ethnicity?.
Indeed, some Italian intellectuals, including Scalabrinians, take pride in their ?marginality? as ?the most European section of British society? who will ?help Europeanise Britain? (Colpi 1991: 22, 258) by fostering a ?European conscience [within English society] whose temptation is always to shut itself off, to close itself upon itself? (Tassello in LV 831, October 1990: 15). At the same time, as already stated, the Scalabrinians are utterly aware of the dangers of absolutism which they seek to side-step through biblical modernist discourses about the universalism of the (Christian) human migrant subject. Thus a paradox ensues: that is that the Scalabrinian project of visibility is pronounced through the modality of invisibility, captured in the present/absent body in the fresco. More specifically, the bodily experience of migration are at once denied and enforced. This visual depiction of emigration-as-Calvary speaks of the hope of transcending the suffering immigrant body, of rendering the immigrant body invisible, whilst it the body is the preferred site for the representation of the sufferance and hope of the migration experience.
In conclusion
The project of migration-as-transcendence of the ?foreigner condition? is cast within the postmodern landscape of fragmentation within global interconnectedness. A kind of third space, which, however, does not exist outside of social forces of race and ethnicity. The construction of a migrant ontology universalises migration as part of being human, while it covers significant distinctions that relate to different conditions of migration and different experiences of ?home?.
First, differences are denied by concealing ?the substantive difference it makes when one is forced to cross borders, of when one cannot return home? (Ahmed 2000: 81). Italian-British culture, to be sure, is a migrant culture where the Italian homeland remains a ?spiritual possibility? (Salvatore in Caccia 1985: 158). Historically specific conditions of the diasporisation of Italians support a kind of imagining of Italy not as a mythical homeland, nor as a land of expulsion. It manifests itself in Italian ?migr? culture not in terms of rupture, uprooting, or discontinuity, but rather, as continuity, as a place where one can return. So even if the return to Italy is difficult, and the place of origin no longer feels like home, the deterritorialisation of ?home? surfaces from the possibility of moving between ?homes?. Italians can, and many do, move between Italy and the UK. Their refusal of fixing a home within the glorified migrant identity is formulated from a position of access to multiple spaces that could be called home; to put it bluntly, it’s easy to refuse ?home? when you’ve already got one (or more). In this respect, the ontologisation of migration as transcendence (of borders, of differences, and so on) denies the multiplicity of experiences of ?homing desires? (Brah 1996).
Second, a tension emerges between wanting to be visible and the suspicion for the surveillance that visibility allows. While the project of recovering the Italian presence in Britain conceals important differences by assuming the universal experience of migration-as-estrangement, it raises important anxieties about what it means to be a ?stranger? for those who are in that position. Being at home in migranthood is not a project shared by all members of the Italian ?community?. When I discussed the Scalabrinian identity politics with members of the Italian Women’s Club (Club Donne Italiane; CDI), who meet at the Centro Scalabrini, many resisted the labels ?immigrant? or ??migr?. ?I don’t consider myself an immigrant. I live here, I’m English.? ?I’m just an Italian who lives in London, I feel at home here and in Italy. I’m not an immigrant, and I’m not an emigrant?. ?But we are immigrants, whether we like or not!? ?But why do they [the Scalabrinians] spend so much time fighting for our voting rights in Italy anyway? I’d like them to fight for our rights here, in Britain. I’ve been here 20 years and I still can’t vote.? At this point they all agreed.
As I listened and engaged with the women, it seemed to me that in the midst of the animation surfaced an anxiety to belong. The energetic rebuttal of ?emigration? as a defining trait of collective identity goes hand-in-hand with a fear of being marginalised. In a country and continent where ?immigrant? means black, minority, and foreigner, these women refused to be pushed to the margins of belonging in Britain. As Europeans who move freely between two countries, who cross borders without hassle (in theory), who are organically integrated in the British social and economic fabric, these women’s experience of migration is not that which is associated with ?immigrants? or ?emigrants?. At once ?foreigners? ? culturally and politically (for example, many have no voting rights in the UK) ? and no-longer-immigrants, they are searching for a vocabulary that would adequately define their modes of living, their senses of identity, and, more importantly, that would not emphasise their marginality in British society.
The concern of some of these women is to go unnoticed and to be included within the white British majority. As Antonia (not her real name) once told me: ?We’re not a minority. We’re well integrated, we speak English, our children studied here, we’ve got good jobs. We’re not a minority.? Being defined as ?minority? is equivalent to being marked as cultural and economic ?outsider?. Whereas to be an unmarked ?invisible? white Italian, a non-?ethnic?, is to assume a mobile identity that can move without notice or effect. To be ?minority?, to be ?ethnic?, is to be hindered in that movement, to become visible and potentially open to surveillance (Gray). This is indeed a tension inherent in the Italian identity project: recovering the Italian presence in Britain and creating a ?new identity? inevitably allows for the construction of terrains of belonging through which the social dynamics of inclusion/exclusion are delineated. Who is included and who is not? What does it mean to be Italian, or of Italian cultural background? Likewise, what does it mean to be a (im)migran
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