The New Racism in Europe
A Sicilian Ethnography

Ground breaking study of everyday attitudes to immigration, race, and nationalism in Italy.

Jeffrey Cole (Author)

9780521021494, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 October 2005

176 pages, 10 b/w illus. 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.271 kg

'Jeffrey Cole's book is essential reading for scholars interested in studies of migration and racism in Europe and within Italian culture.' Modern Italy

In the last twenty years, immigration has become one of the most contested issues in Western Europe. The arrival of Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans and others in Italy has reversed earlier trends of emigration. Debate, political activity and violence have raised questions of rejection and integration, of anti-racism and the new racism. Studies of these issues commonly focus on political activity and the plight of minorities, but this book breaks new ground in its emphasis on the everyday reactions of Italians to immigration and related issues. Drawing on research carried out in Palermo, Jeffrey Cole considers the role of class, culture, local history and political economy in the ambivalent responses of Sicilians to immigrants. He places Italian attitudes in a European context, and investigates why anti-immigrant politics are concentrated in the wealthy Italian North.

1. Introduction
2. When the bottom looks down: working-class views of immigrants in Palermo
3. The view from the top: Bourgeois views of immigrants in Palermo
4. The politics of race and immigration in the Italian North and South
5. Conclusions
Appendix
Notes
References.

Subject Areas: Physical anthropology [JHMP]