Contesting race and citizenship : youth politics in the black Mediterranean

__Contesting Race and Citizenship__ is an original study of Black politics and varieties of political mobilization in Italy. While there is extensive research on first-generation immigrants and refugees who traveled from Africa to Italy, there is little scholarship about the experiences of Black people who were born and raised in Italy. Camilla Hawthorne focuses on the ways Italians of African descent have become entangled with processes of re-defining the legal, racial, cultural, and economic boundaries of Italy and by extension, of Europe itself. __Contesting Race and Citizenship__ opens up discussions of the so-called migrant "crisis" by focusing on a generation of Black people who, though born or raised in Italy, have been thrust into the same racist, xenophobic political climate as the immigrants and refugees who are arriving in Europe across the Mediterranean Sea from the African continent. Hawthorne traces not only mobilizations for national citizenship, but also the more capacious, transnational Black diasporic possibilities that emerge when activists confront the ethical and political limits of citizenship as a means for securing meaningful, lasting racial justice—possibilities that are centered on shared critiques of the racial state, as well as shared histories of racial capitalism and colonialism. Contesting Race and Citizenship is an original study of Black politics and varieties of political mobilization in Italy. Although there is extensive research on first-generation immigrants and refugees who traveled from Africa to Italy, there is little scholarship about the experiences of Black people who were born and raised in Italy. Camilla Hawthorne focuses on the ways Italians of African descent have become entangled with processes of redefining the legal, racial, cultural, and economic boundaries of Italy and by extension, of Europe itself. Contesting Race and Citizenship opens discussions of the so-called migrant "crisis" by focusing on a generation of Black people who, although born or raised in Italy, have been thrust into the same racist, xenophobic political climate as the immigrants and refugees who are arriving in Europe from the African continent. Hawthorne traces not only mobilizations for national citizenship but also the more capacious, transnational Black diasporic possibilities that emerge when activists confront the ethical and political limits of citizenship as a means for securing meaningful, lasting racial justice—possibilities that are based on shared critiques of the racial state and shared histories of racial capitalism and colonialism. Contents Acknowledgments Note on Language, Terminology, and Translation Introduction: Contested Borders in the Time of Monsters Part 1 CITIZENSHIP 1. Italian Ethnonationalism and the Limits of Citizenship 2. Black Entrepreneurs and the “(Re)Making” of Italy 3. Mediterraneanism, Africa, and the Racial Borders of Italianness Part 2 DIASPORIC POLITICS 4. Translation and the Lived Geographies of the Black Mediterranean 5. Refugees and Citizens-in-Waiting Conclusion: Looking South Coda Methodological Appendix Notes Bibliography Index "Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, this book explores the political mobilizations of Black Italians, the children of African and Afro-Latinx immigrants who were born and raised in Italy, as they engage with questions of citizenship, state racism, and global Black diasporic interconnection"-- Provided by publisher