ALLIEVI S. (2008). Nuove forme dell’islam nel mercato globale (introduzione a). In: PATRICK HAENNI. L’islam di mercato. L’altra rivoluzione conservatrice. (pp. 7-12). ISBN: 978-88-8137-313-0. TROINA (EN): Città Aperta.
Questo libro è disponibile su:
ALLIEVI S. (2008). Migrazioni di ieri, lezioni per l’oggi. Di partenze, di racconti, di vino e d’altro ancora (introduzione). In: DANIELA MELFA. Migrando a sud. Coloni italiani in Tunisia (1881-1939). (pp. 25-48). ISBN: 978-88-548-0919-5. ROMA: Aracne (ITALY).
Questo libro è disponibile su:
ALLIEVI S. (2008). Musulmani in Italia. In: BRANCA P., SANTERINI M. Alunni arabofoni a scuola. (pp. 37-55). ISBN: 9788843045983. ROMA: Carocci (ITALY). E R e R/I
Questo libro è disponibile su:
Allievi S. (2006), I sociologi italiani e l’affaire Ramadan, in “Religioni e Società”, XXI, n.56, settembre-dicembre 2006, pp.107-115; issn 0394-9397
Allievi (2005), Conflicts, Cultures and Religions: Islam in Europe as a Sign and Symbol of Change in European Societies, in “Yearbook on Sociology of Islam”, n.3, pp.18-27
Abstract
In this paper I attempt to analyze some key-concepts (such as multiculturalism, globalization, identity, community, and pluralism) using the presence of Islam in the European public space as a case-study.
The aim is to define how important it is in understanding the change in European societies, of which it forms an important part, but also a symbol laden with significance.
Pluralism, or rather pluralization, is a determining concept in defining the new Europe being built: on the social, cultural and religious level plurality is no longer pathology, but physiology. To the point that the very idea of Nation-State that we have inherited seems no longer either explicative or representative, and perhaps not even descriptive of the social and institutional landscape of the various European countries.
In this framework a kaleidoscope of cultures is taking shape, whose pieces (identities and cultural communities) are in continual movement and transformation, and of which European Islam is an important element, from both the numerical and symbolic point of view.
This is however a presence with peculiar characteristics in respect to the Islam of the countries of origin: with “Meccan” rather than “Medinese” characteristics, in which being a minority becomes a constitutive and transformational element.
In this situation of ever greater pluralization and hence of inevitable confrontation, reactive identities and conflicts are developing to play a determining role in the designing of the map of European Islam, but also of Europe itself.
CONFLICTS, CULTURES, AND RELIGIONS
Islam in Europe as a sign and symbol of change in European societies
by
Stefano Allievi
Changes in the European cultural and religious landscape
The fact that, despite religious practice being widely considered to be in decline all over the continent, the definition of Europe, or better European specificity, can perhaps be understood in terms of religion rather than any other defining criterion, is a possibility that deserves closer examination with all the necessary caution.1 As much of the research shows, religion is not just a “cultural heritage” that may be on the way to being abandoned, a fact of tradition without any obvious consequences for today or with a diminishing importance. On the subjective (individual) level, it is under transformation and displaying less coherence and fewer non-linear attitudes of belonging, but significant forms of participation and involvement. On the objective (structural) level, the demand for forms of recognition and institutionalization (which come not only from the dominant Christian institutions in the relevant countries, but also from significant sectors of public opinion) is not on the decrease. On the contrary, from the financing of religious schools to the debate on bioethics, from certain neo-conservative political positions to the recovery of a public symbolism that we might consider a form of “re-traditionalization” from above, there is no lack of signs of institutional visibilization of religion, at times re-inventing forms of civil religion.
Clearly, the second of these phenomena could simply be interpreted as a sign of weakness caused by the first. Thus, the attempts to re-establish consensus from above merely show that the established religions are losing presence, capacities, and power. However, this interpretation may not be sufficient to allow us to understand fully this complex phenomenon which seems too profound to be explained by a simple interpretation in terms of balance of power or economic (market) rationality. We may admit that the secularization paradigm is not working as expected by its more naive interpreters (Casanova 1994).
Among other factors, a certain degree of reemergence of religion in the definition of nationhood, which is included in the “identity” of Europe by cultural and political forces, also appears to indicate that the religious reference is much more than mere remains of the past. This evolution is internal to Europe. However, the presence of new religions – and in a very special way Islam – that arrived in the wake of the waves of immigration is producing changes that are more than significant and should be acknowledged as radical or even historical due to the effects that they will presumably have on European societies.
A standard situation of pluralism
The presence of ever-increasing numbers of immigrants in the European social landscape it is not merely a quantitative fact with different consequences for many social and cultural dynamics. Changes in the quantitative levels of so many different indicators (economic, social, cultural, political, religious) not only produce quantitative change, they alter the scenario completely. Overall, the indicators that are currently changing as a result of the presence of immigrant populations in Europe are producing and creating new problems, new processes of interrelation, new conflicts, and new solutions to them. In a word, they are producing qualitative change, i.e. nothing less than a different type of society which is quite different to that imagined with the rise of the nation state and its founding principles. A society for which we have no plans or rules and for which we can only proceed by trial and error, learning through experience.
Among the changes taking place, one of the most visible is the so-called “return” of cultures – and in particular religions – to the European public space. Incidentally, religions are profoundly embedded in cultures, and vice versa – even if we tend to overlook it, it is no coincidence that cult and culture share the same etymology. This fact tends to be ignored in the West (and even more acutely in the universities which, in my view – and this is a small and entirely unacknowledged sociological fact – is not extraneous to the “academic” underestimation of the persistence, force, and social effects of religion in a social context) where processes of secularization appear to be secularizing readings of reality. It is demonstrated particularly strongly by immigrant communities, some more than others, and arouses surprise and even amazement in observers, including multi-culturalists, sometimes reluctant to grasp the religious specificity of these cultures. A public space which used to be described in terms of secularization is now increasingly described as a territory in which a “return of religions” is one of the main ongoing processes.
Even if it is not the only case in point, Islam – and in particular Islam in Europe – is often considered the most problematic and “problematized” expression of this process. In fact, if only because of the significant numbers involved and, of course, the historical legacy associated with the relationship between Islam and the West, it offers a great deal of substance for reflection. It incorporates various ethnic sources, a number of autochthones (i.e. converts) and second generations born on European soil and progressively “integrated”, as well as a broad series of environments in which it produces a contested imaginary, often despite the will of Muslims themselves: from the rebirth of fundamentalisms to gender relations, through the relations between the state and religious communities and the dynamics of mixed marriages. Although Islam is not the only religion that finds itself in this situation, it demonstrates more than others the growth in and difficulties surrounding cultural pluralism, and, more generally, the ever-increasing weight of the “C” factor, i.e. culture in the wider more anthropological than sociological sense of the term, in Western societies. And finally, as many observers note, Islam shows more than other indicators the fact that religion is back on the agenda.
Excursus: on mobility and religions
As has always been the case, the mobility of religions is also linked with human mobility. Thus it forms part of the more general “mobiletic revolution” involving the movement of information, goods, money, and ideas as well as the movement of men and women. It is an increasingly rapid process and is, in turn, part of the more “problematized” process of globalization. One of its effects is the inCreasing coexistence of an ever-expanding cultural and religious plurality on one and the same territory, which is emerging in the processes of change that are sweeping over Europe and beyond, despite the significant resistance and reaction to it. Islam, i.e. the presence of Muslim populations in Europe, is the most debated example of this process. On one hand, we still have the habitual religious presences that are a constant, i.e. very much more present – even if only for reasons of inertia – both in terms of social and cultural roots and institutional incardination, than the emphasis on change and the new religious modes manage to comprehend. On the other hand, however, there is change itself, the dynamisms that more than troubling the waters, actually modify their composition.
The “religious moment”2 as currently being experienced by the West is characterized by two concomitant phenomena which are sometimes considered by the social actors who interpret them as competing. Firstly, together with the religions traditionally present in Europe (the various Christian faiths, the Jewish presence, and various scattered elements which at one time would have been defined as pagan), today we find other religious actors who are increasingly articulate and visible. Secondly, with the arrival of new immigrant populations, an event usually described in sociology, from Poulat and Bourdieu onwards, using the perhaps debatable yet very effective economic metaphor of “a religious market”, has been made even more complex. The supply of religious goods, which is already widespread and increasingly visible for reasons of its own, has found a fecund new niche of the market in which to expand, as well as new social entrepreneurs of the sacred and different modes of consumption; new channels for religious import-export activity have also been opened. What this means, in short, is that there is an ever greater presence of old and new religious traditions that have arrived with the immigrants.
These two phenomena are neither separate nor mutually exclusive: they interweave, interpenetrate, influence each another reciprocally, and retroact on the society into which they are inserted, in the same way as the latter retroacts on them. These new religious presences are not actually neutral. And their consequences are not limited to themselves: the presence of these new “lodgers” is susceptible to influence and, indeed, is already influencing the old “landlords” too, i.e. institutions, social systems, and – a fact that is much less reflected on – religions themselves. Furthermore, this represents an interpretive challenge to sociology which does not yet appear to be fully equipped to understand it (Allievi 2003a).
Synchronic pluralization: the new geo-religion of Europe
The presence of immigrants of different cultural and religious backgrounds is one of the engines driving society towards a change that is much greater than their presence: in fact, their presence also has important if not crucial effects on the “host society” (an expression that should be used with some irony as this connotation is becoming less credible now than it was in the past). As we have seen, the presence of immigrant populations is neither culturally nor religiously “neutral”. The immigrants do not arrive naked: they bring with them, inter alia, visions of the world, traditions, histories, faiths, practices, values, moral systems, images, and symbols. And they turn to these as indispensable identity references.3 Furthermore, they often turn to these references – or, better, they use them – not only individually, but also collectively and as communities (another crucial word that should be used more carefully than is usually the case).
In short, religion, and more precisely religion lived collectively and on the community level, has its space and role in the construction of individual and collective identity of large numbers of immigrants. This process brings about a radical change of paradigm in the strong sense of the word as used by Kuhn. And this is also an effect – and one of the less perceived ones – of the process known as globalization which has, however, a range of meanings, ranging from those of Robertson and Harvey, Bauman and Beck, through the specific focus which is more attentive to the cultural aspects of change of Appadurai, Featherstone, Lash and Tomlinson, and of anthropologists such as Hannerz and Geertz.4 In terms of this process I intend here to underline a phenomenon that is at once one of the causes of globalization and most conspicuous effects (but also one of the least studied in terms of its cultural consequences): migration. Furthermore, in terms of migration processes, I refer here more to aspects of cultural pluralization than those of homologization and “Westernization”, to use Latouche’s expression. In particular, I intend to highlight the phenomenon I refer to as synchronic pluralization which is the most conspicuous effect of the growing mobility of men and cultures, i.e. the co-existence on one and the same territory of populations and cultures that were previously distant or separated or at least far more distant and separated than they are today, and an effect of migrations, but even more of what Tomlinson (1999) has called “complex connectivity”, and other writers (from Lash to Hall, from Semprini up to Castells) have preferred variously to highlight as interconnections, fluxes, or networks. Our interpretative key, our case study, our possibility for empirical verification, will be European Islam.
As we have seen, the implications of the globalization process produce a radical change of paradigm in our interpretative criteria and, even prior to this, in our perception, our experience, and our lives. One of the things that have changed dramatically, even if we are hardly conscious of it, is our idea of our country of origin, of what we call our “native land”. We usually have, or believe we have, a clear notion of the nation state, whose elements in the classical doctrine are: one territory, one people, and one normative system (i.e. one law). An implicit corollary of this, which is not part of the doctrine but is rooted in the collective unconscious of many, is also one religion, or at least one common religious heritage with the possible inclusion of some recognized religious minorities (this is also the implicit common interpretation of classical sociology, such as that of Durkheim – an interpretation of religion as implicitly majoritarian, despite the fact that he, the son of a Rabbi, belonged to a religious minority).
For various reasons, which we cannot go into here, all of these elements are undergoing a profound change. Territories are multiplying through both processes of devolution and separation, but also processes unification and federation. Peoples are pluralizing through migration, but also internal processes of cultural differentiation. And even normative systems are pluralizing, i.e. through the differentiations between the national level, European level, the jurisdiction promoted by the International Court of The Hague, and through the incorporation of elements of allochthonous systems, such as the Islamic shar§ia in family law, i.e. marriage, divorce law etc.5 Finally, cultures and religions that are not part of any historical heritage are finding their place in society in a more or less “integrated” or “separated” way, based on different interpretations, but apparently with a certain degree of success. Incidentally, a secondary effect of this process is to make the repetition of ideological interpretations of society, such as those familiar from the 20th century, e.g. “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”, factually impossible. This may be considered as progress, I suppose. In effect, however, it is possible that the increasing pluralization of societies will have the systemic effect of triggering greater democracy in our societies and not less as many would have it.
Today, the co-existence of many religious entities, which are made even more visible and in a certain sense dramatized by the conspicuous presence of immigrant communities who look to religions that are more or less extraneous to European history or are at least perceived as such, obliges us to reckon with what appears to me pertinent to describe as a different “geo-religion”, to borrow an expression from the recent philosophical debate (Allievi 1998). People, cultures, religions, live together on the same territory: they come into contact with each other, they may or may not mix with each other, however they co-exist and cohabit. From being a pathology, plurality is now becoming physiology. It is, or is becoming, “normal”. And, furthermore, in many situations it is also becoming the ‘norm’. The problem is that our constitutions were written and our founding principles defined when the normality, the physiology, were different, and homogeneity – real or presumed – prevailed. Incidentally, this is what makes a popular interpretative paradigm such as the thesis of the “clash of civilizations”, popularized by Huntington (1996), sociologically implausible. He describes civilizations as separated, “here” and “there”, rooted in different territories and clearly definable. This is precisely what they are not, or no longer, and not only in the United States and Europe. Clearly, the fact that civilizations are not as separate as they are assumed to be does not exclude conflicts and clashes, in particular on cultural and religious grounds. They simply have to be re-interpreted differently: i.e. more as the effect of contact and interconnection than of separation. Like certain imprudent but lucky doctors, Huntington has probably understood the evolution of the illness correctly, but has completely mistaken the causes (the diagnosis), not to mention the treatment.
This change within and of society is irreversible. Homogeneity, if it has ever existed –historically it was more (and not only) a romantic myth than reality, but a myth with many “real” consequences as demonstrated by Thomas’s theorem – is no longer a criterion for the definition of society at the social, cultural, political, economic, and religious level. Thus, pluralization is occurring on all levels. Moreover, pluralization is not only a fact (implying a greater cultural, social, or religious supply disposable): it is a process that is changing society and us along with it. It is changing us and the other actors involved in the process, i.e. primarily the immigrants themselves. It is transforming our and their individual and collective identities. Good or bad, this situation already exists and we are now dealing with the consequences of this process.
The kaleidoscope of cultures or the importance of the “C” factor
Globalization and migration have had the paradoxical and certainly unintentional effect of making other remote, unknown, or misunderstood cultures “disposable” on a global scale. They are now bouncing back at us, so to speak, projected on to a global scenario, and re-localized elsewhere, in particular in the West where the macro-process of globalization also originates. This is an effect that has been observed, perhaps earlier and more accurately, by certain anthropologists who have direct contact with other cultures and their changes. Hannerz (1996), for example, who refers to “global oecumene”, is one of those who stresses that although the world has become a network of social relations, there has not been any homogenization of systems of meaning. On the contrary, in terms of the flows of exchanges of meanings, the cultural production of the peripheries, in the direction of the centre – and, through the centre, between themselves – has not only increased, but is in some way a response to the political and economic dominance of the centre.
In short, there is a process of de-territorialization of cultures in progress that is showing outcomes of a certain interest and is basically reducible to two processes (this was previously dealt with in Allievi 2004a). The first of these is the “discovery” (on our part) or re-discovery of the cultures and knowledge (including religious) of others which we find in distant territories, appropriate, bring back “home”, and compare with both our current knowledge, for example, that produced by “scientific reason”, and our “traditional”, e.g. religious, knowledge, developing diachronic comparisons that are beginning to produce results of some interest. The presence in the West of increasing numbers of “representatives” of these different kinds of knowledge is another way of making mentalities, knowledge, symbols, and visions of the world move around. The second is the arrival, through migration, of what we may call shared (included religious) knowledge: what is involved here is not only knowledge of and ideas about the world, but widespread social and cultural practices shared within ever-expanding social groups (immigrant communities) which can live these practices, reproduce them, and also “contaminate” them with different forms of knowledge and experience.
The most immediate and evident effect of these processes is the increase in the level of pluralization of the – not only “theoretically” but concretely and immediately available – supply, which has thus strengthened the possibility of choice, including religious choice, actually offered to each individual. Thus, it is becoming (or becoming once again) crucial and strategic that we reflect on the implications of what I call the “C” factor, i.e. the “culture” factor. It is no accident that more and more expressions are emerging in relation to the “mosaic of cultures” or “religious patchwork” that appears to be forming. However, these expressions highlight only the rigid, static aspect of the process currently unfolding, i.e. the increasing cultural pluralization of our societies. This is actually a dynamic and rather complex process which is better described by the image, not static but dynamic, and of continuous change, of a culture kaleidoscope whose pieces, both large and small – (and, leaving aside the metaphor, the old and new cultural forms that were monopolistic in the past and remain dominant or at least more institutionalized) are in constant movement. The “C” factor, in a broad sense, is increasingly decisive. To borrow the title of a well-known book by Nathan Glazer (1997): “We are All Culturalists Now”. Like the presence of immigrants, cultural exchange constitutes some of the engines that drive the culture kaleidoscope. And the overlap of the various pieces, the new ones and the existing ones, produce new forms and new shades of colour, that is, they produce phenomena of “métissage”, syncretism, and cultural hybridization. The most important of these elements include, of course, Islam.
Multiculturalism
The acceptance of the term “multiculturalism” is considered as given, at least in terms of its descriptive meaning, despite the fact that it contains a serious original defect: the vast majority of contributions to the debate on multiculturalism, or at least in the more important ones, are substantially monocultural, i.e. Anglo-Saxon, also from the linguistic perspective .6 Thus, this debate starts from empirical premises and theoretical references that seriously underestimate other empirical situations and other possible theoretical references. This is already true if we limit ourselves to the Western context and much more so if we think on a global cultural scale. The main problem is probably due to the definition of (collective) identities which is too often implicit in the debate. This term is, in fact, ambiguous and anything but clear. Religious or political definitions of identities are very different from the way identities are perceived and tested at individual level. Scholars from different fields rarely understand each other when speaking of multiculturalism, identities, communities, etc. (“What is culture?”, the question raised in the earliest days of the social-anthropological disciplines, remains the question and one with too many answers.) What political philosophy often takes for granted is described in an entirely different way, or simply not accepted, by sociology, anthropology, and psychology (the human sciences). If (collective) identity is a problematic concept, any abstract consideration of suggested “politics of recognition” of these same identities will be even more problematic (I clearly refer here to Taylor and many others).
It is not my aim here to analyze the concept of (collective) identity. I simply wish to suggest that the debate would gain significantly if the concept were applied to the case study of “Islam in Europe”. More than discussions on Aboriginal populations in Australia, the French population of Quebec, or references to homosexual rights or the women’s movement, the empirical case of Muslim populations in Europe appears to offer an ideal point of reference for the comparison, challenging and, probably also, rejection of many of the theories of multiculturalism and their implications.
What is culture? What is religion? What is identity? What is community? What is individual? And how do all these references – too often considered as static – change? And how fast? All of these questions could be challenged in a very interesting way by empirical observations from this field, particularly if it were to be studied from a sociological perspective and with a socio-historical sensitivity: men, women, identities, communities, societies, change – because thay want to, because they are obliged to, or sometimes simply due to the fact that time is passing (something sociologists should know, even if they often forget it, but which political philosophers hardly ever take into consideration). What I have elsewhere referred to as the “T” factor (“T” for time) is central to any serious analysis of ongoing processes, for example, the perception and forms of change undergone by a migrant, from the initial moment of migration to five, ten, twenty years after settlement in a different country and, even more, across generations. Furthermore, it is not only individuals who change. Their cultural references change also. Thus, the questions arise as to how Islam in Europe has changed over the generations, whether the Islamic references of the fathers are the same Islamic references as those of the so-called second generations,7 how the Islam of converts and other neo- or reborn Muslims has changed,8 and how they influence each other and move together towards change. Studying sociologically means taking change and movement as defining elements of the description of a phenomenon, included that of cultural pluralism in a given society: a thing that is very rarely done, if it is not completely uncommon, in both the multicultural debate and the liberals versus communitarians controversy, that too often imply static definitions of cultures.
In its present terms, the debate still appears to be too “rigid” in that it deals to a far greater extent with the hypostatization of cultures and identities than with reality. All too often forms of hybridization, of being “in-between”, of métissage (of both cultures and identities) are not considered at all. Or, conversely, in some cases, they are proposed “ideologically”, as a criterion for understanding society, in the place of a factual evidence that must be empirically verified, in the same way as for hypostatic descriptions of the same cultures and identities. The spaces of regulations must be identified. The role of boundaries at the cultural level must be emphasized along with the frequent tendency, at social level, to cross them.
Excursus: the meaning and role of boundaries
Most research has studied the Muslim populations in Europe, we might say, in themselves, i.e. taking for granted the existence of these communities and focusing mainly on their basic elements and on the consequences of their presence. However, the question needs to be raised as to how the Muslim presence “happens”. In other words, how do these communities “produce” themselves and by what means and what are the effects of this “production of community”.9
A process of construction of transnational and non-ethnic Muslim communities is taking place in Europe through Islamic networks and through the use of (mass) media. Thus, we should probably be studying identities and communities in a different way. These cannot be easily defined as is often the case. The emphasis should not be placed exclusively on the sociological and cultural data often stressed when we use the words “identity” and “community” – terms wrongly implied as self-evident. On the contrary, we need to pay more attention to their “boundaries”, i.e. the boundaries of the communities and the boundaries of the society in which they live, and to what happens when these boundaries are crossed, i.e. how the individuals and groups “use” them and their function. Although it is not often used in this field, the metaphor of the boundary appears promising because it opens up unthought of horizons, projecting us out of the usual world – as the Greek etymology metà-phérein suggests, beyond and out. “To create a boundary is an act that generates reality, an act that gives shape to the world by introducing a discontinuity where before there was homogeneity. It is a violent act, a show of force, a manifestation of power” (Colombo 2001).
The concept of boundary – in Italian confine, the same etymology of the English confined and confinement – is intrinsically polysemic: it signifies that which marks the difference between two things, i.e. subjects, states, ethnic groups, religions, and at the same time what they have in common. The Latin cum-finis, i.e. the end “finis” one has in common with, i.e. “cum”, someone or something else, contains both meanings although the latter sense has been lost in everyday language and usage (Cassano 1995). As Maturana and Varela (1980) have written, albeit in an entirely different context, a universe comes into being when a space is divided in two. The ambiguity of the boundary and its profoundly tragic nature are due above all to its artificiality, its conventionality – a drama to be found in all the laws of men who, not by chance, have often tried to invent for themselves a security that they do not have in a divine origin, the guarantee that they cannot produce in a God who in turn will guarantee them – knowing, however, that it is a question of convention, of invention (this is precisely what gives depth to Greek tragedy). It is significant, however, that the concept of boundary immediately evokes the concept of alterity which, in turn, evokes that of identity. This is a logical chain that should prompt reflection. This reflection should focus, on one hand, on the utility of boundaries (logical and material) so as to enable it to ask the right questions: as Pascal noted, what is true one side of the Pyrenees is often not true on the other side, which makes us wonder about what – if anything – the two slopes of the same mountain range have in common. On the other hand, it already shows us the possible drift, often measured in history, of the acceptance of the boundary: the fact of entering directly in dynamics such as inside/outside, in-group/out-group, and amicus/hostis, as in the politological definition of Carl Schmitt.
Some processes appear provoke a crisis in the concept of boundary. The internet, which nullifies the idea of a world constructed on the basis of the centre-periphery model and makes us speak instead in terms of nets, links, and about communication that is no longer only or primarily unidirectional, but is multi-directional and allows interactivity, is a typical example of this. In a certain sense, physical space is losing importance: connections are being developed between different and geographically remote worlds in a process of intensification of social relations on a global scale. To see the world as a network does not naturally mean that there are no longer “centres” (economic, technological, political, but also ideological, anyhow of power), nor does it mean that boundaries are disappearing: if anything, perhaps the opposite is true and some centres are stronger than before and some boundaries are even becoming insurmountable barriers (beginning with the barrier that separates those who have access to the web and those who don’t, and the respective worlds they belong to, i.e. the world of those who count in a certain order of things and those who can only be counted). And we need to have no illusions about the meaning of this process: as has been observed, the society of global interconnection is as remote as the classless society, and in the same way as the latter it is above all an ideological product and as such probably destined to follow the same curve as that other better known utopia.
We are living increasingly under the sign of Hermes, god of the gate, the threshold of the city, but also of crossroads (Augé 1992). However, if the external boundaries appear to be disappearing, this does not mean that the internal ones between me and the other whom I don’t know and between me and the very idea of alterity are not reproducing. Furthermore, who is the other? Is it not the boundary that determines and “decides” it? One of the consequences of globalization processes is that they bring societies that were once distant and separate into contact with each other. Thanks to this contact, there is a greater level of multi-ethnicity and multi-culturality in an ever-increasing number of societies and this, in turn, produces additional links with and between distant societies. In fact, the simultaneous presence of different cultures and identities “relativizes” those in which we grew up and, at the same time, may drive us to search for that same identity and those same roots that have gone into crisis and even make us invent new ones. This is why these “returns to the roots”, which seem “natural” and rooted profoundly in history to us, are often actually recent and “invented”, in the sense of constructed. In short, they are cultural creations, as we have seen, for example in relation to nationalisms in books with significant titles such as The Invention of Tradition (Hobsbawm) or Imagined Communities (Anderson). What Peter Berger calls “plausibility structures”, i.e. those social structures that make life in association “plausible”, by repeating its foundations, even without explaining them, are now in crisis.
Thus, “the world” has become a concept that is more present in the minds of many of its inhabitants, even if this does not mean that it is neither more peaceful, and nor more integrated as a certain naive functionalism would have us believe and as a certain kind of laissez-faire ideology, which mainly seeks to legitimate processes of economic globalization, often repeats. There is a dramatic aspect to this that is underlined by Bauman (1998): the idea of universalization incorporated the hope, intention, and determination to create an order – the same does not apply to globalization. What this world shares is the synchronic principle, i.e. it is free of roots, diachronic depth and hence history, comprehension of the roots of the past – both of ours as well as those of others – and of the history of our relations with others. The following comment by Jabès (1989) may be useful in this context: “A tree is foreign to another tree but with this it participates in extending the forest”. Today more than ever before alterity returns us to interdependence. We believe it is not an accident that many currents of 20th-century Western philosophical thought all involve digging for the sense of this relation: phenomenology, existentialism, as far as Lévinas, and Ricoeur, and Jabès. And the same can be said for anthropology (by definition a science of, or at least research into, the other), psychoanalysis, much of sociology, not to mention a great deal of literature. And the identity of the other leads us to ours: “L’étranger? L’étrange-je”, writes Jabès in an untranslatable play on words.
This observation is not merely a cultural metaphor, it can also have important sociological consequences. And it points to some interesting considerations, if applied to the situation of Islamic communities in Europe (Allievi and Nielsen 2003). Among other things, it shows that one of the major consequences of the Islamic presence is in fact that these populations (groups, associations, ethnic communities) are entering the European public sphere as a new social actor with cultural/religious references that did not previously exist in this public sphere. It also shows us that these same references are changing (Van Bruinessen and Allievi forthcoming, 2005) and that the societies are changing too. Identities (and communities, and cultural and religious references) seem more and more like balls rolling on a billiard table which represents the public sphere in which they move. Their movement is not linear (it is often easier to get from one point to another better by using the cushions or this is simply what happens to beginners, i.e. those who have little control over their paths and plans); the balls often touch and change position and change the positions of the actors. Furthermore, some balls are lost or end up on the outside in the course of the game. What the metaphor of billiards does not show us is that, as in set theory, the circles can also overlap, incorporating one another, grow larger or smaller – in short, be transformed.
On multiculturalism
Thus, the presence of immigrants of various ethnic and religious provenance and the progressive structuring of communities that are based on these have important consequences for society. We can no longer be content with studying the presence of immigrants (who from the second generation on are no longer immigrants as they have never actually moved anywhere) as an aggregate of individuals alone as is the case in many of the analyses of the arguments that are most frequently used concerning their presence, from those dealing with their occupational structure and the give and take of their presence in the economy to the many studies based on indicators of social privation, i.e. from marginalization to criminality to problems of housing, access to social services, and so on. Immigrants are not in fact all the same, as implicitly suggested by many studies on these sectoral issues. Furthermore, their presence does not only concern the immigrants themselves; the same, e.g. religious specificities, of which they are bearers, also involve native populations, even if they do so in different ways.
In other words, these immigrant are not only that: they are also groups, associations, communities – in short, collective social actors. As such they organize themselves and make their voices heard, and as such, finally, they are or are beginning to be perceived by professional observers and, increasingly, by public opinion in general. Thus, we must analyse cultural specificities, as it is considered a privileged object of multicultural studies. But this multiculturalism cannot be satisfied to merely indicate these general dynamics of society and, more specifically, cannot be reduced to a vague support for action or mere ideological statements. On the other hand, cultural communities are not static, nor are they completely inclusive and omni-comprehensive; they are born and built socially, but action within them and through them is also individual. Thus, when considering communities and the individuals who pass through them, we must also, and above all, highlight the dynamics of change and modifications in process, which are no less relevant than forms of continuity and cultural “inertia”, and the connections with the parallel processes of individualization, which are no less important than elements of communitarization and no less significant also in terms of the self-definition of these same identities, both from the individual and collective point of view.10 In this context, it would appear useful to recall, with a certain irony, the scientific expression “multikulti” which is current in Germany that has ended up by being appropriated by everyday language and drags multiculturalism down from the heavens of metaphysics (a sociological or “sociologicizing” metaphysics also exists) to a more prosaic and irreverent everyday dialectic. It is here, in this multiculturalism, or rather in multiculturalism conceived in this way, that Islam, like other cultures, expresses itself in the everyday. Think of the pervasive – and decisive in terms of the development of our “habit of plurality” – role of the “market multiculturalism” that is expressed in food, music, “ethnic” fashions in clothing, furnishings, etc. (see Martiniello 1997).
The presence of Islam has not created a multicultural situation in Europe.11 However, it has certainly contributed to a great extent to creating an awareness of it and making it more visible and topical, more than other “othernesses” which are less visible or symbolically charged (also historically) or perceived as less conflictual – in short, less “other”. Multiculturalism, by which I mean not the adhesion to a specific political philosophy, but the simple recognition of a plurality of competing cultural options present in the same territory and of competing cultural universes associated, in particular, with the arrival of populations which have these as their own heritage of reference, is now part of the European agenda. Naturally, this does not mean that before this there were no clashes of opinion and references. However, it is plausible to hypothesize that with the arrival of the new immigrants, cultural and religious plurality has not only increased in terms of potential references, but has found new collectively-shared forms of presence and has triggered at least partly new dynamics on the Old Continent. In Europe the introduction of the term “multiculturalism” has marked the shift from an immigration perceived solely as economic and temporary to a permanent presence of populations. However, the picture outlined in the early 1990s by one of the first comparative analyses of the Muslim presence in Europe still appears to be reliable and can be summarized by the three following elements: a liberal myth of a multicultural Europe, which is indeed still a myth; the social reality of a multicultural Europe, which can be found in the field; and the unreality of any real cultural encounter in Europe (Nielsen 1992).
On communities
The term “community” tends to be polysemic and therefore needs interpretation; in particular, its use differs significantly the “high” academic-scientific register and the “low” register of both common speech and policy. As a scientific concept, “community” has no value. As an instrument for the creation of the social imagination, it occupies a fundamental place and is destined to last (Busino, quoted in Bagnasco 1999) .12 The language of social actors is even more explicit and very insistent when it comes to the concept of community. The Muslim community/-ies is/are among those that frequently use this vocabulary. But this “communitarian temptation” is present everywhere, i.e. among both the majority religions and the historical minorities. Some important Muslim exponents theorize that integration can work better if it comes through the community and not through individuals (Rachid al-Ghannouchi, personal interview, May 2002), even if, perhaps aware of the mistrust that weighs on the idea of community, some European Muslim intellectuals propose a version that is conceptually on the defensive, i.e. “community against communitarianism” (Ramadan 1999). Moreover, the term has often been used in the language of the media and of social and political operators with a certain lack of awareness that reflects deep-rooted thought processes. As referred to by both the civil authorities and minority groups the notion of community has become “as vague as it is comfortable” and, as has been noted, it is now invoked without defining a fundamental resource of ethnic (and also religious) mobilization that has led to the emerging “politics of religion and community” (Vertovec and Peach 1997).
Thus, the category of community, which never really went out of fashion even if it was abandoned by academics, has returned. However, it is now accompanied by an overload of ideological elements, both on the part of its supporters and its detractors, which makes it very difficult to use it in a semantically “neutral” way. In the case of Islam, the conceptual ambiguity stems from the fact that the term can refer to both social relations that involve the individual in his totality and communities delineated both territorially and by religious characteristics (e.g. neighbourhoods with a majority of Muslims) and the meta-community of the Muslim umma – also when used by the social players involved. It is of little importance that, as we have seen, like national communities, religious communities can also be imagined or invented. It is a fact that reference to them in the lives of those who refer to them is solid, material and not at all virtual. Furthermore, in the case of Islam in Europe, communities appear to form a sort of third, hybrid space between insiders and outsiders (Eade 1997). Reflection on community self-organization would appear to be indispensable for an understanding of the processes of insertion and integration. Muslims who have moved to Europe are not only immigrants: they are also groups, associations, communities – i.e. collective social actors. On the other hand, however, it is not possible to concentrate solely on the above specificities: the links with the parallel processes of individualization are no less important than the elements of communitarianism, and no less significant for the self-definition of these identities, both from the individual and collective point of view.
The European Islamic world is going through a process of extremely rapid transformation.
In particular, it is of strategic interest to see how the processes of structuralization of Islamic communities will proceed in this crucial phase in which they are no longer ethnic communities coming from elsewhere, i.e. with the passing of a generation they have lost their ethnic character and identification with the countries of origin at least in part, but, for reasons associated as much with culture and customs as citizenship ,they are not yet fully autochthonous communities nor, above all, are they perceived as such. In other words, if they are Muslims, the youths of the second are not so because they are Moroccans, Turks, Egyptians, or Pakistanis, but precisely because they are no longer this, even if they are not yet Belgian, German, Spanish, or Italian; indeed, in many European countries, with the remarkable exceptions of France and the United Kingdom, the majority of Muslims, including the second generations, are not legally citizens of the countries in which they live. Thus, they are Muslims, albeit in a different way to their immigrant parents, but they are not yet Europeans of Muslim faith, as is the case with the converted.
Seen from this perspective the very notion of Islamic “community” ends up relinquishing this idea of opposition to the “individual” which it maintains at least implicitly, and often explicitly, in many analyses of the Islamic phenomenon in Europe, thereby demonstrating their over-simplistic and simplifying character. In the new panorama that is being defined, community and individual are not alternative ways of being Muslims, but on the contrary concomitant ways that even reinforce each other. Thus, it is not correct to formulate the debate in terms of communitarianism or individual integration (or simply individual paths). This is a false alternative which is not confirmed by empirical analyses of the phenomenon of Islam. Instead, we must speak of communitarianism and individual integration involving in not a few cases the functional/instrumental use of the community for the purpose of supporting strategies of individual promotion, which furthermore use cultural bi-nationality to create a favourable position in a double market (often also economic) or, it could be said, to “bi-position” themselves.
Meccan and “ummic”: on minority Islam
European Islam is an Islam in a minority situation (the consequences of which I have studied in Allievi 2002). Thus, it cannot be equated with the Islam defined as din, dunya wa dawla, which is religion, everyday life (literally, the low temporal existence, earthly life) and organized living, i.e. institutional, government in its modern form, state, and hence politics. On the other hand, this image, which is often used to interpret majority Islam, is probably a mere intellectual construct. It is also interesting to note that the Arabic root of the word dawla, which is used to indicate a reign or dynasty, and by extension a power, also means alternation, change, and instability, almost as though to underline the inevitable transient dimension of any political and institutional structure. Incidentally, this also applies to religious structure in that no legitimizing centre exists that is able to issue licences of orthodoxy or heterodoxy, and this dimension is therefore substantially subject to the logic of de facto powers of contractualization and contestation, but also permanent regeneration. The imbalance is experienced in a very modern way as largely structural. And if this is true for majority and hence hegemonic Islam, it is all the more true for minority Islam.
Nevertheless much cultural production on Islam and much production that comes to us from Islam implicitly considers Islam as a majority religion. It could not be otherwise: Islam defines itself as such, even theologically – hence the importance of constructing a minority theology starting from the European situation which authors like Tariq Ramadan and organizations like the European Council for Fatwa and Research in London are attempting to do. It is no coincidence that Islam instituted its calendar at Yathrib-Medina at precisely the moment in which it became a majority religion; this shift from Mecca to Medina, in the hijra of 622 AD was its date of birth. Islam was not born with the birth of the Prophet, but with the community founded by him. For, as Lewis notes, while Muhammad preached Islam in Mecca, in Medina he could practice it. By transferring from Mecca to Medina, Islam itself changed from being a minority religion and marginal sect in contemporary terms to became a majority one and, therefore, law and government. And from being the guru of a movement of religious revival which tended to seek its followers at the lower rather than higher end of the social scale at Mecca Muhammad became what he was only for his few followers: prophet and envoy of God, religious but also political, legislative, juridical, even military authority. It was at Medina, and only here, that the Muslim umma was truly born in the historic sense that gave it its character and identity.
Fate would now have it that present-day European Islam finds itself in a situation that is far more similar to that which prevailed in Mecca than Medina, i.e. it is a tolerated minority religion that is sometimes stigmatized and sometimes integrated and institutionalized, but it remains a minority religion. Moreover, being a minority religion has important sociological consequences. As Mirdal points out, from a psychological point of view, Freud was not a practising believer and his opinions on religion in general are well known; however he used the term “identity” only once, and that was with a religious connotation in reference to his own Jewish identity. But “it is doubtful that Freud would have considered his Jewish identity particularly important had he lived in a country with a Jewish majority. Likewise, Turkish immigrants in Europe…” (Mirdal 2000). Not only is European Islam “Meccan”, it is also “ummic”. In the history of Islam, starting from the Arabian Peninsula where it was born, expansion has always originated in some kind of ethnic drive, even if the ethnic groups leading Islamic supremacy and the responsibility for its spreading have changed: from the original Arab combatants (plural in their internal relations), to Persians, Turks, Mongols, or many others who took into their hands –not only metaphorically – the sword of Islam.
This characteristic of internal plurality is far more accentuated in present-day Europe. The origins are multiple, and even in those countries in which there is an identifiable ethnic group or dominant geographical provenance among Muslim immigrants (e.g. Germany, United Kingdom, France), in reality it is difficult to identify it, or it is becoming less and less identifiable: there is no single origin nor an original centre of power that is easily identifiable. Instead, the observable panorama shows us not only a plurality of presences and contributions in terms of law schools (all co-existing which makes them lose much of their traditional meaning) and mystical confraternities (a far greater diversity of which can be encountered in the West than elsewhere and whose boundaries are easier to cross in Europe), but also a plurality of ethnic groups, a plurality of “religious families” (Sunnites of all kinds, Shiites, Ishmaelites etc.). Finally, it also shows us a plurality of languages both those of the countries of origin which are numerous (first and foremost Arabic,13 Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Wolof, and many others) and the European languages, the dominant languages in the respective host countries. The latter are often the only languages in which all immigrants of Muslim origin can communicate among themselves. This becomes even more applicable the further removed they are from the moment of immigration and is increasingly the case as the first generation of immigrants is replaced by the second, third etc. and no longer definable as such.
In many ways, the umma is far more visible in Europe than in the countries of origin where believers can only find other persons like themselves, of the same nationality, language, belief, and interpretation of these beliefs (within a specific law school). Only on the occasion of the hajj (and in this case, of course, to a greater extent) can a Muslim experience the umma as a concrete and visible reality and not only as a symbolic one in the same vivid way that the common believer can usually experience it in many mosques and Islamic organizations in Europe. The internal diversity among Muslims is more evident in Europe, the USA, and in other countries of migration than elsewhere, and certainly more than in the countries of origin of these immigrants. And this internal diversity has important consequences. A particularly relevant example is provided by the law schools which are so crucial for the self-interpretation of Islam. All of the madhhab in Europe are “living”; but the major difference from the situation in the countries of origin is that they mix much more easily, and individuals can find their way through them even more than in one of them. To use the words of one of my interviewees, born in Africa but of Yemeni origin and living in London: “I am shafii, but I have to follow the most common madhhab here which is the hanafi one. Personally, as far as the hajj is concerned I am hanafi, for jihad I am maliki, for the conception of minority I am hanbali…”. Thus it is no coincidence that European Muslims are beginning to speak of the European school – sometimes the Western and minority one (including the United States) – as of the “fifth law school” under construction.
Islam in Europe
As it is not possible for me to discuss this topic in detail here, I will limit myself to summarizing an entire historical cycle of relations between Islam and Europe in a few sentences.
During a prolonged first stage, Islam and (Christian) Europe, which were conceived and saw themselves as mutually impermeable and self-centred, stood in opposition to each other despite reality and history which show how the permeability of philosophical ideas, scientific notions, artistic – and also economic and commercial – forms and exchange were more the norm than the exception. During the second stage, it was Europe that penetrated far into the lands and culture of Islam in the age of Empires and the period of colonization and then in contemporaneous neo-colonization, which passed through the processes of both economic and also symbolic globalization, and that of consumerism, media etc. Thus, here we see a penetration by Europe into Islam. The third stage, which is more recent (in some countries, like France, it had already begun in the period between the two world wars, but in most cases it started from the post-war years of reconstruction and then following on the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s in central-northern Europe, and even later, from the end of the 1970s onward, in southern Europe), marks the start of the presence of Islam in Europe through migration. During a fourth stage we see the birth and consolidation of an Islam of Europe as a result of the progression through generations and a more general cultural change which took place primarily at a personal level. The natural follow-on of this process should be a fifth stage, of which we can now only see the uncertain beginnings, involving the formation of a real European Islam with a proper and marked identity which differs to that of Arabian Islam, for example. When referring to this Islam we should speak of European citizens of Muslim origin or of Islamic culture and/or religion instead of Muslims living in Europe. Even if it is possible to detect signs of the onset of this fifth stage, most countries today are somewhere between the third and fourth stages.
As it is not possible to provide even minimal demographic or economic data on the Muslim presence in Europe, I shall limit myself to stating this as an accepted fact (see however Maréchal, Allievi, Dassetto, and Nielsen 2003). What we can say, while undoubtedly summarizing too much, is that we are faced with simultaneous processes of widespread integration and conflictual perception. The widespread integration is what we see at work, school, and in many neighbourhoods. The conflictual perception is what emerges from the cultural (and sub-cultural) debate, the perception of Islam in part of the media and the political world and also in parts of the cultural and religious establishment. On the one hand we have the normality of immigration and the exceptionality of its perception, on the other; this is not found in similar forms and modes in other cases of immigration, even if they are not less “other” in the context of European history than Islamic immigration. It is obvious that there are many good reasons for the exceptionality of this interpretation which mainly originate in the current geo-political situation and the growth of trans-national Islamic terrorism’s capacity to strike the West and its imagination. However, it is equally true that this does not explain everything. The conflictual interpretation of the Islamic presence in Europe and the popular spread of a Huntingtonian vulgata of the “clash of civilizations” precedes September 11 2001 and can be found in the widespread use of the word jihad in the press, in conflicts concerning the hijab, in urban conflicts concerning mosques and cemeteries and in political parties, religious movements and movements of opinion that had identified Islam as a target well before that “black September” (see my chapters on The Media, pp 289-330, and Relations and Negotiations: Issues and Debates on Islam, pp 331-368, in Maréchal, Allievi, Dassetto, and Nielsen 2003).
Thus, the problem precedes geo-politics and terrorism and has profound roots and a symbolic overload that must be kept in consideration. This alone can explain the ferocity of certain attitudes to Islam which circulate in the European public space and in which sometimes it would suffice to substitute the word “Jew” for “Muslim” to understand their gravity and negative potentiality – I prefer not to refer to this phenomenon as “Islamophobia” as is all too often the case, starting with the famous report of the Runnymede Trust (1997) with its politically correct and victimized tone. This word is just too easy for Muslims as it heaps all of the responsibility on the host societies. This is clearly not the case and Muslims, their leaders, their imams and their associations bear significant responsibility for its diffusion, for the hypocrisy of some positions and the abstractness of others, for the violence of certain positions and the incomprehension of certain basic categories and methods of common European thinking, for certain extremes of language and lexical hair-splitting and for the open choice of violence by some of their number – from Mohammed Atta, who flew the aeroplane into the World Trade Center to Muhammad Bouyeri who murdered Theo Van Gogh. Naturally, a more general process of social construction of fear plays a crucial role in this process of demonization of Islam which is part of that more general transformation of our society into a “risk society” (Beck 1992). This fear has now translated into a “long-term tendency” of the contemporary West, from which many draw advantages, and its specific anti-Islamic dimension is also leading to the development of political and intellectual positions and extremely concrete economic gains – we only have to think of the media and anti-Islamic libels here: what people forget to say is that this is a literary genre that sells very well, much better than any dialogue about civilization or religion.
Reactive identities
Objective transformations in and of social reality trigger or are accompanied by subjective transformation in and of personal identity. This is a debate that transcends the religious reference and constitutes a problem in itself. However, I shall limit myself here to stating that identity must be increasingly considered and can be read and interpreted “not as a ‘thing’ like the monolithic unity of a subject, but as a system of relations and representations” (Melucci 1982). (These issues are explored in greater detail in Allievi 2004b.) Thus, today, identities are less and less attributed from birth and immutable, and we can speak increasingly of transitory identities that are freely chosen (and in the case of some religious groups of the “sect” type somewhat less freely abandoned) and assumed through “elective socialities” which codify but also allow entry into the modern tribes that Maffesoli (1988) refers to, that are temporary character and, in many cases, ultimately multiple. Given that we appear to be witnessing the progressive drawing apart of increasingly uncertain identities and the veritably systemic social need to distinguish and re-know them, which probably no accident as the former appears to imply the latter, this process is not without consequences for the identities themselves or their perception. However, the reason we are interested in analysing this process here is that concerns not only individual identities, but also collective ones, and the social perception of both.
Globalization has created a world in which, in a certain sense, geography has become detached from other variables and space has “contracted” and relinquished significance (there is no lack of sociological reflection on this subject, from Giddens to Harvey to Robertson and many others). It is precisely the apparent overcoming of all boundaries or the extension of boundaries to encompass the entire globe that brings back the need for boundaries, i.e. small motherlands. Religious fundamentalism, political localism, ethnicism, racism, micro-nationalism and metropolitan neo-tribalism also respond almost always unwittingly to this need. The prevailing situation is one of Jihad vs. McWorld as Barber (1995) described it. However, to be more precise Jihad and McWorld are consubstantial, the one is indissoluble from the other in that one is the effect of the other in a process of circular causality. Globalization actually divides as much as it unites and, as Bauman (1998) reminds us, in a certain sense divides precisely because it unites. It is no coincidence that Geertz (1996), who was accustomed to studying small and definable societies, now sees himself obliged to reason in terms of globality so as to arrive at a real understanding of these societies: cosmopolitism and provincialism are no longer antitheses, if anything they are interconnected and reinforce each other. Geertz reminds us correctly that it is not a question of the “global village” because this world does not know the solidarity or tradition of a village “it has no centre nor boundaries and is completely lacking in unity”.
This is how what I call “reactive identities”, identities that are such only in opposition to someone else, are born and develop – in Europe also. We find them again among the numerous people in Europe today who have been rediscovering their own Christian roots on the political and intellectual level since the emergence of the Muslim presence. This is expressed, perhaps, by the recent controversies surrounding religious symbols, e.g. the crucifix in Italy and the hijab in France. Interestingly, these positions tend to be stated even more vociferously by declared atheists such as Oriana Fallaci and Michel Houellebecq than by believers. However, they can also be found among Muslims who have rediscovered their roots and readopt customs they had abandoned before living in Europe, from attending the mosque to insisting on the hijab, or used to practice in a different and more relaxed way. Part of this process is the same use of one’s own self-definition in terms of “community” on the part of both Muslims and natives, i.e. as if they really were that, as if there were really only one, as if all the members of the supposed community belonged to it or really recognized themselves in it.
Conclusion: on conflict and change
As we have seen, fear is the first general key concept to be kept in consideration and is a backdrop to the specific fear of the other, i.e. of the Muslim by the European, of one’s own annihilation by both the majority and minority, and therefore leads to conflict. It is no accident that this conflict is often about symbols rather than modes of behaviour and social practice (Allievi 2003b). However, sociologically conflict has a positive function. Furthermore, it is basic and, as the classics of sociology have taught us, from Marx to Weber and Simmel, cannot be eliminated. As Heraclitus said: “It is necessary to know that justice is conflict” (cited in Hampshire 2000). After all, crisis prompts the discussion of a problem – always too late, but always better late than never. Crisis and conflict also help us to discover how far we can go and which social boundaries cannot be exceeded. Leadership is forged in conflict. In conflict we have to ask ourselves about a sense of common responsibility which must not produce harmful excesses that may rebound on those who produce them: we measure our real strength, but also that of others, and that of society, its rules, its tools for regulation. Through conflict we test who we are, but also who others are and the idea of alterity. In conflict situations we learn to measure the difference between what we are, what we want, and what we can obtain. Moreover, conflict is a means of bringing to bring to the surface of consciousness what lies and bubbles in the depths. Taking opinions to extremes has a function, which is precisely this: to make visible what is not usually visible, make the unconscious conscious, the unaware aware and letting words say what is not usually said.
As is the case with couples and families, the healthy ones are not those that do not experience conflict, but those in which conflict finds channels to emerge, be dealt with, and resolved. When this does not happen, families break up, or their members continue to live together in a state of constant unhappiness. This is not a good solution or one to be desired. As happens in democracy, which after all is a method not for avoiding conflict, but facing it without recourse to violence, instead of killing my adversary, I vote. As happens in the case of social conflict, for example, in the workplace, i.e. conflict arises and is inevitable, but can be dealt with through a revolution or a strike. Society is conflictual by definition. In a real sense, conflict is the only way we have to avoid war. By taking it into consideration and managing it, we manage to avoid any explosion of violence. However, if we have learnt to regulate political conflict (representative democracy) and social conflict (industrial relations), we have not yet found a stable system for regulating cultural and religious conflict that is accepted by all. It is no coincidence that today the preachers of conflict and of cultural clash are enjoying great success on different sides. This is the reason why what could be a physiology of social conflict, developed in a cultural form, risks becoming a pathology: it is always like that, when and as long as those who gain from conflict are in greater numbers or simply play their cards better than those who do not want conflict to be overcome (because that is not possible) but simply regulated and made to lower its tone a little. Moreover, there will always be people who have an interest in fomenting or even creating and “inventing” conflict where it does not exist or could be diminished, solved, or dealt with.
From this point of view, the danger we face is great: the clash of civilizations – not only on a planetary scale, but also in our cities and neighbourhoods – may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is by dint of repeating it, recalling it, invoking it, that we produce it and we make it real. In a certain sense it is a hole that we are digging for ourselves with our own hands. Furthermore the conflict is not only, and perhaps not mainly, between cultures and religions or better, more accurately their exponents, it is internal to cultures, religions, and communities. Today, society is divided on different questions to those on which it was divided the past. With the decline of class distinctions (at least in the common ideological interpretations and intellectual and media opinions, albeit less in reality), we are increasingly divided today over factors of inclusion and exclusion that are often very material (expenses, interests, costs and benefits, taxes, services), but equally often cloaked in ethnic, racial, cultural, or pseudo-cultural and religious justifications. Diversity, or alterity, is becoming a problem or even a flaw in itself. This means that other social actors (including religious ones) are also being divided increasingly not only and not so much among themselves, but within themselves, i.e. between those who engage in dialogue and those who do not, those who are open to change and those who are not, those ready to put themselves on the line and/or put society on the line and those who do not even consider this (also in the face of the facts and changes that have already taken place which they do not even wish to consider), and between those who are hence ready to measure up to diversity and alterity and those who deny their very bases. These positions are, of course, complemented by all manner of conceivable intermediate attitudes.
On the other hand, precisely because, for the reasons set out above, conflict is necessary, constitutive of society, physiological, and inevitable (in particular in the presence of such significant changes and the fact that Islam is today the second religion in Europe cannot be considered a detail of history), we can hypothesize that in its present form with its extensive radicalization and visibility it is only one inevitable stage, even if this stage is unlikely to be short (or perhaps has yet to peak), that is unfolding while we wait to find forms of regulation more suited to the conflict itself. In this sense we can try to be optimistic or have some reasonable hope of emerging from the crisis. A new level of equilibrium may be born. This may be the new society we spoke of at the beginning, for which we do not (yet) have any plans and rules, but which we are trying to construct. This may be indicated by the long-term trends we are seeing within the Islamic communities of Europe – tendencies that could generally be referred to as the Europeanization of Islam, i.e. the adaptation of its cultural and normative framework (a Europeanization that ranges from gender relations to theological changes, from forms of family and cultural integration to economic integration and consumer models).
Islam in Europe is changing. However, in the process of making itself European, by becoming a European reality and an internal social actor, it is also changing Europe. Furthermore, through personal links and organized networks as well as the old and new media, the Muslims who live in what we could call the European part of umma also influence their Islamic areas of origin, including those from which first generations of immigrants originated, through numerous feedback effects. In the same way, due to the mere existence of the Islamic presence, Europe is changing. To mention just one example, this is visible on the micro-level this is visible simply in the different attitude that teachers of religion are forced to adopt if they have pupils of different religions, or none at all, in their classes (the example can be extended to an infinite number of potential situations and social roles, most obviously to the case of “mixed” couples and families), despite the fact that he or she may or may not be prepared for this change or may or may not be subjectively open to it. The simple fact of being physically confronted with “the other” forces them to think more profoundly. On the macro-level, this change is visible in politics and policies about the legal regulation of religion in the public space and, more practically, in the everyday functioning of social services and reform of school programmes.
As I tried to demonstrate at the outset, religions are becoming crucial again. And as I have noted elsewhere, from now on it will not be possible to understand the history and the social and religious evolution of Europe without taking its Islamic component into account. In the same way it will not be possible to understand the history, social and theological evolution of Islam without taking into account its European component. The history of Europe has become Islamic history – at least in part – and the history of Islam has become European history.
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Allievi, Stefano (2004b) Inmigraciones y religiones en Europa. Identitades individuales y colectivas en trasformación. In Gemma Aubarell/Ricard Zapata (eds.) Inmigración y procesos de cambio. Europa y el Mediterráneo en el contexto global, Barcelona: Icaria-IEMed, pp. 319-350.
Allievi, Stefano/ Nielsen, Jorgen (2003), Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe, Leiden-Boston, Brill.
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Foblets, Marie-Claire (2003) “Muslim Family Laws before the Court in Europe : A conditional Recognition”. In Brigitte Maréchal/ Stefano Allievi/Felice Dassetto/Jorgen Nielsen (eds.), Muslims in the Enlarged Europe, Leiden-Boston: Brill, pp. 255-284.
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Maffesoli, Michel (1988) Le temps des tribus, Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck.
Maréchal, Brigitte/Allievi, Stefano/Dassetto, Felice/Nielsen, Jorgen (2003) Muslims in the Enlarged Europe. Religion and Society, Leiden-Boston: Brill.
Martiniello, Marco (1997) Sortir des ghettos culturels, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.
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Mirdal, Gretty (2000) “The construction of Muslim identities in contemporary Europe”. In Felice Dassetto (ed.), Paroles d’islam, Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, pp. 32-53.
Nielsen, Jorgen (1992) Muslims in Western Europe, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Runnymede Trust (1997) Islamophobia. A challenge for us all, London.
Simmel, Georg (1989) Gesammelte Schriften zur Religionssoziologie, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot.
Social Compass (1999) Les Conversions à l’Islam en Europe, London: Sage Publications.
Tomlinson, John (1999) Globalization and Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Van Bruinessen, Martin/Allievi, Stefano (forthcoming, 2005) Producing Islamic Knowledge in Western Europe, London-New York: Routledge.
Van Nieuwkerk, Karin (forthcoming, 2005) Gender and Conversion to Islam in the West, Austin: Texas University Press.
Vertovec, Steven/Peach Ceri (1997) Islam in Europe. The Politics of Religion and Community, London–Basingstoke: MacMillan & St. Martin’s Press.
1 Some of these premises and their consequences were developed and expanded in my chapter on Relations between Religions (pp. 369-414) in Maréchal, Allievi Dassetto and Nielsen (2003).
2 The expression was coined by Simmel (1989) in reference to the relational values that constitute a religion. This “moment” is subject to profound transformations hic et nunc and in the European situation.
3 I prefer the more neutral expression “identity references” to “identity systems” for a number of reasons: in particular because, from the subjective point of view, identities are not systems, a word whose connotation is too “coherent. With respect to religion, a possible theoretical reference could involve reflection ideally linking Simmel to Berger. In terms of a wider debate on identity, we can refer to approaches such as those of Melucci, Bauman, and Kaufmann.
4 As this is not the focus of this essay, I shall refrain from weighing it down with detailed bibliographical references. I trust, however, that the frame of reference of the literature that is implicitly referred to here and the theoretical problems it poses are clear.
5 The progressive internationalization of law has been the subject of much inquiry, from J. Rawls to O. Höffe. On the incorporation of Islamic references into European legal practice, see Foblets (2003).
6 It is not possible here to even attempt a summary. In terms of an introduction to the topic, I refer to Taylor, Kymlicka, and Walzer and, to compensate in part for the monoculturalism of the debate (but not sufficiently for its monolinguistic character), almost all the most recent essays by Bauman, Habermas, and Touraine. The bibliography on the subject, in particular the English-speaking literature, is quite copious, as is inevitable for a successful paradigm.
7 On this subject and on how Islamic knowledge is constructed in a minority context, see Van Bruinessen and Allievi (forthcoming, 2005).
8 Another crucial subject in the context of the transformation of European Islam: see Allievi (1998), Social Compass (1999), and Van Nieuwkerk (forthcoming, 2005).
9 For some tentative answers to this question, see Allievi and Nielsen (2003).
10 On processes of individualization in European Islam, see Dassetto 2000.
11 Some of the observations that follow are taken from my chapter on Relations and Negotiations: Issues and Debates on Islam in Maréchal, Allievi, Dassetto and Nielsen (2003) which deals with this subject in greater detail.
12 The debate on this subject is wide-ranging, and involves – to mention just the better known – writers as diverse as Dworkin, Etzioni, Habermas, Kymlicka, Lasch, MacIntyre, Maffesoli, Rawls, Sandel, Selznick, Walzer, etc.
13 And it would in this case be more correct to use the word in the plural.
Allievi S. (2005), How the Immigrant has become Muslim. Public Debates on Islam in Europe, in “Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales”, vol. 21, n. 2, 2005, pp.135-161; issn 0765-0752
English abstract
Among the ‘figures of otherness’ that sociology have conceptualised, there has been a shift from ‘internal’ foreigners (belonging to a minority: Jews, members of ethnic and religious minorities, etc.), to the different, the foreigner, and lastly the immigrant, which has been for a long period the ideal type of the other, and the most studied. Now it seems to become, in more recent years, the Muslim.
There are many reasons to explain this shift, both internal, connected with the transformations of migrations in Europe, and external, connected to the emergence of Islam as a global political actor. But there are also long-term reasons, which are related to the renovated salience of religious categories in the European public space, such as the pluralisation of religious offer, of which Islam in Europe represents in the public debate, correctly or not, the extreme case.
The main interpretative problem is that, on the one hand, the religious specificity of Islam is relatively bad acknowledged; on the other hand, it is excessively used as a self-evident explanation of phenomena related also to non religious reasons. Research approaches to Islam risk then to be condemned either to reductionism or to essentialism.
This seems to be equally true for the political, religious and particularly mediatic debate about Islam in the European public space.
One of the paradoxes of this situation is that today, when Muslims are more and more integrated in European societies, the perception of them and of Islam is more and more conflictual.
In this situation of conflict – not necessarily real, but described as such in part of the public imagery – in which the interpretative paradigms (also those of common discourses, not only scientific) are still weak and little attested, reactive forms of identity emerge, both among the autochthonous populations and the immigrant communities. A good example of reactive identities can be seen in the conflicts on Islamic symbols in Europe (hijab, mosques, etc.).
We analyse here a case of media/intellectual cultural clash concerning Islam, and particularly the ‘method of discourse’ which is behind some widespread interpretations of the presence of Islam in Europe, epitomised in the popular books of Oriana Fallaci and others.
Notwithstanding the necessity of ‘de-islamise’ the debate on the Islamic presence in Europe, in order to better understand it, some field observations lead us to conclude that the ‘Islamic diversity’ will be with us for a long time in the European public debate.
French abstract
Parmi les ‘figures de l’alterité’ que la sociologie a utilisée, on a pu voir le passage de l’étranger intérieur à l’immigré, qui a été longtemps le visage le plus étudié de l’autre, et plus récemment au musulman.
Ce passage de l’immigré au musulman est due à plusieurs raisons, qui concernent soit les transformations de l’immigration en Europe, soit l’émergence de l’islam comme acteur global, mais il y a aussi des raisons de long terme, liées à l’importance du facteur religieux et des catégories interprétatives basées sur la religion dans l’espace public européen, desquelles l’islam semble représenter dans le débat public, à tort ou à raison, le cas extrême.
Le problème interprétatif principale semble être, d’un coté, la mauvaise connaissance des spécificités religieuses de l’islam, et de l’autre son utilisation comme une explication auto-évidente, même quand des raisons d’autre genre (non religieuses) sont à l’origine de certains phénomènes. La recherche, tout comme le débat politique, religieux, et surtout médiatique sur l’islam, semble donc osciller entre l’essentialisme et le réductionnisme.
Le paradoxe de cette situation, est que dans le même temps que le processus d’intégration des musulmans dans la société européenne poursuit, sa perception et la perception de l’islam devienne de plus en plus conflictuelle. Une bonne exemplification de ce processus peut être vue dans les conflits sur les symboles islamiques en Europe (hijab, mosquées, etc.).
Un autre exemple est visible dans les cas de conflit médiatico-intellectuel à propos d’islam, comme dans les livres très diffusées d’Oriana Fallaci et d’autres, à propos desquels on fera ici référence en particulier à la ‘méthode du discours’ à l’oeuvre.
Biography
Stefano Allievi, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at the University of Padua, where he teaches at the Faculties of Sciences of Communication and of Political Sciences. He is specialized on migration issues, in sociology of religion and cultural change, and has particularly focused his studies and researches on the presence of Islam in Europe, to which he has dedicated many publications. Among others: L’occidente di fronte all’islam (ed.), Franco Angeli, Milano, 1996, pp.224; Les convertis à l’islam. Les nouveaux musulmans d’Europe, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1998 pp.383; Musulmani d’occidente. Tendenze dell’islam europeo, Roma, Carocci, 2002, pp.194; Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe (ed. with J.Nielsen), Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2003, pp.332; Islam italiano. Viaggio nella seconda religione del paese, Torino, Einaudi, 2003, pp.272; Muslims in the Enlarged Europe, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2003, pp. 601 (ed. with B.Maréchal, F. Dassetto and J. Nielsen).
Public debates on Islam in Europe
How the Immigrant has become Muslim
by
Stefano Allievi
“Fondement – Toutes les nouvelles en manquent”
Gustave Flaubert, Dictionnaire des idées reçues
Premise: conceptualising otherness
The 20th century could be defined from the point of view of Western thought the ‘age of the other’1.
The entire history of contemporary philosophy, from phenomenology to existentialism, right up to Ricoeur and Lévinas, is actually a reflection and a continual re-conceptualisation of and about the ‘other’, and the identity-otherness polarity. Psychology, from Freud onwards, has made us familiar with the idea of the ‘other’ as a mirror of oneself, making us see the other’s gaze as a constituent element of our own identity: without which we do not exist, or find it difficult to define ourselves.
All modern anthropology, as opposed to “missionary” ethnology (included the one that supported and collaborated with the imperial conquest and colonisation, following the idea of “the white man’s burden”, a secular mission, so to speak), is based precisely on the recognition of the other as such, on the acceptance of the other’s identity and on making legitimate the other’s diversity, leading us to search for it and also to safeguard it: recognising that the loss of cultural diversity, far from being a victory of “progress”, is in itself negative (a recognition without which there would be no anthropology, nor would it be possible in any proper sense, as we have learned through Lévi-Strauss and many others).
These idea of the ‘other’ can be summed up in the synthesis, unfortunately difficult to translate properly, that Edmond Jabés made in a precious book (Jabés, 1989): “L’étranger? L’étrange-je”. Something similar is implicitly fomulated in the expression alter ego: without alter, ego does not exist; and at the same time alter has in common, with me and with everyone, the fact of being ego.
Sociology has gone through a significant curve of development. Tempted from its beginnings and right up to the great functionalist syntheses, above all by “social modellism”, which had an effect of uniformity and was in a certain sense conceptually authoritarian (from Comte and Durkheim to Parsons), it found itself having to measure up with the figure of the ‘other’: above all the deviant, precisely he who deviates from the norm and normality, the outsider. Following on which it set about, with the great classics (in particular Simmel, Sombart, Schütz, and then with Park – who had followed Simmel’s courses and influenced the Chicago school with his personality – Elias and others), and up to many classics today’s sociologists, to observe the figures who actually threw the idea of uniformity and homogeneity into greatest crisis, and so implicitly the idea of system, in itself unitary, uniforming and stable. These ‘figures of otherness’, which have had a certain importance, and have been properly conceptualised, have been above all ‘internal’ foreigners (belonging to a minority: historically Jews, and then members of ethnic and religious minorities, and successively also defined culturally or differently: think today of certain interpretations of sexual minorities, for example), the ‘cosmopolitan type’, and lastly immigrants.
We could stop here: the ideal type of the other, the most recent, the most studied, for a long period has in fact been that special type of foreigner that is the immigrant. Seen usually as a worker and often, in the Anglo-Saxon sociology (much less in the Continental one) through the lens of race relations.
For many years the analysis (quite rightly contested) passed through various kinds of reductionism: the immigrant seen only as homo œconomicus, so as labour force, and with his economic consequences (on the GNP or unemployment rates, the Welfare state, etc.) – remember the synthetic criticism of this view of the immigrant implicit in the Swiss writer Max Frisch’s statement: “We were expecting arms [for work]2, we received men”. Successively research broadened out to include what is attached to the arm, so to speak: the arrival of men, with all the complexity of their needs, their expectancies, their social and religious practices, their appurtenances. And then, much later, the discovery of the gender dimension of immigration: not only men, but women, families, and with them children, the “discovery” of the second generations, and their problematic specificities. Following on this, the dimensions of mixité: conjugal, but also more generically cultural, with which the concepts of hybridisation made their way into the field of study (with authors such as Gruzinski, Amselle, Bhabha), métissage, creolization, all in all a different and opposing analytical point of view, more attentive to the dynamics of change than to those of cultural continuity. A point of view, it is worth noting immediately, that is singularly little used when Islam is spoken of: as if it were more difficult or impossible for it, as if it were incapable of mixing and creolization. We already observe here the essentialism that a great deal of research attributes by default to Islam, but much less to other cultures and religions.
Why are religious categories so salient today in the study of migrations?
The other, the different, the foreigner, the immigrant. And today the Muslim. A path that has unravelled in the course of the decades and which in particular has transformed one category into the other, through a semantic shift and a selective perception of not little importance, which corresponds only in part to real changes.
If in fact right from the years of the post-War reconstruction and the economic boom it was the category of the immigrant that prevailed, from the 70s, and in a more decisive manner afterwards (with many differences according to the country, and the respective migratory situation) the Muslim became increasingly visible, for many reasons.
In central-northern Europe the turning point came in the 70s when, following on the oil crisis and the consequent economic crisis, immigrants began to realise that they would have to consider their presence in Europe as no longer transitory, but definitive. Or, more brutally, they found themselves faced by the alternative of returning home, which would make it impossible for them to re-enter Europe (also in the wake of the progressive approval practically everywhere of more restrictive immigration laws, which would make the coming and going that in many cases had previously been the norm impossible), and a definitive acceptance of their European horizon, with the consequent need to put down roots, also culturally – also following the presence of those who are wrongly called second generations, but which, not having ever moved, are actually the first generation of autochthones.
We can quite rightly say that the immigrants coming from Muslim countries brought Islam with them, in their suitcases. But for many years they left it there: not only were they not perceived as Muslims (the Turks in Germany were just Turks, the Indo-Pakistanis in Great Britain only immigrants from the ex-colonies, as were Algerians in France – and everywhere in Europe classification, perception and also study were limited to ethnic and national variables), but they themselves considered themselves essentially immigrants, transitory to boot (the weight of the “myth of the return” in all this, typical of the first generations of immigrants, should be considered)3. Their Islam, the weight of the religious variable, all the more so if lived collectively and in a community, was, all things considered, secondary: Islam, if it was there, often remained in the suitcase, or at most was relegated to the private sphere, with few exceptions4.
In Southern European countries the situation was different. Italy, Spain and others became countries of immigration only in the 70s after having had for centuries countries of emigration. For them the change was even stronger and more rapid. They too passed through the stage of sole ethnicisation of immigration (perceived on the basis of the countries or areas of provenance). But the stage of Islamisation of immigration, to use a deliberately strong expression, came first, and already with the first generations, without any need for a second generation towards which they would feel the need to transmit their cultural and religious capital.
There were many reasons for this:
the diversification of countries of provenance, which actually prevented identification, both at the institutional level and that of perception, with a single country and, on the contrary, favour the identification with religious rather than ethnic references;
the greater speed of entry and settlement, and the more recent arrival, in a situation in which also in the countries of origin Islam had in the meantime become central in the construction of the public space, on the religious, political and cultural plane, (much more than in the 70s and early 80s, for example, when most immigration took place in central and northern Europe);
the scarcity of arrivals from ex-colonies with pre-existing ties (for example of culture and language), and a tradition of mutual knowledge;
the important role played by the converts in the “social production of Islam” (in the associative world), cultural (media visibility, reviews, websites, publishing, translations), and political, with a more general role of assistance in the organisational problems of the Muslim immigrants, and with a clear interest in making interpretative categories of the religious kind prevail;
the greater dispersion in work and housing, which does not favour the phenomenon of the “ethnic threshold”, and a lack or relative weakness, at least for now, of associative secular interlocutors (ethnic and cultural) of any representative weight, which make the social and religious role played by the mosque network even more relevant.
Mosques, in short, and everything that revolves around them, seem to play in these countries a more important role, if only because highlighted by the inadequacy or weakness of other interlocutors, than they do in other European countries.
So it seems strange if seen with the eyes of the present cultural debate, but there was a time, not so far off, when Muslims in Europe were only immigrants. Why has the situation changed?
There are internal reasons connected with the world of migrations we have already seen. Then there are reasons connected with the emergence of Islam as a disruptive element, also on the symbolic plane: as a global geo-political actor (from the local crises connected with Islam – Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, the always significant but ever more Islamically interpreted Palestine, Cechnya and many others – up to trans-national Islamic terrorism and the impact of the terrorist attack upon the Twin Towers, and then, still in the West, the attacks upon Madrid and elsewhere); as an instrument and interpretative category (from Huntington onwards, in a very widespread literature, above all in its more popular versions); as a social and political actor of ever greater importance also in the countries of origin of the European immigrants.
But there are also long-term reasons (the deep currents, to use an expression dear to Braudel, more important even if less observed than the histoire événementielle, which does not represent anything but the froth on the surface waves), internal to the European West, which do not have to do only with Islam, but more in general with tendencies of religions as a whole.
The last thirty years, in particular, have led to a radical transformation in the religious field in various European countries: which have become (all, even those traditionally religiously monopolists like Catholic Italy and Spain), on the religious level, more and more plural. This process has taken place for two reasons: a process of pluralisation inside the dominant religious field (whether Catholic or Protestant, and in various grades in-between), and a progressively greater presence of other religions, or of other ways of being religious, as well as non-religious options, or of abandonment of the religious field altogether.
This second element of pluralisation was in its turn due to two tendencies: an internal pluralisation, autochthonous, produced in the resident population; and the arrival of allochthonous populations, with religions different from those already present in the country (and at times different ways of belonging to the same religions).
If the fact of progressive religious pluralisation was considered both as a fact and a tendency in progress, it was not perceived as being such to the same degree: the public, media and political discourse on religion remained still essentially very close to the dominant religious institutions as majority religions (or too hastily identified as such).
This change in the religious field took place in a period that, in contrast to other periods in the recent history of Europe, was seeing religion ever more present in public discourse (Casanova, 1994), for reasons connected as much with processes of globalisation and their cultural consequences (Kurtz, 1995), as the effect of media visibility that only had in part the same origins.
In speaking about Islam, why am I referring to a more general and undifferentiated pluralisation of the religious field? Because I have the very strong feeling that in public discussion Islam has taken on a crucial role among other religions, because in a certain sense it represents the extreme case (or to be precise, the case perceived as such) of pluralisation itself: discussion of and on Islam, with the historical and symbolic overload it carries with it, reassumes and in a certain sense replaces discussion about pluralisation, which has taken place and is on the increase, but is not at all understood and even less digested, metabolised, by the social body.
This is a problem that is strongly present specifically in the social sciences, which still need to really come to terms with religious pluralisation and its persistent and perhaps increased salience in social experience. And, above all, they do not yet dispose of an adequate conceptual and methodological range of instruments to grasp and understand it5.
Religious specificity as object of study: a sociological problem or a problem for sociology?
One of the elements of otherness that foreigner bring with him is naturally the religious element. And I say naturally because in some cases we are dealing with foreigners coming from cultures (you come from a cultural universe in a more radical and significant manner than you come from a country, even if we find this latter expression, wrongly, more congenial) in which religious identity is central and crucial for defining the cultural and also personal identity of the individual, as well as certain important social subjects.
This in itself, far from being an explanation, is for Western social scientists a problem: because they do not necessarily find themselves in the same situation. Actually, they nearly always find themselves in a situation that is very different: and this may even cause them problems of understanding and being at one with the situation.
And when the religious universe in question is Islam, the difficulty of comprehension can become much greater and change into a serious interpretative handicap (even if the fact that it is serious does not necessarily mean that it is taken seriously) and this for various reasons.
The first is that Islam itself is a world that is very little known, a bit all over the West, which is the heir of a long historical period in the course of which Islam was not only another world, different, unknown, but actually the enemy; and when you have to describe the enemy you do not usually worry about treading too heavily, nor do you worry about being objective. This legacy is more alive now than ever before; more in any case than we would tend to believe. And it is also visible in the attitude, at least implicit, of not a few works on the subject: also in the scientific and academic field (to take one example, think of Huntington, 1996, and the conspicuous line of inquiry, or rather interpretation, that he has produced). But this is a trend that is getting stronger and stronger, with best-selling books and not only, above all since with the fall of the Berlin wall the West lost its traditional enemy to the East; and, in the thinking and practice of some, it is replacing it with a new enemy, to the South (who because of intrinsic features, but above all because of the complicated play of mutual perception, lends himself very well to this role). September 11 did the rest, by making Islamic terrorism break in and explode – literally – on the public scene, inevitably giving the coup de grace to any non-emotional or politically correct reading of Islam.
The second reason regards sociology specifically. When this has been applied to the religious phenomenon of Christianity it has nearly always stooped to analysing its role, however intended (see Weber in the Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, one of the works that have left a mark on sociology, and not only religious). Or perhaps, already with Durkheim, aware that “religion is the first of all social phenomena”, it went to seek in religious phenomena at a primary stage the “elementary forms” of what at a more elaborated stage was to be found also in contemporary society. Other religions, like Hebraism, have possibly for different reasons been given greater attention (think of Sombart, among others). Islam has instead remained among the great unknowns of sociology.
First of all because (as opposed to Hebraism) it was not present in Europe, not even as a minority (and it was a minority, after all, from which Christianity derived, so there was a reason for interest in it, too)
Secondly because Islam as a subject of study has been up to most recent times the prerogative of Classical Oriental studies, and so also a prisoner of its methods of study and its interests, only rarely enriched by any sociological sensibility.
Last but not least, because there is no possible reference to an attested tradition. Islam is only now starting to enter sociology books, and badly, often in a banal way: perhaps just for the sake of making a necessary reference to a phenomenon that cannot be avoided, but often for less noble reasons – simply to sell.
Sociology and Islam: notes for a history
The study of Islam by sociology is a complex problem. Complex, and in no way defined, not even in its broad outlines. Sociological study of Islam is in fact relatively “young”, much younger than a discipline which is itself young, with little more than a century of life, even if the offspring and heir of other contributions. And it is like this despite the fact that the study of religious phenomena, which has now become a specialised sociology and, at least in Europe, secondary (the sociology of religions, for the record), was instead, at the beginnings of the discipline, the centre itself and the main object of its reflections: think of Durkheim, but also, in a different manner, Comte, not to mention Weber, who dedicated most of his intellectual energies to it, to the point of attempting a gigantic comparative work, in his Sociology of Religions, left unfinished.
This was however a sociology that was essentially centred on the phenomenon of Christianity, as we have seen: it took this as its starting point and proceeded in continual confrontation with it, often polemically and to a certain extent ‘in competition’ with it. A confrontation that went on beyond any ‘universalising’ ambitions, those daughters of the age in which sociology was born and of its Illuministic presumption, evident as much in Comte’s law of the three stages as in Durkheim’s Elementary forms of religious life – both convinced that they had found general laws, applicable everywhere, of universal value.
Islam however was not able to enjoy so much attention: much less, I would say, than the “primitive” religions, as well as the Aboriginal ones that served as a basis for Durkheim. And the pre-comprehensions about Islam and the polemical legacy of theological interpretation undoubtedly weighed heavily, as did the authority but also the peculiar distortions of the Orientalist legacy, too. At the same time sociology was less implicated than its cousin disciplines – I am thinking of anthropology – in the fieldwork (including its notorious colonial “complicity”). There were many reasons for this, of which one would seem to be decisive even if completely absent from the debate on the subject: the fact that sociology was born as an inquiry into the effects of modernity (whatever we may mean by this term), and the changes induced by it in developed societies: so it was born as a Western and modern science. And Islam, like other cultural worlds, was, or rather was and is still often perceived as, whether rightly or wrongly, non-Western (when not anti-Western) and non-modern (when not anti-modern). Here is the explanation for the delay of sociology – to blame certainly, but inside this framework it is understandable – in dealing in general with other cultural worlds rather than Western ones (not only of Islam, but also of Islam); as well as, in other ways, the failed or weak development of sociology in Muslim countries, despite the call, often purely rhetorical, to the legacy of Ibn Khaldun.
Here are, in synthesis, some of the reasons that make sociological study of Islam a discipline (I deliberately avoid the term “science”, even if it is used, with too much presumption and lightness, in other disciplines too), still young. Which makes it difficult to speak of different schools, for example. At this stage we are still at the beginning: at the building of the foundations.
Perhaps, to use a synthetic expression (which, however could be, as Karl Kraus said of aphorisms, “either half-truth, or a truth and a half”), it is Weber’s fault, and the lack of attention on the part of sociologists to Islam goes back to the fact that Weber did not manage to introduce it in time in a systematic manner into his vast comparative edifice, a necessary point of reference for any social scientist wanting to study religions. Others did it after him (Turner, 1974; Carrè, 1986), but without his authority, and actually with not many results and very few intuitions, in addition nearly all close to the ‘political’, macro, dimension.
In fact even today sociology texts on Islam can be counted on the fingers of one hand, or not much more (Charnay, 1977), and those that are entitled to this position often speak of something completely different and are not sociological works at all (Shari’ati, 1979). Only recently have we seen some rare attempt to make Islam the object of study in itself (Dassetto, 1996; Pace, 1999). And unfortunately an autochthonous sociology of Islam, born from within the Islamic countries themselves, has been late in appearing, for reasons that would be too long to go into here (Sabagh and Ghazalla, 1986; Maatouk, 1992; Abaza, 1993). It took time for it to be born and developed, and although able to count on noble and ancient forbears (the already cited Ibn Khaldun, perhaps considered with some exaggeration a sort of forerunner of social studies, and not only in the Islamic world), with the exception of important but not sufficient exceptions, it suffers from difficulties in its context (including – not a small problem – repression and lack of democracy, that clearly do not help freedom of research) and a lack of means at its disposal. Even if it is more lively and interesting than is generally known or admitted in the West.
The overall result is that a great number of studies of Islam, and consequently also Islam in Europe, are also in their theoretical foundations if not necessarily in methodology, differently derived from sociological ones. Furthermore, in some hot subjects, there is an excessive number of studies with a political bias, with all the consequences and all the “vices” and deformations that arise in these cases: among which the overexposure to political Islam, and excessive attention to fundamentalist movements. Maybe comprehensible, in the wake of present geopolitical events; but less ethically “neutral” than we might legitimately believe, when applied perhaps too lightly to a reading of social processes inside Europe. With important consequences in the formation of the social public imagination.
How and when the immigrant became a Muslim
In the last thirty years, as we have seen, a new element of reflection, and a new analytical point of view, has burst on to the scene: privileging reflection of a cultural nature, specifically religious. At the risk of producing a new reductionism: immigrants always seen more as Muslims, less as workers, students, parents, children, etc., starting, that is, from their (pre-supposed) identities, rather than the roles they have. A way to re-introduce the category not only of diversity, but also otherness, if not extraneousness, and even, as a consequence that is sometimes theorised, incompatibility, in situations in which it was no longer verifiable and demonstrable from other points of view (think in particular of the second generations: no longer immigrants, less and less ‘other’, always less different – but who, when “Islamised”, re-become ‘other’ and different and even extraneous, according to the interpretations).
This is a debate that was born outside academia and social research: in debates that are invading the public space, in politics, in the media, in certain religious considerations, in many popular essays. But which are also entering sociology strongly. First of all, as a response to a lack, an underestimation, that might be considered indecent and most unscientific, of the cultural and religious element, obvious both in only social interpretations and in the race relations approach, which aimed at a specific interpretation of racism and tended to underestimate other aspects. Then as a path of research: it is the case of much research on European Islam that at a certain point not only the sociological debate began to enter but also that of the wider public, a sign of an already mature interest. Lastly, as an element of social debate and in more deleterious cases of a new, more subtle and more potent form of xenophobia.
The literature that sees the Muslim as different, the ‘other’, at times the enemy (mostly extra-sociological, it must be said, even if there are exceptions), is spreading, together with the research that just makes Islam its subject of research and its fieldwork. Lately however, at least at the level of the wider public, the first seems to be getting the better of the second.
One of the paradoxes of this situation is that today, when we find ourselves in a not-simple moment of transition between an Islam in Europe and an Islam of Europe (with signs already of the construction of a European Islam), it seems that the situation of the Islamic presence could be synthesized with this slogan: substantial integration, conflictual perception.
We have no space here to even mention the figures, not only demographical and economic, for the Islamic presence in Europe, which I will just take for granted (see however Maréchal, Allievi, Dassetto and Nielsen, 2003).
I would just say that substantial integration – no different for Muslims in its positive and negative aspects from for other immigrants – is what we see in the workplace, in school, in many districts. Perception of conflict is what the cultural (or sub-cultural, because it often would be too much to call it that) debate reveals, in one part of the media, in the political world, but also in parts of the cultural and religious establishment.
On the one hand we have the normality of immigration, on the other the exceptional nature of how it is perceived (which is not found in similar forms and modes with other immigrations, even if they are not less “other” that the Islamic one in respect to European history).
It is obvious that the exceptionality of the interpretation has many good reasons on its side, which come to us mainly from the present geo-political situation and the growth of trans-national Islamic terrorism’s capacity to strike (the West and its public imagination). But it is equally true that this does not explain everything. The conflictual interpretation of the Islamic presence in Europe, and the spread of a popular Huntingtonian interpretation of the ‘clash of civilizations’, in fact precedes September 11, 2001, and we find it in the press, in the popularity of the word jihad, in conflicts over the hijab or in urban conflicts concerning mosques and cemeteries, as well as in political parties and religious movements and movements of opinion which had chosen Islam as a target well before “black September” (see my chapters on The Media and Relations and Negotiations in Maréchal, Allievi, Dassetto and Nielsen, 2003).
So the problem precedes geo-politics and terrorism, and has profound roots and a symbolic overload that must be held in consideration. Only this can explain the fierceness of certain attitudes to Islam circulating in the European public space, in which sometimes it would suffice to substitute the word “Jew” for the word “Muslim” to understand their gravity and negative potentiality.
Naturally, in this process of demonising Islam, a more general process of social construction of fear plays a crucial role, which is part of that more general transformation of our society into a “risk society” (Beck, 1992). A fear whose general meaning is now a “long-term tendency” of the contemporary West, from which many draw advantage, and whose specific anti-Islamic aspect is also creating advances in political and intellectual positions, and extremely concrete economic profits (think of the media, or anti-Islamic libels: what people forget to say is that this is a literary genre that is selling very well, much better than any dialogue about civilisation or religion).
European Islam
The case of “European Islam” deserves special attention because of one simple but decisive fact: in the space of one generation, in just a few years in some countries, it has become the second religious presence in Europe, after the Christian presence seen globally: a presence that can be considered definitive and irreversible. A turning point that is not emphatic to call historic.
And it is not an entity in transition, only temporarily present, perhaps against its will – as some would like – returnable to the sender: like the foreigner in Simmel (1908), he is not the one “who comes today and goes tomorrow, but (like) him who comes today and tomorrow remains”. It is the distant subject that has become near, to remain inside the Simmelian terminology.
To Muslims by origin we have to add a not-overwhelming number, but becoming increasingly significant, of European converts, whose role and function in some countries, is becoming more important than the statistical evidence would seem to show (see Allievi, 1998; Social Compass, 1999; van Nieuwkerk, forthcoming). Furthermore a second and third generation of Muslims can call themselves European to all effects, and represent – together with the converts, but with greater numbers and more complex qualitative implications – the first real autochthonous European Islam (often –particularly in France, UK, and in other countries with lower percentages – also “citizen” to all effects, and so endowed with full rights, including political ones, see Khosrokhavar, 1997; Vertovec e Rogers, 1998). An Islam that is changing, evolving, which for many reasons is no longer the Islam of the fathers, without for this in any way losing its identity by being dispersed in the sea of the indeterminate and undifferentiated.
An Islam in evolution, then, but which in this very process sanctions its progressive stabilisation, and offers its candidacy to become part of the cultural identity of the new Europe in the process of a difficult construction. An Islam furthermore that is minoritarian, which in this condition and with little hope of changing has to play its role and negotiate its space in society, on a par with other religious and cultural minorities: not a small change, also “theological”, all still to work out, but which promises interesting results and a feedback effect in the future with Islamic countries of origin– implications that European Islam is only now beginning, and with difficulty, to be aware of (or perhaps it is not even beginning: it may be simply riding them out). Islam is changing, but Europe is changing too: “reality in change, but also of change” (Dassetto, 1996).
But how is it being studied, this changing Islam?
The sociological analysis of Islam in Europe often tends to compare the situation in the different countries of Europe by comparing different national cases (France, Great Britain, Germany, sometimes Holland and Belgium and less frequently the Mediterranean countries of Southern Europe and the Scandinavian countries). Often these works are not really of comparison, because they are not the product of the work of a single researcher or team of researchers: they simply put together papers or essays by various authors, rarely with a common structure and objectives6.
Another frequent approach is to study the presence of Muslim populations in a particular local environment, or in a specific country7.
A third kind of research includes the study of a specific ethnic or national group (for instance the Senegalese in Italy or the Turks in Germany), in some cases with part of the research conducted in the countries of origin8.
Only rarely has a synthesis of the different processes at work been attempted, on a more general level, by specialists who have attempted to describe different implications of the presence of Islam in Europe9. In very rare cases, the synthesis has been the outcome of a research project (Maréchal, Allievi, Dassetto and Nielsen, 2003).
Approaches to Islam: the risks of research, between reductionism and essentialism
The risks that research on Islam in migration runs are, I believe, essentially twofold: one is being misunderstood and the other, the contrary and a mirror image of the preceding one, is an excess of prominence.
Being misunderstood is obviously all about not considering its being above all a religious fact, even if social too (social and religious, and perhaps, according to the teaching of some of the classics, social because religious); it leads to the common temptation to consider it one cultural element among the many, explainable, today that reductionisms of an economic and historicist kind are no longer in fashion, in terms of the sociology of migrations; a factor that can also be manipulated by host societies as by many others, in tension like all of them (the immigrant as a subject between two cultures, etc.) and like many others easily re-absorbable by the stronger culture.
The excess of prominence consists instead in the highlighting of only one – supposed – peculiarity, defined a priori (usually in ways that also owe much to an unconsciously Orientalistic approach), with which is explained, or there is an attempt to explain, every possible act and form of behaviour of Muslims – also what could be attributed to other factors.
Often the first approach only sees the individual dimension of Islam, and can predict its absorption (this at least was what it was like initially, and emphasised more in French sociology, or sociology influenced by it). The second approach instead tends to accentuate the communitarian dimension of Islam, and often fears (or at times exalts) its irreducible diversity.
If in the intellectual prejudice that ‘forgets’ the religious aspect the risk (and for some, ‘pre-judicially’ we might say, the aim) is the failed recognition of a specificity, the desire to read it at all costs in another key – a form of reductionism – the incomprehension of the reality can also manifest itself in the opposite way.
A good example may be a certain kind of Orientalism (or worse, its mass media version) incapable of distinguishing between the Islam described in books and that lived (or even not lived) by Muslims, who recognise themselves more or less (or do not recognise themselves) in it: a form of essentialism, which basically proceeds from a predefined image of what Islam is, in which it tries to bodily collocate in flesh and blood those Muslims that find themselves in its path. And if they do not fit, too bad for them… An approach that is not limited to Orientalism. Many of these (theologians, political experts, journalists and sociologists) who, in second-hand works, borrow concepts about the Islam of Muslim countries (majoritarian Islam) and apply them slavishly to the Islam of Europe (minoritarian), and do not grasp their fundamental diversity, are carrying out precisely this sort of essentialist operation10.
Essentialism, the search for “what a thing cannot but be”, which in other fields led to fertile developments, runs the risk of being quite misleading in sociology (specifically in the sociology of Islam), even if it responds to some characteristics that make it attractive as a method from the point of view of the scholar: it is relatively easy to study, it has an undoubted didactic efficacy, it gives the illusion of immediate comprehension and thus satisfies any anxieties as to interpretation, and it adapts very well to academic rituals (cultured citations, footnotes, attachment to a tradition, ritual homage to past masters, etc.). It also has debatable results in the kind of “reflexivity” it produces on society, leading to a pre-interpretation in cultural and religious terms that is both scientifically and politically problematic in its consequences (Martiniello, 1997).
A way of proceeding, this, that makes it difficult to distinguish – an operation which is heuristically indispensable – between three levels of reading that are conceptually distinct, but which often overlap in the analysis: Islam “in itself”, so to speak (theology, legal studies); Islam as a model (social, political, cultural, religious) that exists concretely, but which has many and diverse applications and articulations in the Muslim world; and lastly Islam in Europe, which finds itself in a completely different situation from that of its countries of origin (but what origin, from the second generations on, born in the European context?), as different from that described by Islam as a principle of reference, the one that I have called for want of a better term Islam “in itself”.
These are the reasons for which scholars and researchers, who at a certain point had begun to deal a little more closely with the phenomenon of immigration, have not so far fully understood (with important exceptions) the weight of this religious specificity. They too, they above all, have been the victims of a peculiar form of cross-eyed vision.
In part because of pre-judicial questions, to be understood as we have seen in a literal sense: the emergence of the religious factor as the characterising factor of a social phenomenon is something that is intellectually extraneous and ideologically troublesome for a consistent opinion, also, and perhaps above all, in the intellectual milieu (“the speaking class”, as it has been called), which has often revealed itself to be, especially in the past, not well equipped to understand it as such, and in some cases not very willing even to want to recognise it. On the other hand a-critical emphasis on the religious factor itself, the tendency to explain everything as stemming from it, underestimating or completely forgetting the social, cultural and political dimension, is in a certain sense the other side of the preceding error, and shows the same incomprehension. Which means that – to give an example of the mechanism at work – if an Egyptian beats his wife who is, say, Spanish, the initial interpretative factor is religious, and there we go to look for explanations of the behaviour; level of education, social class, rural or urban provenance, but also just the pure and simple psychological variability of individuals, tend to get lost (for example, much reflection on so-called mixed couples suffers from this over-representation of the role of religion: on both religious sides, in the media, etc.).
Those who want to study “sociological” Islam should move between reductionism and essentialism, in a delicate balance which is not easy to keep, above all if they intend to start from the concrete behaviour of Muslims: so dealing with lived Islam, using the Islam described in the pages of newspapers and books only as an indispensable instrument of analysis, and knowable and recognisable through these. In any case, between reductionism and essentialism, and before these, there must be the observation of the phenomenon (and a phenomenon, it must be said in brackets, that leaves very few written traces: so that either you observe it directly, in its empirical manifestations, or it simply escapes us).
The problem is that direct observation is tiring and costly, and uses up much time and money. It is not strange, therefore, that today many people, not only journalists, are choosing easier interpretative shortcuts: telling us for example what is happening in European mosques without feeling any need to set foot inside them. What is surprising is nobody finds this surprising; that it is accepted both in its deontology and in its conclusions. The interpretation of a phenomenon cannot logically precede observation and description. The fact that there are many people who are prepared to theorise before having analysed and described is not only an intellectual perversion that goes well beyond the subject in question, but is a sign that the subject is hot, sensitive (from many points of view: political, cultural, religious, of customs, even sexual) and a symptom of that frequent and peculiar over-exposition to media to which Islam is subject. All the more reason for insisting on proceeding more carefully.
So there is a need for much more inquiry, both qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative is still too scarce, above all in respect to the excess of “explanations” offered on the subject, which suffer from having a definitely inadequate empirical base. But more than large surveys, it is the specific and qualitative inquiries, of ethnic communities, associations, or the most diverse groups, that can be more precious at this stage. Perhaps because despite the passing of the years we find ourselves in a phase that is relatively approximate in development, it would be better not to let the second precede or prevail, that is, the quantitative research over the qualitative. The contexts of the various countries are in fact different, as are also the migratory components and the times and modes of the migratory and economic cycles; so that also from the conceptual point of view there is need for theoretical refinement and contextualisation of conceptualisation itself. In short, as always, both are necessary, qualitative and quantitative research (after all they respond to different research aims). Remembering however that the first may be empty without the second, but the second without the first is blind. In short, we need the scientific humility of being able to start from the beginning again: also in “qualifying” and conceptualising.
All in all it would seem to be useful for everyone to attempt to shift from systemic comparisons to an empirical analysis of the data offered us by the reality of the Islamic presence in Europe, and also by the changes in progress in the countries of origin: from Islam to Muslims, or if we prefer, from systems to social actors. To then return, supported by a more solid basis for verification, as is right and necessary, to the systems.
Reactive identities
In this phase, in which the interpretative paradigms (also those of common discourses, not only scientific) are still weak and little attested, identity conflicts and reactive identities are emerging: that is, identities that are such only in opposition to someone else11. We find them today in Europe among the very many people who on the political and intellectual plane have been rediscovering their Christian roots only since the Muslims have been present, and in opposition to them, perhaps through controversies over religious symbols, as is the case in Italy of those over the crucifix and in France the hijiab (and it is symptomatic of this identity reactivity that these positions are often found again, even more vociferous, among declared atheists – think of the Oriana Fallaci case, or Michel Houellebecq – than among believers). But we find them also among Muslims who have rediscovered their roots, manifesting them through customs they had interrupted (ranging from attending the mosque, to the insistence on the hijab itself, as far as self-segregation in ghetto-like communities) since they have been living in Europe. The same use of self-definition, on the part of Muslims (as well as of ‘anti-Muslim’ autochthones), in terms of “community” is part of this process: as if they were really so, as if there were only one, as if all the members of the supposed community actually belonged to it, or adhered to it, or recognised themselves as part of it. To paraphrase a well-known book by Nathan Glazer (1997): We are all Culturalists now.
A good example of reactive identities is conflicts on Islamic symbols in Europe.
Conflicts on Islamic symbols in the European public space
The presence of Islam inside the European public space could not pass unobserved, either socially or culturally. It is too visible and ‘bulky’ not to lead to debate and tension: a sign that it really is an event that touches sensitive chords, or that is perceived as such. To the point that, if we measure its effects, we at times have the impression of an open and thorough confrontation (on the subjects discussed in this section, see Maréchal, Allievi, Dassetto and Nielsen, 2003).
Islam is disputed in sé, often through essentialist and simplistic interpretations of the kind of rapport between religion and politics that it proposes. Islam is then disputed in some of its aspects, in how they manifest themselves especially in Muslim countries: of these aspects, the most mediatised are certainly the condition of women and fundamentalism. Lastly, it leads to debate on the foundations of our societies, on the limits of their possibilities of “openness”, on their boundaries, on the many interpretations of possible “tolerance thresholds”. All this happens without there often being a direct confrontation/clash with Muslims: often it is a question of internal debates in the host society, about Muslims and Islam.
These debates on Islam are very wide-ranging, even if what sets them off and their temporal recurrences can be brought down to a limited number of issues. There are however some issues that also imply a social and cultural confrontation/clash which involves Muslim social actors directly (but not necessarily the Islam communities as a whole, as people too readily tend to say), and which have led to discussions, shows of hostility, forms of refusal or afterthoughts.
One has the sensation however that the debate that is emerging from these forms of tension has a common theme, and that this is what integration is, and how it can be attained: whether it be the Islamic schools or the hijab, mosques or associationism of radical inspiration, and in general anything that creates discussion and tension around Islamic subjects.
The question of the hijab is a typical case. Anyone who has had occasion to hold courses, seminars or conferences on Islam knows how sensitive, how intensely felt, this subject is: almost a point of reference for any discussion on the presence of Islam in the public space, and in general on the question of women in Islam and comparisons between the Western and the Islamic model, both too easily taken for granted.
From a controversy discussed in the public space, like that of the hijab, we pass to a controversy about the public space. Another issue frequently discussed is in fact that of mosques and cemeteries, not simply as such, but perceived as symbolic and central places for making Islam visible.
A point that seems even more crucial, implying as it does a perception of control of territory, and its symbolic imprinting. An aspect that even with all due caution could be studied not only with the tools of cultural sociology, and sociology tout court, but also with the categories proper to ethology and sociobiology. Control of and on territory, after all, is not only a cultural and symbolic fact: it is also (and remains, despite everything) a very concrete and material sign of dominion, of power.
Think in particular of the building of mosques, but also simply of the visibility of prayer halls in European cities: questions to which we can add the possibility of spreading the adhan, the summons to prayer, outside the mosques themselves, and the building of cemeteries or the granting of specific cemetery spaces. The latter a problem around which the level of hostility is sometimes surprising, considering the fact that granting burial to foreigners is a custom that goes back thousands of years, to be found in all cultures and religions, a fact of human pietas, not to mention religious traditions. And considering that, on the other hand, the fact that the immigrant no longer asks for his body to be sent back to the country of origin is, so to speak, a form of post mortem integration: the recognition at the very highest symbolic level that the ground in which he wishes to repose for his final sleep he considers his home.
The question of mosques is important for various reasons. On one hand, in fact, the presence of foreign communities would seem to presuppose as a quite obvious consequence that they would desire to have their own places of religious encounter according to the religion they belong to, as is the case with “internal” autochthonous minorities. But there have been at times surprising conflicts around this question: the sign of discomfort and refusal that is more profound than its specific target in this case. Conflicts that make one think that the question is not the fact in itself (hardly anyone who opposes them would say that they want to stop anyone praying: the reason evoked is always different), but something more profound, connected with symbolic appropriation of territory, which has also something to do with history and its re-construction, but also with deep psychological and social dynamics, to understand which we would perhaps have to venture on to the insidious and slippery ground of cultural psychology. Without forgetting ethology, as I said before.
But other subjects are also often being discussed: from fundamentalism to multi-culturalism, that is, from what we consider unacceptable and impossible to integrate in Islam, to the limits themselves of our capacity for and possibility of welcome.
Islamophobia?
Social processes are never simple. We may at times try to describe them in clear colours, but they actually always appear in chiaroscuro. The process – Islam settling in Europe and becoming visible – “is happening”, that is true. But, even more, it is the object of discussion: and less for what it is, for its manifestations that are empirically observable on the ground, than for what it is in the public imagination, literally pre-judicial (in the sense that the judgement is given before the observation), which surrounds it and in a certain sense anticipates it.
It is this that transforms the robes or the beard of a pious traditionalist Muslim into the uniform of an Islamic militant. And this is why the desire to erect mosques as a place of worship and assembly of the community is as it were semantically over-determined, overloaded with meanings that it does not possess, which are connected with fundamentalism and terrorism, or more often with the general fear of a cultural invasion, or the introduction of elements that are extraneous and potentially of the “enemy”. This also an example of the “cultural overload” (Pace, 1995) that often affects debates over Islam.
The media play a decisive role both as the expression of a culture – in this case Muslim cultures, in the plural – and as an instrument for reading and interpreting these same cultures, through news of Muslims spread by general and specialised media. What is more, they play a significant role, even if underestimated, as a means of building the Muslim communities and the keeping up of ties with the countries of origin. Lastly, the media are a sounding box for problems, and constructing criteria for interpretation of the same. Let us start from the question of the production of the social public imaginary12.
The public imagination is crucial. In a certain sense even more than the reality of ongoing social processes, it is from perception of these that much of the direction that they take and their “success” depends. This aspect is of fundamental important also for policies around Islam: which do not so much influence, as depend in great measure on the perception of the phenomenon.
I will not underline, even though it would be necessary, on the importance of history. I will just limit myself to say that in the case of Islam factors come into play that in the case of other Eastern religions and other cultures do not. I refer in particular to the long past of confrontation/clash with the European West and Christianity, through the Crusades, the long period of maritime conflict against the Saracens and barbarian pirates, but also more recently of colonisation and the complex drift of de-colonization. A story that is not yet over, which also includes the consequences of the Arab-Israel conflict, the Gulf war, and other moments of crisis. Not last, September 11 and its consequences, with the attack on Afghanistan and the War in Iraq today.
“L’Islam vis-à-vis de l’Occident, c’est le chat vis-à-vis du chien”, wrote Braudel. And Delumeau, in his history of fear in the West, does not forget the role played by fear of Islam, traces of which are still to be found not only in history but in the lived reality of folklore (“Saracen” and “Moor” games, among others), in town-planning and landscapes (the “Saracen towers” that dot the Mediterranean coastlines), in proverbial lore (the Italian “mamma li turchi” – Help! The Turks!): a legacy that it would be ingenuous to think has no effect on the present day. And which weighs at least as much as the Orientalist tradition stigmatised for its defects, with some lack of generosity, by E. Saïd (1978). The media are unwitting offspring of this mentality, and they take it on board, and in doing so they re-produce it and so make it real, thus turning a legacy from yesterday into a problem of today.
In this complex mechanism of construction of the cultural public imaginary the media have a central role, which turns out to be more and more determining today, also because their role, following on the processes of globalisation, of which they are at the same time effect, cause and accelerator, is no longer just to inform, but actually to build our worlds of knowledge. And to build them not only through the traditional effects of vertical integration, inside single nation-states or single societies, or single public spheres, in the words of Habermas (1962), but also by connection and horizontal integration, inter-, trans- and super-national (the word integration, incidentally, must not fool us: it is anything but a-conflictual, in the same way as a-conflictual, at least from the sociological point of view, is not a word that we could use for society, whose equilibrium is by definition unstable, and in which conflict plays a physiological and determining role). These processes cannot be comprehended in a ‘mediacentric’ view, so to speak (as happens in some studies on the relations between the media and Islam), and be limited to the social and cultural effects of the media themselves, but must be perceived as being capable of seeing their role inside wider social processes.
Of many other factors, the presence of Islam, with the apertures and connections that it implies with other national public spheres and other cultural worlds, is a non-secondary element of construction and ‘complexification’ of this unusual form of public sphere, interrelated and necessarily, also beyond the will of its actors, open, and rich with consequences, often unexpected. In fact there is a process in progress, even if with counter-tendencies and withdrawal symptoms, that seems to be going in the direction of a substantial co-inclusion of Islam in the public sphere, as more in general in society, through the various paths of integration.
Lastly, the world of media visibility is also the world in which and through which Islam is also seen. And at the same time Muslims are indirectly the means by which Islam is being discovered: something that some seem to have a certain awareness of.
One of the ways of making Islam visible is what happens in exceptional cases, which we may interpret as hermeneutic accidents, a jamming in a certain sense of the interpretative codes, and of the representations of these. Think of the Rushdie case, the question of the headscarf or hijab in France and elsewhere, and other more local ones.
Here I just wish to note their basic logic, which helps to give a certain image of Islam (conflictual, for example), which also reverberates through the perception of the phenomenon as a whole, and on to the welcome reserved for the social actors who embody it.
Think also of the fate of concepts like jihad, that burst into the Western public imaginary as a decisive aspect, at least in the perception of it, of Islam and therefore of Muslims, and therefore also of Muslims in Europe; an interesting example of generalisation of a local(isable) concept at a global level, and along this path of its assimilation into a perception that is now trans-national.
One of its expressions is what a work that has had a certain amount of publicity has called “Islamophobia”, an expression that has become much-used in all European countries where the Islamic question is important, among experts and especially among social actors, first of all obviously Muslims themselves (Runnymede Trust, 1997, known also as the Islamophobia Report).
The word Islamophobia has however an unpleasantly ring of victimisation to it. While it does refer to social facts that do definitely exist, and which it is important to monitor, its use is particularly seductive for Muslims, putting all the responsibility for its existence on to their host societies. Now, while it is no doubt true that inflammatory anti-Islamic messages have been spreading over Europe, which I look at below, Muslims and their leadership, their imams and their associations, bear a non-secondary part of the responsibility for their spreading: for the hypocrisy of some messages or the abstractness of others, for the violence of certain verbal attitudes (occasionally with too weak condemnations from other Muslims) or for the incomprehension of some basic categories and methodologies of common European thinking, for certain extremes of language or defensive lexical hair-splitting, as well as the explicit choice of violence of some people (from Mohamed Atta, who flew into the Twin Towers, to Muhammad Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo Van Gogh, to the suicide bombers operating on European soil – as in Madrid – or, beyond Europe, in the Islamic world, in Palestine as in Casablanca). Obviously they do not concern all the Muslims in Europe, and not necessarily the majority of them; but quite comprehensible they fall over all of them.
Islamophobia does not regard only, nor perhaps even mainly, the media, which are almost more an effect than a cause of it, even though they act as multipliers and driving force. It is present in politics and theologies, as well as in academia, at various levels and in the most diverse disciplines. It seems to me however that one of the successful elements of the term among the Islamic communities and politically correct spheres close to it is also to discharge the communicative responsibility of Islamophobia entirely on to non-Muslims. Now, if the mass media often have an “exaggerated” perception of Muslim positions, this is partly because the Islamic leaderships sometimes express them in that very manner.
Having said this, let us see how the Islamic enemy is constructed.
The ‘method of discourse’: a case of media/intellectual cultural clash
The debate in the public space on Islam is becoming more and more heated. But how are we to deal with it? To overturn Descartes, I think that “the method of discourse” can be summarised as follows. I will take some examples from the case of Italy, which I know best, but which can be found also in other European countries (on the case of France see for example Geisser, 2003).
Often, in attitudes concerning Islam, we shift (but I fear not unconsciously, even less ‘innocently’) from a consideration – more or less profound – about Islam, ‘abstract’ so to speak, or connected to the situation in some Muslim countries, to one on Muslims in Europe, and even to immigrants in general. I limit myself here to underline that to continually overlap the two levels, that of the image that we have of Islam (often based only on extreme cases) and that of ‘normal’ immigration, is a dangerous game. The minimum that can be said is that it is not an incentive to integration. On one hand in fact it offers to autochthones a false vision of reality which only increases already pre-existing phobias, which have a ‘foreign’ as well as ‘historical’ origin, but effects that are all ‘internal’ (as we are taught by sociological constructionism, it does not matter if a thing is real or not : it is enough for it to be believed to be real, to produce real effects). On the other hand it favours responses in tune with the stimulus, which go from motivated rage to a defensive sense of being victimised, up to a generalised sensation of ‘extraneousness’. With the result that this obsessive insistence on the Islamic ‘wolf’ risks becoming a particularly dangerous and disturbing example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There is often a “expectation effect” around Islam, which brings about what the semiologist Ugo Volli has called “fattoidi” (factoids): strange creatures that resemble facts without actually being them. Possible, expected, even if not real, and more easily malleable and manipulated than reality itself; but which produce what the same observer has called semiotic pollution – a form of pollution that is less observed but not less dangerous: if not of pollution of places and bodies, then of consciousnesses. They have a ‘logic’ that we have often seen at work: among the more significant examples, at the time of the Catholic Jubilee, the various G8 meetings, but also at elections and at Christmas, when possible risks of fundamentalist terror attacks are feared. The same happens cyclically, in many European countries, with the publication of reports from the respective intelligence services, on ‘expected’ dangers from Islamic terrorism. Possible: who can say the contrary? But it is above all the alarm that is real, and it is this that gains the opening pages of newspapers and TV newscasts. And its effects, above all else cumulative, remain.
To quote from a specific but interesting case, the ‘cultural’ debate on Islam developed relatively late in Italy, as opposed to other European countries. If only because the Islamic presence itself came later, and is still now numerically much lower than in most other countries. To compensate, it seems to be now recovering lost ground very rapidly, and even exporting its arguments and maîtres-à-penser to countries in which the debate is of earlier date and more mature (I am thinking of the many translations of journalist Oriana Fallaci’s books, 2001 and 200413, but also political scientist Giovanni Sartori, 200014, and Cardinal Biffi’s statements spreading beyond the Alps).
But how has this debate developed? How has it been formed? What is it based on?
Let us see a few recent examples of the ‘cultural’ debate on Islam in Italy.
First of all, the method. A culture, a civilisation, a religion, is defined a priori, starting from knowledge that is often completely patched up, scraps of information, second-hand readings: from this abstract definitions, ‘empirical’ Muslims are ‘deduced’. This is the ‘Sartori method’. Or one can start from personal experiences here and there, in different times and places, and again the deduction is: Muslims here and now. This is the ‘Fallaci method’. Or yet again one can give a theological definition of the ‘other’, show his diversity and incompatibility with ‘our’ principles, and then conclude that there is ontological incompatibility. This is the ‘Biffi method’. All others are only variations on the theme.
Sartori, in synthesis, says: the Islamic model contemplates an overlap between religion and politics in a theocratic key (the implication is: not us), therefore Muslims think that, therefore they are dangerous for our way of life, therefore they cannot live among us.
Fallaci, in synthesis says: I have seen dangerous fanatics in Pakistan and Iran, Arafat thirty years ago blessed suicide bombers, today Muslims have carried out a terror attack on the Twin Towers (the subtext is: they are always like this), therefore Muslim immigrants are intrinsically dangerous, therefore we have to get rid of them.
Biffi, in synthesis says: we are Catholics, they are not (the subtext here is above all that we are Catholics: but also that they are completely other-than-us), they have theological structures and therefore of thought and therefore of behaviour that are different from ours, incompatible with ours, therefore we have the duty to protect ourselves, therefore the state must not let them in.
These are in synthesis the positions expressed. With success, because in an age in which things are much less clear than we would wish, pedlars of cheap certainties – a drug not less dangerous than many others – are very successful.
The major political consequence of this way of thinking can be seen in the odious campaign of the Lega Nord (North League, a xenophobic political party which is part of the coalition presently in power) against the Mosques and Muslims in general, with its corollary of visceral and primary oppositions. But the social and cultural consequences are much larger than this empirical example.
It would be easy to deconstruct one by one the arguments advanced to motivate the incompatibility of the systems of thought and therefore of life. On the level of principles: they are often described differently from how they are defined by those who live them – our definition does not correspond to the self-definition, which should lead us to have some doubts (are we sure we have understood properly?). On the historical level: starting from the same principles, different political and social systems have been constructed in different times and places – which should make us cautious in front of too facile ‘deductions’. On the social level: the situation to which we are referring today – that of Muslim immigrants in Europe – does not correspond to those of the Muslim countries to which we are referring to motivate the incompatibility. The category ‘Islam’, used in this way, far from having any explicative value, risks to become completely useless if not misleading: more or less, as Saïd (1981) already denounced, like the category ‘negro-mentality’ in order to understand black people.
There is more. There are some considerations to make also about how we define ourselves and our societies: are we sure that they correspond to our ideal types? For example, is the Christian identity of our land so evident as certain secular intellectuals and certain political leaders claim, even more than certain religious figures?
But the problem of interpretation can be reassumed in the therefores and the premises with which I reassumed the theorems cited. And in one basic idea.
The implicit presupposition in fact is: if a person belongs to a certain faith, this person cannot be different from what he or she is supposed to be, that is to how we define that particular faith. Pity that things do not work like that. Not even practising Catholics are simplistically ‘deducible’ from an abstract definition of the basic principles of Catholicism. Imagine the non-practising ones, even if they are baptised…
The idea of shari’a, for example, with everything that it leads to in terms of relations between religion and politics, actually presupposes that the Muslims are the majority, and are working the levers of power. The problem is that where they are not the majority, and do not have power, the entire conceptualization of shari’a, and its consequences for the individual, changes, often radically. What theology do they follow then, in concrete terms? And again: are a Muslim in Morocco and one in Egypt equal (and neither of these will be the same as those who come from Senegal or Indonesia), the same Muslim once he has emigrated to Europe, the same individual twenty years later after his emigration, and yet again his son who was born here? Obviously not. Not even in their way of being Muslims. Probably not even in the things in which they believe. Certainly not in the way in which they believe.
Conclusions
There is in the background to the fear of Islam what seems to me to be a long-lasting trend in Western societies, increasingly manifested in recent decades: the generalisation of the social construction of fear, its systematic spreading, its omnipresence in the media, its political exploitation15. And as a consequence the spread of mentalities, even before policies, of obsession with security: in some cases also frankly paranoiac. The phenomenon is not new in itself. It seems to me that it is new in its modes of operation. And naturally in the choice of object (scapegoat?) of reference.
One of its effects is the steady disappearance from the public scene of other diversities: polarisation, at present, is on the Islamic one. Which is keeping up an incomparable level of visibility in respect to other cultural and religious phenomena, and also in respect to other problems that immigration does create, and which seem to have been pushed to the sides of the stage, including those of security, deviance, crime, even if extremely popular with the media. The only possible way out from this tendency seems to be a progressive de-islamization of the discussion on Muslims in Europe: a way out to the ‘exceptionalism’ attributed by default to Islam. Something that does not seems to be on the agenda, at present.
We can easily foresee that the ‘Islamic diversity’ will be with us for a long time in the European public debate. The path we traced at the beginning – the ‘other’, the diverse, the foreigner, the immigrant, the Muslim – does not appear to be leading to anything new. At least for now.
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1 As well as the century that saw the rise and fall of the most devastating forms of totalitarianism (that is, the negation at the roots of any diversity) and some of the greatest massacres that history has ever known. I do not here intend to enter into the relations between the two things: search for the otherness and negation of the other (tempting and risky at the same time). I will just limit myself to touch upon the first aspect.
2 Same meaning presupposed in expressions such as the French main d’oeuvre or the Italian manodopera.
3 Nostalgia as a peculiar form of mental disease, on which Frigessi Castelnuovo and Risso (1982).
4 A detailed periodisation, which compares migratory cycles and “Muslim cycles”, can be found in Dassetto (1996), and more synthetically in Allievi and Dassetto (1993).
5 On the two aspects, theoretical and empirical, respectively, see the essays by Guizzardi and Allievi in Garelli, Guizzardi and Pace, 2003. For a more general discussion of the difficulty of using the category of religious pluralism in sociological theory, see Allievi, 2004b.
6 Some examples, normally the outcome of a seminar, are Gerholm and Lithman (1988), Shadid and van Koningsveld (1991 and 2002, to quote just the oldest and the more recent), Lewis and Schnapper (1992), Waardenburg and others (1994), Nonneman, Niblock and Szajkowski (1996), Vertovec and Peach (1997), Ferrari and Bradney (2000), Haddad (2002), Hunter (2002).
7 The local studies are too numerous to quote them. They constitute an important literature to refer to, when in search of empirical works: too often, unfortunately, with lack of theoretical profundity. Some examples of texts on national situations, which from different point of views have opened the debate on the Islamic presence in their respective countries, have been, among others, Dassetto and Bastenier (1984) for Belgium, Kepel (1987) for France, Landmann (1992) for Holland, Allievi and Dassetto (1993) for Italy, and Lewis (1994) for Britain.
8 To quote only two examples, Schmidt of Friedberg (1994) and Amiraux (2001).
9 Among others Dassetto and Bastenier (1988), Nielsen (1992), Shadid and van Koningsveld (1995), Dassetto (1996), Allievi (2002).
10 On minority Islam, on its “Meccan” and “ummic” character, see Allievi 2002 and 2005).
11 I develop the concept further in Allievi (2005).
12 For further discussion see the chapter on the media that I wrote for Maréchal et alii (2003).
13 On which I have extensively commented and to which I have tried to respond in Allievi 2001 and 2004a.
14 To which I have responded all the same in Allievi 2001.
15 I have given some further indications in Allievi, 2005.
Questo libro è presente su:
Allievi S. (2005), Sociology of a Newcomer: Muslim Migration to Italy – Religious visibility, Cultural and Political Reactions, in A. al-Shahi and R. Lawless (a cura di), Middle East and North African Immigrants in Europe, London, Routledge, pp. 43-56;
Allievi S. (2004), Communication and Communities: Public Space, Global Media and Local Umma, in J. Malik (a cura di), Muslims in Europe. From the Margin to the Centre, Munster, LIT Verlag, pp. 185-203; isbn 3-8258-7638-1 pp.260
Questo libro è presente su:
Allievi S. (2004), Il fattore “C”. Dinamiche (inter-)culturali e logiche istituzionali: osservazioni a partire dal caso dell’I.P.M ‘Cesare Beccaria’, in A. Campus (a cura di), Minori stranieri soli. Tra politiche di accoglienza e politiche di controllo, Roma, Officina Edizioni, pp. 221-256; isbn 8887570-78-7
di
Stefano Allievi
Padre nostro
che sei nei cieli
dacci oggi i lavori giornalieri
non ci indurre al Beccaria
e liberaci dai carabinieri
così sia
(dal sito web del Beccaria)
Le riflessioni che seguono sono il frutto di una ricerca svolta nel corso dell’anno 2000, con momenti di osservazione partecipante all’interno della struttura dell’Ipm “Beccaria”, in diversi ambiti e momenti della giornata, a seguito dei quali sono state svolte alcune interviste ad operatori ai vari livelli, dal vertice alla base, oltre che diversi incontri e riunioni con i medesimi, allo scopo di far emergere alcuni nodi particolarmente rilevanti nell’ambito delle relazioni interculturali[1].
Data il carattere non sufficientemente lungo e intenso della nostra presenza (in particolare, data la mancanza di un periodo di osservazione partecipante continuativo e approfondito – stile Asylums di Goffman, per intenderci), non abbiamo in questa sede alcuna ambizione esaustiva, né riassuntiva: soprattutto non ci permetteremmo, per motivi deontologici, dopo una serie di prese di contatto troppo brevi per essere considerate sufficienti, di proporre uno strumentario analitico, né ad uso di operatori che in molti casi hanno una maggiore conoscenza sia dei problemi che delle dinamiche relazionali in gioco, né ad uso dei decision makers.
Il fine che ci muove non è nemmeno, d’altronde, quello di proporre una analisi della letteratura in materia. Il nostro scopo è piuttosto e soprattutto, in questa sede, di far emergere alcuni spunti di riflessione, a partire dall’osservazione di alcune dinamiche legate alla concretezza del caso in questione, e a una più generale frequentazione delle problematiche interculturali in vari ambiti, che possano eventualmente servire da spunto operativo, e magari da punto di partenza per una ricerca ulteriore.
In particolare, affronteremo alcune dinamiche culturali, indotte dalla presenza sempre più significativa di minori immigrati, o figli di immigrati, o comunque appartenenti a culture minoritarie (ad esempio linguisticamente), che esulano dalla normale pratica relativa alla situazione dei minori e della devianza minorile. Dinamiche che, innanzitutto per questioni numeriche (questa ‘utenza’ è in crescita, mentre quella autoctona ‘tradizionale’, a causa della sempre maggiore diffusione di misure alternative, è in diminuzione; cf. Campus 2000[2]), ma anche per la loro precipua importanza, diventano sempre più importanti e centrali anche nella vita dell’‘istituzione Beccaria’.
La percentuale di stranieri, al Beccaria come in altri istituti per minori, è come si è visto sempre più ampia. Tanto per dare una cifra indicativa, al momento del nostro ingresso, il 74% dei minori presenti (60 maschi e 15 femmine) era straniero, di cui l’86% in custodia cautelare, per recidiva o per fallimento delle misure assunte in precedenza. Le presenze principali erano quelle degli jugoslavi (quasi ‘monopolistiche’ nel femminile), dei maghrebini, degli albanesi e di alcuni altri (sudamericani, rumeni ecc.). Naturalmente gli stranieri hanno molte più probabilità di finire reclusi: “Di fatto, su 100 italiani che arrivano al CPA (Centro Prima Accoglienza), 20 passano in carcere; su 100 stranieri ve ne finiscono 80”, come afferma sinteticamente il vice-direttore dell’Istituto (Centomani, s.i.d.).
Sembra ancora vero insomma quanto notato a suo tempo da Goffman a proposito degli Stati Uniti: che c’è “un solo tipo di uomo che non deve mai arrossire”, e che può sperare, nel corso della sua vita, di non finire in galera, e costui “è il giovane, sposato, bianco, abitante nei centri urbani, proveniente dagli Stati del Nord [da noi, senza modifiche geografiche, le Regioni, ndr], eterosessuale, protestante [da noi, ovviamente, cattolico], padre, con istruzione universitaria, un buon impiego, una bella carnagione, giusto peso e altezza e dedito a vari sport” (Goffman 1970, 198).
Sul peso della presenza degli stranieri, anche minori, in carcere ha peraltro qualche non secondaria influenza la percezione del fenomeno della delinquenza minorile, e più in generale della presenza straniera. Società e politica (o, per meglio specificare, certo associazionismo – tipicamente alcune organizzazioni dei commercianti e non pochi comitati cittadini – e talune forze politiche) promuovono volentieri mobilitazioni e proteste sul tema della sicurezza dei cittadini[3]. E a livello politico come giornalistico diventa pane quotidiano quella che viene chiamata strategia, ma è soprattutto una evocazione retorica, della tolleranza zero[4]: una idea della società, o per meglio dire della città (ché si tratta di fenomeno essenzialmente urbano, anche se non solo metropolitano), spesso tutta incentrata su una politica di “prevenzione situazionale”[5]. E non si tratta certo di una novità, ma piuttosto di una costante. Già Foucault notava come “la convinzione generalmente diffusa di un aumento incessante e pericoloso del crimine” sia all’origine, insieme ad altri fattori, della svolta nella concezione della pena e del carcere avvenuta nel XVIII secolo (Foucault 1976, 83-84).
Per parte nostra aggiungiamo solo che la storia stessa della parola crimen ci indica questa prospettiva: in origine significava ‘accusa’ – solo poi, ‘delitto’.
Bene, oggi sappiamo quanto la ‘percezione selettiva’ che caratterizza questo modo di concepire la società veda negli immigrati, negli stranieri, degli obiettivi di per sé prioritari: percezione cui implicitamente o esplicitamente si adegua l’operato tra l’altro delle forze di polizia, ad esempio privilegiando taluni obiettivi invece di altri.
I minori stranieri sono anche elementi di una catena migratoria atipica: ragazzini venuti il più delle volte senza famiglia e genitori. Ci preme sottolineare la vulnerabilità precipua di questi minori: a causa della necessità di produrre un reddito immediato (per sé, per la famiglia rimasta nel paese di origine, ed eventualmente per il racket che li ha presi ‘in carico’), della carenza di contesti e di luoghi di aggregazione, delle condizioni di vita e di alloggio precarie e marginali, della forte mobilità sul territorio alla ricerca di opportunità di guadagno, della irregolarità giuridica diffusa (Favaro 2000).
Va notato tuttavia che comincia a farsi presente una ‘normale’ seconda generazione di figli di immigrati in Italia, con famiglie quindi presenti sul territorio. E questi stranieri sono più simili agli italiani, anche dal punto di vista della devianza: commettono ‘reati di seconda generazione’, per così dire.
Per gli stranieri, in ogni caso, la permanenza negli Ipm non è una extrema ratio,
come dovrebbe essere (Campus, in questo stesso volume): per loro le misure alternative alla detenzione, le pene alternative, come la permanenza presso il domicilio della famiglia (che non c’è quasi mai) o in comunità, sono sostanzialmente residuali. Manca ancora una struttura di accoglienza esterna al carcere in grado di accoglierli, con strutture alloggiative adeguate, anche se un progetto in tal senso è in corso di realizzazione proprio in collegamento con il Beccaria. Si radicalizza dunque quell’andamento ‘a forbice’ delle presenze, che vede gli italiani in diminuzione e gli stranieri in aumento. Ma non solo essi entrano più facilmente nel circuito detentivo; essi tendono anche a rimanervi più a lungo.
La permanenza media è compresa in un periodo di 3-5 mesi. Non molto lunga, dunque, e questo è certamente un dato positivo, anche se vi sono singoli casi con detenzioni di lunghezza maggiore. Tuttavia questa permanenza relativamente breve può essere a sua volta un problema, rendendo difficile impostare lavori in profondità, necessariamente più di lungo periodo. Paradossalmente il fattore tempo rischia di incidere maggiormente, in negativo, sugli stranieri: l’auspicio di base anche degli operatori, e non solo dei ragazzi/e, è ovviamente che il periodo detentivo sia, in linea di massima, il più breve possibile (e qui notiamo già l’implicita ammissione di una sconfitta: la consapevolezza che esso non svolga, in definitiva, quella funzione educativa che la società, in teoria, gli affida). Ma d’altro canto, se questo stesso periodo è troppo breve e per giunta segmentato, è più difficile costruire un percorso (ri-)educativo, che, ulteriore paradosso, è in un certo senso più importante ancora per i minori stranieri, la cui famiglia o altri legami parentali, capaci di responsabilizzazione nei confronti del minore medesimo, sono assenti o comunque non coinvolgibili.
L’attenzione è comprensibilmente focalizzata sul destino personale del minore, il progetto da costruire intorno e a partire da lui: non a caso la terminologia usata all’interno della struttura, tra operatori ed educatori, ed anche con i ragazzi/e, parla di “contratto”, di “progetto”, e così via, in una logica marcatamente individuale e individualizzante (Ciavattini 2000). Non vi è quindi di necessità molto tempo e molta attenzione disponibili rispetto al background culturale: o meglio, questa attenzione deve essere sussunta nell’interazione personale, e in buona misura data per scontata, o utilizzata in maniera per così dire ‘tecnica’, strumentale, mirata.
Proprio per questo motivo risulta o risulterebbe di non poca utilità disporre di informazioni di base sui mondi culturali di provenienza, e sugli effetti anche relazionali che la diversità culturale può innescare, del resto ampiamente verificati nella pratica dagli stessi operatori, al fine di ottimizzare il rapporto e la possibilità di costruire un progetto/processo educativo. Questo perché il ragazzo non è solo un individuo, e in un certo senso non è primariamente questo. Specie in una situazione, e in una fascia d’età (anche se il discorso vale anche per gli adulti) in cui le logiche di gruppo, marcate culturalmente, operano come fattore integrativo spesso decisivo. E, per esempio, possono favorire l’integrazione nel gruppo, al limite a spese e ‘contro’ l’integrazione nella vita della struttura, che ha a sua volta una sua cultura, marcata dalla cultura della società in cui si colloca – e con cui gli ‘utenti’ non necessariamente si identificano. Ciò è valido in generale per le culture ‘devianti’: lo è in un certo senso a fortiori per le culture alloctone, che non hanno una storia che si incrocia con quella della struttura, e nemmeno con quella della società al cui servizio la struttura si colloca[6].
Il ‘peso’ stesso della struttura, la sua impostazione, è una variabile anche culturale importante. Oggi la situazione è certamente diversa da quella desumibile dal regolamento della “Casa dei giovani detenuti” di Parigi, redatto nel 1838, riportato da Foucault (1976, 8-9), in cui tutto si incentrava sul lavoro, con un po’ di preghiera e letture edificanti a mo’ di ‘distrazione’, e assenza totale di presa in considerazione dei corpi (il movimento, la ginnastica, e persino l’’ora d’aria’), quasi si trattasse di individui dis-incarnati. Non parliamo pertanto di manifestazioni ed espressioni latamente culturali, aspetto per il quale i giovani detenuti potevano essere considerati solo passivi: recettori, anzi, recipienti, pensati come vuoti e da riempire, peraltro con moderazione.
Tuttavia, anche se la descrizione foucaultiana non si attaglia più alla realtà attuale, si tratta pur sempre, anche oggi, di una istituzione restrittiva.
Dopo tutto carcere[7] significa recinto, in cui il prigioniero è prehensus, preso, recluso, cioè chiuso dentro, internato appunto: è questo il dis-crimine che lo separa dal ‘fuori’. E all’interno vi sono scopi eminentemente culturali, incorporati per così dire nella struttura, ben evidenziati dai nomi che essa di volta in volta assume: correzionale, riformatorio, e infine penitenziario, di non casuale derivazione religiosa.
In fondo anche il “progetto” che oggi viene fatto sui singoli casi non è, per certi aspetti, e senza nulla togliere alla sua importanza, che la proiezione sul futuro del “resoconto morale” (Foucault 1976, 274), cioè di fatto un giudizio sulla moralità, dunque sulla cultura, che si iscrive in un inconsapevole orizzonte ancora una volta religioso – almeno nel senso di re-ligare, ricostruire il legame sociale, che è uno dei significati, non il solo, della parola religione (e non solo nell’interpretazione durkheimiana). E il resoconto morale è a sua volta un equivalente delle odierne “cartelle cliniche”: esse stesse un giudizio su cui, come notava Goffman (1968), si scrivono solo gli aspetti che possono in qualche modo collocare il soggetto – ma meglio sarebbe dire in questo caso l’oggetto – in un universo interpretabile, che possa insomma ‘spiegarlo’ attraverso i sui sintomi e la storia della sua ‘malattia’. Anche qui, dopo tutto, l’etimologia ci viene in aiuto, ricordandoci che la malattia è anche il male, da cui bisogna essere liberati o, nel caso del percorso progettuale e responsabilizzante, liberarsi.
Nella definizione culturale non è certo possibile lasciarsi andare a spiegazioni ‘naturalistiche’, di tipo lombrosiano, in termini di frenologia o di fisiognomica, che sono per inciso tra gli elementi di base delle moderne teorie razziste[8]. E nemmeno accontentarsi della ‘statistica morale’ che sta agli albori della sociologia criminale ottocentesca, o della ‘biometria’ che è in un certo senso, dal punto di vista concettuale, l’evoluzione naturale delle fisiognomiche e del positivismo biologico e biologistico. Neanche, tuttavia, possiamo del tutto passarle sotto silenzio – ed è per questo che qui le ricordiamo, limitandoci peraltro a citarle – perché esse sono tutt’altro che assenti nella pratica quotidiana, nell’implicito, nell’inconsapevole, nell’inconscio delle relazioni con ‘devianti’ in più appartenenti ad altra cultura.
Occorre andare oltre esse, e contemporaneamente a monte e a valle di esse. Ed è quello che tenteremo di fare qui, incentrando la nostra attenzione su alcuni aspetti e dinamiche che hanno a che fare più con la cultura che con la ‘natura’ (essa stessa, peraltro, soggetta a definizione culturale).
Già nel 1841 J.-J. Marquet-Wasselot, rendendosi conto che “i condannati sono… un altro popolo nello stesso popolo” scriveva una Ethnographie des prisons (cit. in Foucault 1976, 277). Oggi questa relazione si è ulteriormente complicata, come del resto la società stessa in cui è inserita, e l’etnografia stessa scoprirebbe la presenza di ‘popoli’ diversi all’interno della medesima popolazione ‘condannata’, che danno letture diverse delle medesime situazioni (diverse da quella dell’istituzione stessa e dei suoi rappresentanti, e diverse anche tra loro). Mai come oggi dunque una ‘etnografia delle prigioni’, in un senso alquanto letterale, sembra necessaria. L’istituzione stessa mostra del resto di essersi accorta di questa impasse comunicativa, e per cercare di risolverla ha cominciato a fare ricorso a personale specialistico in funzione di “mediatore culturale”, come viene pertinentemente chiamato.
Oggi infatti le società occidentali, e non solo esse, si fanno sempre più plurali dal punto di vista etnico, culturale, e religioso. Un processo che, a partire soprattutto dall’ultimo quarto di secolo, ha cominciato a investire anche l’Italia, in maniera sempre più significativa, anche se pur sempre con percentuali che potremmo definire ‘sotto controllo’. Gruppi etnici prima collocati altrove hanno cominciato a radicarsi nel nostro paese, hanno fatto la loro apparizione lingue e costumi diversi, e la pluralizzazione progressiva della società, dal punto di vista culturale e religioso, comincia a dare un quadro inaspettatamente frastagliato e articolato (Allievi, Guizzardi e Prandi, 2001 e Garelli, Guizzardi e Pace, 2003), cominciando a innescare dinamiche di cambiamento ulteriori.
Una prima conseguenza di questo processo è riassumibile secondo la tesi seguente: la cultura di appartenenza, o meglio di provenienza, è un fattore integrativo di per sé, che contrasta anomia e perdita di sé nell’indifferenziato. Ma bisogna conoscerne le dinamiche. La prima modalità di conoscenza è ovviamente quella sperimentale: ci si trova in una situazione specifica, si ‘scoprono’ delle cose, si sperimenta per tentativi ed errori una possibile soluzione. E questo già succede. Ogni operatore, come ogni ragazzo, è portatore di una conoscenza empirica, fondata sulla propria esperienza, delle differenze, e delle reciproche modalità di relazione tra le medesime. Ma si può e si deve andare oltre questo primo livello, pur importante.
Proviamo a riprendere la nota affermazione di Becker (1987, 22): “la devianza non è una qualità dell’atto commesso da una persona, ma piuttosto una conseguenza dell’applicazione, da parte di altri, di norme e di sanzioni nei confronti di un ‘colpevole’. Il deviante è una persona a cui questa etichetta è stata applicata con successo; un comportamento deviante è un comportamento che la gente etichetta come tale”.
Non ci interessa qui testare l’efficacia euristica della labelling theory, che, pur utile, non basta a spiegare il comportamento detto deviante[9]. Da sola, se ci si consente il gioco di parole plurilingue, è una “labilis theory”. Nel contesto che stiamo analizzando ci muoveremmo semmai nei termini classici della “definizione della situazione” e della conseguente self-fulfilling prophecy mertoniana (ad esempio: se percepisco l’altro come estraneo, questo porterà a un’estraneità effettiva tra gli attori coinvolti). Tuttavia è vero che la percezione reciproca passa frequentemente attraverso stereotipi costruiti culturalmente: le etichette, insomma, sono anche – anzi, sono essenzialmente – culturali. E giocano nei due sensi. Come pregiudizio della società nei confronti del diverso, dello straniero. E come pregiudizio del ‘diverso’ nei confronti della società. Un esempio noto, tra i molti possibili, è l’opinione implicita ma spesso anche esplicitata di alcunigruppi nomadi nei confronti dei gagé, cioè degli ‘altri’, in cui sono ricomprese le istituzioni sociali che gli ‘altri’ esprimono. Ma ne troviamo dei casi anche in altre culture, in cui l’in-group si definisce e si esprime in termini religiosi, e attraverso categorie religiose definisce anche l’alterità, l’out-group.
Si pensi, tanto per fare un esempio concernente il mondo islamico, cui più di frequente ci riferiremo in questa sede, all’idea, seriamente discussa all’interno di un gruppo di immigrati iraniani che abbiamo incontrato, studenti universitari e dunque anche colti (Allievi 1999), che pagare il biglietto dell’autobus non fosse lecito sul piano religioso perché così facendo si andava ad arricchire un sistema di infedeli e dunque esso stesso infedele (interpretazione per inciso contestata e quindi non accolta dal loro riferimento spirituale, sollecitato per iscritto, ciò che ha fatto cambiare i comportamenti del gruppo in questione). Ma anche, più legato a comportamenti che pure c’entrano con quanto accade al Beccaria e soprattutto col perché ci si entra, l’idea, promossa da qualcuno per fini evidentemente ‘interessati’, che spacciare agli ‘infedeli’ non sarebbe stato un crimine, un male: un volantino in arabo sulla questione, apparso in una città del nord Italia, è stato duramente commentato e contestato dal locale centro islamico, in un’opera di controllo sociale rimasta ignota alla città in questione… (ibidem). Il fatto non è importante in sé, proprio perché ‘unico’, in certa misura ‘estremo’: ma proprio per questo è interessante come ‘segnale’, come indicatore – come sintomo è forse dire troppo[10].
La trasgressione di tipo ‘ludico’, ‘espressivo’ (A. Colombo 1998, 77), il cui moto originario non è primariamente acquisitivo, rientra assai spesso in una definizione delle regole, e dunque della possibilità della loro trasgressione, di tipo culturale. Basti pensare che la troviamo con relativa frequenza, in gradazioni molto diverse, anche nei comportamenti di chi, semplicemente, compie un viaggio all’estero per motivi turistici, e ‘sente’, percepisce intimamente, per questo solo fatto, e per essere in maniera percepibile circondato da estranei, non foss’altro che dal punto di vista linguistico, che il controllo sociale viene meno: che, in certa misura, egli è libero da esso.
Dunque, anche avendo a che fare con l’individuo singolo, occorre sapere cogliere le implicazioni culturali del suo comportamento. Vale anche per il sociologo quanto asserito a proposito di etnopsicanalisi, e cioè che “anche un’osservazione superficiale mostra ben presto che possedere una cultura ed essere dotati di psichismo sono due fatti strettamente equivalenti, e che per lo psicopatologo, di conseguenza, la differenza culturale non è una deviazione ma un dato di fatto altrettanto ‘umano’, altrettanto imprescindibile quanto l’esistenza del cervello, del fegato e dei reni” (Nathan 1996, 40; il corsivo è nel testo). Semmai siamo cauti – da sociologi, abituati ad analizzare quanto la realtà anche culturale sia una ‘costruzione sociale’, dunque modificabile e di fatto in continua rielaborazione – nei confronti di ogni essenzializzazione (e anche folklorizzazione) delle culture, e di ogni ipostatizzazione delle identità, che pure ci pare di osservare in molta sociologia ‘etnica’, che ha scoperto di recente il peso del fattore etno-culturale, e non l’ha ancora sistemato al suo posto, che è uno dei posti, dei fattori determinanti, ma è lungi dall’essere il solo[11].
In questo senso potrebbe essere promettente ricorrere al concetto bergeriano di “struttura di plausibilità” (Berger 1984, 58 segg.), che per così dire ingloba la cultura nella sua base sociale e allo stesso tempo ne costituisce la solidità (relativa…): un concetto nel contempo più sociologicamente fondato e paradossalmente meno rigido di quello di cultura (e anche di quello schutziano di “provincie finite di significato”; Schütz 1979). Cultura è infatti un termine troppo frequentemente usato (e abusato), almeno implicitamente, per così dire, con la maiuscola, anche quando viene scritto in minuscolo: il suo significato ha spesso, anche se chi lo usa non se ne rende veramente conto, la coloritura di Kulturkampf, anche nel quotidiano, a livello micro.
In ogni caso occorre molta cautela – merce rara nell’attuale dibattito non solo sociologico e mediatico – nel maneggiare il concetto di cultura. Con esso infatti si rischia di porre troppa enfasi sulla specificità delle culture medesime, evidenziando, a causa di questo solo procedere epistemologico, per un ‘vizio metodologico’, per così dire, le diversità o le presunte ‘incompatibilità’[12] rispetto a quanto, nella vita degli individui, è invece continuità, e al limite rifiuto implicito di obbedire al principio di non contraddizione, che è costrutto concettuale, ma molto meno percezione vissuta. Le culture si modificano infatti nell’interazione con la società di inserimento – dire di accoglienza è probabilmente troppo. Occorre dunque una certa dose di attenzione diffidente nei confronti di ogni essenzialismo e ‘fissimo’ nell’interpretazione delle culture medesime: vale per l’islam, ma anche per altri universi culturali[13]. Il minimo della precauzione è di parlarne quanto meno al plurale: gli islam, le culture nomadi, ecc. (Allievi 2000c).
La nozione di confine anche culturale, la sua stessa esistenza, è del resto intrinsecamente ambigua. Confine è cum-finis. Ciò che separa e nel contempo abbiamo in comune con l’altro: “Con-fine vuol dire infatti contatto, punto in comune e le guardie di frontiera condividono il paesaggio anche se lo tengono diviso” (Cassano 1998, 56); ci può essere dunque “un confine in cui la prima parte della parola (con) vince sulla seconda (fine)” (ibidem). Dove c’è il confine c’è appunto anche chi lo transita: vale del resto anche per i confini ‘morali’, per esempio tra norma e devianza. Il confine stesso presuppone il fatto di attraversarlo, per così dire – con delle implicazioni direttamente legate al nostro tema: “C’è un’economia illecita che spesso collega le popolazioni di frontiera e indebolisce la sacralità dei confini rendendoli permeabili” (ibidem) [14].
Fatte tutte queste doverose e cautelative premesse, dobbiamo tuttavia constatare, innanzitutto in quanto evidenza empirica, che le culture non solo esistono, ma ‘pesano’, hanno conseguenze esaminabili ed evidenziabili nel quotidiano. Anche nel quotidiano di un’istituzione carceraria.
Sarebbe interessante già vedere quale è, come viene rappresentata e praticata, l’idea di pena in altre culture – sottolineando il significato anche religioso incorporato nelle rispettive tradizioni culturali, esattamente come nella ‘nostra’: i termini pena[15], giustizia, reato non sono certo religiosamente neutri, e si legano peraltro in modi diversi, nello stesso tempo distinguendosi da essi attraverso un lungo processo culturale e sociale, a concetti strettamente religiosi come quello di colpa, peccato, espiazione[16].
E probabilmente universi culturali diversi declinano diversamente i concetti qui richiamati, che si pongono in conflitto tra loro. Con l’aumentata presenza straniera aumenta, insomma, il grado di complessificazione del sistema.
Anche le percezioni del reato sono effettivamente diverse, o possono esserlo: “Gli immigrati italiani, che durante il proibizionismo continuarono a produrre vino per loro e per gli amici, agivano in accordo con la norma italiana, ma trasgredivano la legge del loro nuovo paese”, ricordava Becker (1987, 26). Ma questo è sostanzialmente ovvio, e non è questo il caso principale di conflitto tra culture che intendiamo sottolineare: anche perché molti di quegli stessi immigrati sapevano benissimo che comunque negli Stati Uniti si trattava (in quel momento…) di un reato. E probabilmente lo stesso vale per i nostri ‘reclusi’ di oggi, anche se può essere utile mettere a tema, e non dare per scontata, la ‘comprensibilità’ tanto del reato quanto della pena che ne segue, e la concatenazione tra i due concetti.
Occorre inoltre quanto meno ricordare che la pena è essa stessa un fattore culturale, e “essa stessa crea cultura”, come sottolinea Garland, ma come già aveva sostenuto, con maggiore radicalità, Foucault: “La nostra idea di fondo è che le pratiche, i discorsi e le istituzioni penali giocano un ruolo attivo nel processo generativo con cui significati, valori e, in ultima analisi, cultura condivisi sono prodotti e riprodotti dalla società. Tra l’altro, la pena è un’istituzione comunicativa e didattica che attraverso le sue pratiche e le sue dichiarazioni conferisce concretezza – iscrivendole nel contesto culturale – ad alcune categorie e distinzioni che noi usiamo per dare un senso al mondo” (Garland 1999, 294).
Le diverse culture interpretano diversamente il senso delle cose: “Per esempio, le mentalità scientifiche e razionali privilegiano esperienze di carattere oggettivo, imparziale, mentre alcune forme di pensiero religioso non negano l’importanza di esperienze emotive, stoiche o, a volte, perfino estatiche” (Garland 1999, 237); ciò può avere conseguenze inaspettate anche nel vissuto relativo alla pena, ben noti del resto a chi opera nelle carceri[17].
In un certo senso è dunque rischioso perdere o non acquisire la consapevolezza del ‘senso’ anche culturale della pena, che del resto non è collegato solo alla presenza di culture straniere[18]. C’è, esiste, una sua percezione estremamente variabile: citiamo per esempio la percezione, in taluni gruppi (nel caso in oggetto, di nomadi) dell’avventura penale come di una specie di “passaggio obbligato, una specie di malattia infantile, come la varicella: sarebbe meglio non prenderla, ma si sa che prima o poi capita” (Pozzar 1995).
Reinterpretando Weber alla luce del paradigma carcerario, Garland nota che “una volta diventato ‘professionista’, il personale carcerario tende a sostituire il giudizio morale sul reato commesso dai detenuti con un giudizio puramente formale, fondato su parametri valutativi di carattere burocratico, di modo che i detenuti vengono trattati non per i reati commessi, ma in virtù della loro condotta istituzionale” (p.225).
I confronti col passato rischiano sempre la sindrome del “una volta invece”, come noto più nostalgica che fondata: non è quasi mai vero che “si stava meglio quando di stava peggio”. Come notava Seneca: “Ti inganni, caro Lucilio, se consideri come un disordine proprio del nostro secolo la dissolutezza, l’abbandono dei sani principi morali, e gli altri vizi che ognuno suole attribuire al suo tempo. Questi sono i vizi degli uomini, non dei tempi”[19]. Dubitiamo quindi che in passato vi fosse invece nel personale penitenziario giudizio morale e non valutazione istituzionale. Se valutazione morale il personale fa, ieri come oggi, è spesso sul piano personale (per esempio sul registro della pietas, eventualmente, della misericordia, non del giudizio legale cui è comunque tenuto ad adeguarsi).
D’altro canto non ci dimentichiamo di quanto vi sia di positivo nel fatto che il personale non abbia a esprimere anch’esso un giudizio morale, già espresso implicitamente dalla società attraverso la comminazione della pena, che ‘incorpora’, per così dire, tale giudizio.
Ma è vero, o ci pare lo sia, che la presenza di più valutazioni morali fondate su culture diverse, potenzialmente e fattualmente discordanti, reintroduca in qualche modo con maggiore visibilità l’interrogativo morale nel cuore stesso dell’istituzione. Dell’appartenente alla medesima cultura (poiché l’istituzione assume inevitabilmente – anche se, sappiamo, a torto – che i cittadini di un medesimo stato abbiano una medesima o comunque sufficientemente omogenea cultura, magari anche fondata sulle medesime basi religiose) possiamo credere che capisca i motivi della condanna e la ratio sottesa alla pena comminata. Non altrettanto possiamo dire dell’appartenente a cultura altra, diversa, che spesso ci restituisce in maniera visibile (più visibile) la sua assoluta o relativa incomprensione della medesima, il suo ‘non capire’ o capire diversamente. E dunque, anche, il non reagire allo stesso modo, il non corrispondere alle attese, ivi comprese quelle rieducative. Occorre, in questi casi, un’attenzione raddoppiata, anche nello spiegare, nel ‘tradurre’ in categorie comprensibili non solo la vita all’interno dell’istituzione, ma gli scopi stessi della pena, e il senso dell’intero processo – che spesso, invero, sfugge in primo luogo a coloro che ne sono o ne dovrebbero essere gli attori consapevoli e pensanti.
“Paradossalmente, il fatto di non attribuire un ruolo specifico ai fattori morali (vale a dire, all’educazione morale) diviene uno dei motivi del crollo dei valori e delle istanze del paradigma riabilitativo, minato proprio da un esasperato tecnicismo” (Garland 1999, 227).
E’ leggibile anche come un problema di rapporto tra codici culturali l’impatto con la stessa autorità, seppure in questo caso ci si possa attendere una coerenza concettuale di base: perché, in fondo, come è stato notato con ovvia ma non banale tautologia, “quella autoritaria è la caratteristica più evidente dell’autorità” (Matza 1976, 253); ovunque essa sia e comunque si vesta essa è appunto vestita, porta una divisa e un non sempre solo metaforico bastone, impone sbarre – ha, insomma, un potere. E lo usa: anche, peraltro, per attribuire etichette. Non è un caso che, come hanno notato varie ricerche, gli stranieri siano ad esempio fermati più spesso, a prescindere dal loro coinvolgimento effettivo in comportamenti in qualche modo perseguibili. E che anche in fase giudicante si possa parlare nei loro confronti di “diritto diseguale” (Patrone 1995).
A monte del discorso che affronteremo ora sta una riflessione sulla definizione del concetto stesso di identità, personale e culturale, che i cambiamenti avvenuti nella ‘modernità radicalizzata’ o nella postmodernità, comunque la si voglia chiamare, hanno indotto. In particolare, ci sembra utile ricordare, senza soffermarci oltre, quel processo che ha portato la sociologia contemporanea a definire l’identità “non già come una ‘cosa’, come l’unità monolitica di un soggetto, ma come un sistema di relazioni e di rappresentazioni” (Melucci 1982), spostando la definizione dell’identità “dal contenuto al processo, dal dato al potenziale”, arrivando a dubitare del concetto stesso di identità e proponendo semmai quello più incerto e dubitativo, e comunque rimesso costantemente in discussione, legato alla “capacità degli individui di identificarsi e di differenziarsi dagli altri”, che potremmo definire come “un processo continuo di identizzazione”[20]. Questi paradigmi interpretativi dell’identità sono ulteriormente complicati e complessificati dalla pluralità dei modelli culturali in gioco, dalla loro com-presenza e concorrenzialità, che rende meno ovvie le strutture di plausibilità una volta sostanzialmente scontate. Tra l’altro, abbiamo il sospetto che queste dinamiche (inter-)culturali abbiano un certo peso e una certa influenza anche nel determinare quelle che Goffman chiamava “carriere morali”[21]; sia nell’evoluzione delle dinamiche, sia nella percezione delle medesime, a cominciare dalla percezione del “noi”, dell’in-group e dell’out-group.
Nel caso di modelli culturali diversi infatti giocano un ruolo importante anche i pregiudizi, che influenzano pesantemente i processi comunicativi. Il ‘nuovo pregiudizio’, che caratterizza le società plurali odierne, a differenza del vecchio, caratterizzato essenzialmente da sentimenti di minaccia, sarebbe connotato da tre caratteristiche fondamentali: difesa dei valori tradizionali del proprio gruppo; percezione esagerata delle differenze culturali; rifiuto di provare emozioni positive nei confronti dell’out-group. Atteggiamenti questi che non sempre né necessariamente escludono il riferimento a ideologie egualitarie e tolleranti, il che rende difficile collocarli con chiarezza in chiave politica (Brown 1997).
Compagno del pregiudizio è lo stereotipo, “un’inferenza tracciata a partire dall’assegnazione di una persona a una determinata categoria” (ibidem, 103); il che gli da’ quel caratteristico aspetto ‘meccanico’ che ci spiega come, non casualmente, la parola stereotipo derivi dal calco per la stampa e dunque la riproduzione di modelli e figure nei processi tipografici.
La costituzione di gruppi, l’appartenenza ai medesimi, la nascita e/o lo sviluppo del pregiudizio intergruppo, attraverso meccanismi di categorizzazione, di stereotipizzazione e di differenziazione, e infine la nascita di vere e proprie dinamiche razziste o razzializzanti, sono ingredienti comuni della relazione sociale, che vengono incrementati laddove si incrementano le diversità, comunque definite e soprattutto comunque percepite[22]. Come ha notato Elias, questo processo sociologicamente può essere definito, se si riesce a farlo uscire dal …pregiudizio ideologico con cui viene solitamente affrontato dal superficiale dibattito su xenofobia e razzismo, “come manifestazione normale delle convinzioni sociali di un gruppo stabilizzato che difende il suo status e il suo potere apparentemente minacciato da un attacco esterno”[23].
Ci incentriamo qui sul fattore culturale perché cruciale e sottovalutato, in queste dinamiche; con l’avvertenza che intendiamo la parola cultura in un senso che potremmo definire ‘tradizionale’, corroborato ampiamente dalla letteratura antropologica, oltre che dall’etimologia, ma un po’ lontano dalla sensibilità (almeno consapevole) odierna: un significato che incorpora e contiene, per così dire, tanto la cultura quanto il culto, come risulterà più chiaro quando parleremo specificamente di islam.
I rapporti inter-culturali all’interno della struttura carceraria possono essere analizzati su tre livelli diversi, che presuppongono differenti tipi di dinamiche e anche di iniziative possibili:
– Rapporti con la struttura. A questo livello possiamo trovare questioni di vario tipo. Ad esempio il caso di un agente che si lamenta perché dice che, parlando in arabo, i giovani detenuti lo prendono in giro: per cui non vuole che si parli o si canti in arabo in sua presenza. Oppure la reazione di alcuni operatori, che magari si rivolgono a un gruppo dicendo: “Voi marocchini”. O ancora affermazioni come: “Sei un animale: mangi con le mani”, rivolte a qualche ragazzo da parte dell’uno o dell’altro dei ‘rappresentanti’ della struttura.
– Rapporti con gli italiani in quanto ‘maggioranza culturale’[24]. Un esempio può essere quello delle ‘alleanze’ che i ragazzi zingari possono tentare con gli italiani, se siamo in presenza di una maggioranza o comunque di un gruppo dominante arabo, e non c’è quindi reciproca fiducia tra i gruppi. Tale strategia può manifestarsi in particolare rispetto agli italiani che rappresentano ‘l’ordine’, la struttura[25]. E’ chiaro che si tratta di un cambiamento culturale spettacolare per la struttura se pensiamo che, nelle parole di un operatore, “sette anni fa era l’opposto: c’erano magari tre marocchini e bisognava proteggerli dagli italiani”.
– Rapporti dei gruppi culturalmente ‘stranieri’ tra loro. Qui gli esempi possono essere diversi: il fatto che il gruppo degli zingari si senta umiliato dal gruppo arabo che riesce a porsi come gruppo dominante; oppure il gioco variabile delle alleanze: slavi con italiani e/o latinoamericani contro gli arabi, talvolta il contrario. Vi sono stati infatti sia episodi di risse tra slavi ed arabi, sia anche frequenti dinamiche arabi contro italiani, dove ci pare di poter intuire che gli italiani ‘interni’ e internati, dunque ugualmente reclusi, possano anche risultare, nel gioco delle percezioni, comunque come rappresentanti della cultura ‘esterna’, che è quella dominante, che reprime e costringe alla reclusione. Detto questo, ancora contro ogni essenzialismo culturale, ci preme sottolineare sia la non inesorabilità di tali dinamiche, sia il ruolo decisivo che gioca la capacità, la presenza e la professionalità degli operatori nel far innescare o meno questo tipo di conflitti, e nel guidarli in una o in un’altra delle direzioni possibili. Certamente vi è anche un effetto di ‘importazione’ all’interno della struttura di dinamiche culturali apprese nei quartieri di provenienza. Un operatore ce l’ha riassunto con l’intuibile espressione del “razzismo tra poveri”, verificabile nelle battute pronunciate contro il gruppo degli ‘altri’. Allo stesso modo si creano e si manifestano forme di tutela interna al gruppo, potremmo dire di ‘padrinaggio’, rispetto al più debole, perché è comunque del gruppo, dalle angherie di altri esterni al gruppo, per orgoglio di appartenenza e solidarietà di fondo.
Tutte e tre queste declinazioni possibili dei rapporti interculturali all’interno della struttura sono attraversate da una questione più generale, trasversale appunto: la questione, evidentemente cruciale, e ancora più immediatamente percepibile, della lingua, cui già abbiamo fatto cenno. La lingua è infatti il veicolo che incorpora la cultura, che, letteralmente, la trasporta: e che può mettere in comunicazione o, appunto, impedire la comunicazione medesima, se non è fatta da codici condivisibili, cioè se non è conosciuta sia dall’emittente che dal ricevente. Inoltre vi è il problema della sua ‘traduzione’, che può costituire anche una sorta di rendita di posizione: chi meglio domina la lingua dell’istituzione domina anche nel gruppo e tra i gruppi, potendo rapportarsi con gli operatori e l’istituzione, eventualmente anche a nome e per conto di altri. E’ chiaro che nella fase delicata della traduzione possono introdursi e di fatto si introducono sovente problemi e inceppamenti, che definirei come ‘incidenti ermeneutici’: che si manifestano in mancanza di adeguata traduzione, che non è solo linguistica, ma, ancora una volta, di codici culturali
Peraltro qualcuno sottolinea che più uno appare come ‘assimilato’ (orecchino, tuta, scarpe e tute da ginnastica ‘conformi’, della marca ‘giusta’, ecc.) e non ostenta le proprie diversità culturali (ad esempio quelle religiose, come la preghiera – rara, come tale, in pubblico – o altro), e più è accettato: le dinamiche in atto andrebbero dunque, da questo punto di vista, in direzione e in favore di una perdita di identità, come accade del resto anche nella società più ‘larga’. Che poi questo processo di ‘stemperamento’ delle identità sia davvero deducibile da questi segnali, e che comunque sia nell’interesse tanto dei soggetti coinvolti che della società medesima, è un altro discorso, che forse bisognerebbe qualche volta affrontare. Qui ci limitiamo a sottolineare che alcuni meccanismi, impropriamente considerati ‘sottoculturali’ (la moda, la musica, ecc.), finiscono per favorire, in genere, l’identificazione in un minimo comun denominatore culturale, piuttosto che l’esprimersi di forti dinamiche identitarie. Dall’esperienza in altri ambiti e in altri settori dobbiamo tuttavia anche rilevare che non necessariamente, a differenza di quanto si potrebbe considerare intuitivo, queste due dinamiche sono tra loro contrapposte e confliggenti.
Non bisogna comunque commettere l’errore, frequente quando si osservano le dinamiche culturali, di esaurire in esse i comportamenti e i riferimenti anche identitari.
Anche in questa come in altre strutture vi è una fetta significativa di stranieri silenziosi, anche con gli educatori: “invisibili”, nelle parole di uno di essi, e che come tali rischiano persino di venire in certa misura ‘dimenticati’ – sorta di ‘maggioranza silenziosa’, in senso proprio. I silenziosi non rendono visibile la propria identità culturale, in qualche modo anzi cercano di occultarla, se non di negarla. In ogni caso non la ‘ostentano’, anche se l’espressione, che ci è capitato di ascoltare tra operatori, non è quasi mai in realtà rispondente alle dinamiche effettive: noi chiamiamo ostentazione ciò che spesso è semplice visibilizzazione, senza volontà appunto ostentatorie. Istruttivo in proposito è per esempio ricordare la polemica sull’hijab, il foulard islamico, innescatasi in Francia: in cui nella definizione burocratica vengono definiti “segni religiosi ostentatori”, il cui ingresso nelle aule va vietato, appunto, gli hijab (ma anche la kippah ebraica o un crocefisso al collo). Insomma, anche la definizione di ciò che è ‘ostentato’ e ciò che invece, visto dall’altra parte, è semplicemente ‘vissuto’ e ‘sentito’, è culturalmente marcata.
Una delle principali coordinate culturali è quella che attiene ai rapporti spazio/tempo e ai suoi significati. Anche qui, senza approfondire oltre, ci limitiamo a ricordare che vi sono significati culturali diversi di tempo, oltre che di valore del medesimo, di suo significato. E, incidentalmente, ricordiamo che anche psicologicamente i tempi sono diversi se c’è qualcuno ad aspettarti oppure no, se quel qualcuno è presente e vicino oppure no: e sappiamo che nel caso degli stranieri quel qualcuno non c’è, o è geograficamente lontano. Anche la percezione di essere o meno ‘dimenticati’ da quello che potremmo semplicemente chiamare ‘l’esterno’ è diversa, in questa prospettiva.
Chiudiamo questo paragrafo con una breve riflessione sul rapporto tra dinamiche culturali, di gruppo, e dinamiche individuali, che può aiutarci a cogliere la loro importanza specifica e anche la molteplicità dei loro rapporti.
Un operatore, durante un colloquio, osservava che “se si abbassa la progettualità individuale, si alzano le dinamiche di gruppo”. Naturalmente, il processo funziona anche all’inverso. Tuttavia ci preme far osservare che il problema concettuale che abbiamo, nell’interpretare il peso di queste dinamiche – che diventa anche un autentico rischio operativo se non sappiamo coglierne la ricchezza dei nessi – è quello di percepirle, in qualche modo, come alternative. Ci pare che, al contrario, saperle guidare significhi anche saper cogliere quanto il gruppo, la comunità, la cultura che questo esprime, possa servire all’individuo ed essere suo strumento, senza che l’individuo diventi succube della comunità culturale e del gruppo di appartenenza. Quanto, insomma, l’individuo ‘usi’ il gruppo e la cultura che esprime, entri ed esca da esso, anche in chiave rafforzativa del proprio esistere e porsi individualmente.
Non è perché sono separate dalle dinamiche individuali che le dinamiche di riproduzione culturale sono importanti: al contrario, è precisamente perché si integrano in esse, perché ne sono costitutivamente parte, che vanno affrontate, approfondite e comprese[26].
Quella islamica è la cultura/culto per molti aspetti più importante da analizzare, in questa sede, anche se non la sola: sono ben presenti infatti, all’interno della struttura dell’Ipm, culture nomadi (diverse), sia nel maschile sia, in maniera pressoché dominante, nel femminile, e provenienze etniche che vanno dagli albanesi, ad altri gruppi dell’est europeo, ai latinoamericani, ecc.
Qui tra l’altro usiamo il termine, volutamente non troppo definitorio, di arabo-islamica, a significare la preponderanza, nella fattispecie, dell’elemento arabo (peraltro anch’esso plurale al suo interno), ma ben sapendo che quello islamico può prescindere da esso[27].
Essa è importante per motivi numerici, innanzitutto, essendo quella più presente anche nell’utenza dell’Ipm, come del resto tra gli immigrati in generale, tra i quali costituisce la seconda religione (Allievi 2003a). Inoltre, essa è transnazionale, non identificabile con una sola origine o paese di provenienza, anche se il suo impatto, per motivi linguistico-religiosi (l’essere l’arabo lingua della rivelazione coranica e della preghiera, dunque lingua sacra dell’islam), è più incisivo tra i provenienti da paesi arabi. In principio, tuttavia, essa dovrebbe coinvolgere, con ampie peculiarità in entrambi i casi, e notevoli differenze rispetto per esempio ai maghrebini, a loro volta diversi al loro interno, anche una parte degli albanesi e della stessa presenza nomade.
Naturalmente, non intendiamo cadere né far cadere nell’errore, peraltro diffuso ma grossolano, di attribuire una religione di appartenenza a degli individui solo in quanto provenienti da tale o talaltro paese. Le forme di identificazione o di mancata identificazione con l’aspetto religioso sono tante quante quelle riscontrabili tra gli autoctoni, e in un certo senso tante quanti sono gli individui con cui si ha a che fare. Tale aspetto è del resto ancora più evidente in un contesto di devianza: e considerare, poniamo, i maghrebini, tout court, come musulmani, sarebbe come considerare gli italiani, solo per il fatto di essere nati tali, come cattolici. Per quanto eventualmente anche battezzati, non è detto che la socializzazione religiosa sia andata molto più in là, né questo aspetto ha necessariamente significative influenze sulle scelte di vita.
Tuttavia questo aspetto, anche quando non immediatamente visibile, non va nemmeno del tutto trascurato, come possono avere tendenza a fare, per esempio, operatori personalmente estranei a riferimenti di tipo religioso, che possono essere indotti a sottovalutarli negli altri (come del resto i ‘religiosi’ a sopravvalutarli). Anche e soprattutto perché esso, anche quando non immediatamente visibile sul piano religioso, si traduce sul piano culturale (e abbiamo già indicato il legame ‘d’origine’ tra questi due aspetti, tra cultura e religione, tra cultura e culto) in numerose e significative conseguenze sul piano squisitamente pratico.
Inoltre l’aspetto religioso, pur non in principio centrale nell’istituzione Ipm, non è in essa nemmeno estraneo, ed anzi possiamo dire che, così come nelle realtà carcerarie e del resto in molte altre realtà sociali, ne fa parte organicamente, con un ruolo specifico riconosciuto come tale. Basti pensare che vi sono momenti religiosi specifici nel calendario dell’istituzione (la Messa, le festività, la possibilità di colloqui) [28]. Inoltre l’istituzione carceraria può avere un duplice interesse a intervenire nell’ambito religioso: da un lato per permettere che ognuno possa rispettare e vedere rispettate le proprie credenze (nonché, in certa misura, per ‘classificare’ i detenuti); e dall’altro, per prevenire ed evitare l’insorgere di eventuali conflitti (Ascaride e Meyer 1990, 295). Infine, un aspetto non del tutto irrilevante della presenza del ‘religioso’ all’interno della vita della struttura è dato dalle attività del privato-sociale, nella fattispecie appunto a carattere religioso, che può consentirsi libertà di azione e di collegamento con l’esterno estranee e impensabili per l’istituzione stessa, e che possono essere da questa opportunamente ‘sfruttate’ e comunque valorizzate.
Non parliamo qui delle incomprensioni più generali e della storia dei pre-giudizi reciproci tra mondo islamico e occidente. Rimane un non detto che bisognerà tenere presente: per esempio nei sottili pregiudizi, che possono essere presenti nel personale come fuori, nella società, nei confronti degli arabi, ma anche il contrario. Ci limitiamo qui tuttavia a citare per punti taluni aspetti rilevanti.
La cultura si esprime nel quotidiano, nel concreto, a partire dai comportamenti più banali e ripetitivi: in cucina, prima ancora che sui libri. Non a caso del resto il sapere condivide l’etimologia con il latino sàpere, da cui anche sapore, sapido, ecc. (si può dire, di qualcuno, che non sa niente, ma sarebbe forse peggio dire che non sa di niente). Cominciamo a guardare lì, allora.
Come noto, nel caso dell’islam si pone il problema di una dieta specifica: una dieta che non dovrebbe contenere né carne di maiale (e derivati), né alcool, e possibilmente, anche se questo, causa forza maggiore, non è un vincolo stretto e cogente, dovrebbe consentire il consumo di carne halal, cioè lecita, in quanto macellata ‘islamicamente’[29].
In pratica dunque il problema principale è la carne di maiale – sull’alcool il discorso è già diverso, e non poche ricerche empiriche, e osservazioni dirette, hanno già notato che, anche nei paesi d’origine, l’interdetto sugli alcolici sia più facilmente superato rispetto a quello sulla carne di maiale.
Nel caso delle istituzioni si sconta il peso di alcune rigidezze strutturali: la mancanza di scelta tra menu alternativi (è sufficiente per esempio che al posto del prosciutto sia disponibile anche il formaggio) è uno dei problemi possibili. Un altro problema strutturale è legato agli appalti per forniture esterne dei pasti, alla gestione del servizio ristoro da parte di cooperative o altri tipi di aziende quasi mai edotti dei problemi specifici legati a questo tipo di alimentazione, e quasi mai informati dei medesimi.
Da un precedente esperienza nel carcere di S. Vittore ci è capitato di notare come molti detenuti rifiutassero il carrello con i pasti caldi perché, spesso, il condimento della pasta conteneva derivati del maiale (lardo, pancetta, ecc., come è comune nelle ricette del nostro paese). E’ stato sufficiente suggerire quanto meno di tenere separato il condimento dalla pasta per consentire almeno il consumo di quest’ultima. Ugualmente, come del resto a S. Vittore, si può porre il problema degli attrezzi da cucina utilizzati: sappiamo che in carcere alcuni addetti alla cucina, musulmani, sono attenti per esempio a non utilizzare i medesimi taglieri, piatti o posate, per il maiale e per altri cibi (fatto salvo almeno un previo lavaggio dei medesimi).
Poi, soggettivamente, può succedere e di fatto succede che i singoli detenuti possano decidere di consumare anche carne di maiale e derivati. Ci pare che in un caso come nell’altro il principio di fondo, del resto facilmente gestibile e non tecnicamente problematico, dovrebbe essere quello di consentire la libertà di scelta all’individuo, quale che essa sia, senza spingere né in una direzione né nell’altra.
Collegato al precedente vi è il problema del rispetto del digiuno di ramadan, uno dei cinque pilastri fondamentali dell’islam.
Esso presuppone l’astinenza da cibo e bevande, nonché dal fumo (e da rapporti sessuali, problema meno presente, giocoforza, nella struttura Ipm), dall’alba al tramonto durante il mese che porta appunto il nome di ramadan.
Dal punto di vista della gestione esso presuppone una diversa elasticità degli orari, con la possibilità di mangiare prima dell’alba e, soprattutto, di ‘rompere il digiuno’ allo scoccare del tramonto[30].
Anche questo ‘pilastro’ non viene rispettato da tutti, anche se i tassi di partecipazione al medesimo sono mediamente molto più alti che non quelli di partecipazione a momenti più specificamente religiosi (vari sondaggi in diversi paesi europei parlano di percentuali di rispetto del digiuno di ramadan variabili, in media, tra il sessanta e il settantacinque per cento della popolazione, per quanto riguarda il complesso della popolazione musulmana). Parlando di giovani, e in situazione comunque ‘particolare’, le percentuali possono essere molto diverse, e inevitabilmente più basse. Tuttavia si assiste a un desiderio di rispetto del digiuno che forse sarebbe più elevato se le condizioni lo consentissero, quasi con una certa ‘normalità’. Sappiamo del resto che la struttura dell’Ipm già si è attrezzata in tal senso, come pure nel senso del rispetto della festa della rottura del digiuno, l’id al-fitr, una delle due principali feste dell’islam, insieme all’id al-kabir (la festa grande) o festa del sacrificio di Abramo.
In situazione di ‘restrizione’ è facile che anche taluni che cominciano il digiuno, non supportati da un ‘intorno’ che ne tenga conto, rinuncino o non riescano a portarlo a termine: la presenza della necessaria elasticità di orari e magari della possibilità di disporre dei tradizionali cibi associati a questo momento (datteri, yoghurt, ecc.) può favorire la partecipazione – che, ancora una volta, deve essere vissuta come una possibilità, non come un obbligo, di fronte al quale l’istituzione dovrebbe porsi in maniera neutra, favorendone l’espletamento ma non necessariamente incentivandolo, o ‘spingendo’, come spesso accade in forme sottili e indirette, nell’una o nell’altra direzione.
Peraltro, il periodo di ramadan è di solito associato al fatto di vivere ‘momenti forti’ dal punto di vista religioso (incontri, momenti di preghiera, la cosiddetta ‘notte del destino’, una maggiore solennità nella stessa celebrazione della preghiera del venerdì) che, ad esempio nelle moschee, vedono un aumento considerevole della partecipazione.
Visto che si è toccato il problema, vi è ovviamente la questione della celebrazione collettiva della preghiera del venerdì: anche il carcere di S. Vittore, per esempio, si è attrezzato, almeno nel quinto raggio e nel femminile, con un piccolo locale ad uso temporaneo di sala di preghiera e la possibilità di avere un imam, o comunque una guida della preghiera, di provenienza ‘esterna’, a disposizione. Ricordiamo incidentalmente che la preghiera islamica presuppone lo svolgimento previo di specifiche abluzioni, e dunque la disponibilità di acqua corrente o comunque la possibilità di accesso ad un locale bagno e/o docce[31].
Sappiamo che da questo punto di vista vi è una scarsa iniziativa, dovuta anche a povertà del livello organizzativo, da parte delle comunità islamiche medesime, che non dispongono di personale che possa garantire stabilmente il servizio in occasione della preghiera del venerdì, e che talvolta, come ci è capitato di constatare in alcune realtà italiane, si pongono in situazione giudicante, diremmo di rifiuto di rapporto con chi delinque: una questione che dovrebbe risolversi con il tempo e la ‘normalizzazione’ della situazione, e una più stabile e radicata presenza, e anche un più attivo livello di organizzazione e di capacità di mobilitazione. Talvolta si fa presente anche un eccesso di cautela da parte delle autorità di sorveglianza, che temono, in situazione di non conoscenza della lingua, qualche forma di ‘contagio’ islamista e radicale (il timore dell’integralismo, ecc.).
Notiamo per inciso che già in passato, in un caso specifico, di un ragazzo molto praticante, che compiva la preghiera le canoniche cinque volte al giorno, accusato e detenuto presso il Beccaria per dieci mesi, e in seguito assolto per non aver commesso il fatto, era stato concesso un permesso speciale di uscita il venerdì proprio allo scopo di frequentare la moschea in occasione della preghiera congregazionale, che, come noto, si svolge nel giorno di venerdì intorno all’una circa, a seconda dei periodi. Dai racconti che ci sono stati fatti tale persona, pur caso abbastanza unico di rispetto esplicito e continuativo delle obbligazioni islamiche, ivi compresa la lettura del Corano, aveva costituito un elemento di riferimento e di rispetto anche per chi tali pratiche non riteneva di seguire.
Un caso ordinario di riferimento a categorie religiose è quello contenuto nella comunicazione verbale quotidiana, che spesso in lingua araba contiene riferimenti religiosi, come inshallah (l’equivalente del nostro “se Dio vuole” o “a Dio piacendo”, come interiezione e risposta relativa a qualsiasi affermazione posta al futuro, foss’anche solo un generico “ci vediamo più tardi”) o al-hamdulillah (letteralmente equivalente del nostro “sia lode a Dio”, ma come formula di conversazione, nel senso di partecipazione in positivo: qualcosa come il nostro “meno male” o “per fortuna” o anche solo “bene!”).
Alcuni operatori hanno sottolineato il ruolo benefico e di rinfrancamento delle benedizioni (“Che Allah ti benedica” e simili) ricevute anche solo durante una telefonata con i genitori, magari ignari che il figlio in Italia sia detenuto.
Un caso atipico di manifestazione religiosa è quello della cosiddetta “non Messa” celebrata all’interno del Beccaria, il sabato pomeriggio, da don Gino Rigoldi: si tratta infatti di una celebrazione eucaristica cattolica, a cui partecipano anche alcuni membri del personale, che nella sua struttura cerca tuttavia di tenere conto, in particolare in alcune preghiere e durante la predica, del fatto che molti dei presenti cattolici non sono, e nemmeno cristiani latu senso.
Essa costituisce momento di distrazione dalla routine, occasione di incontro, e soprattutto è la sola occasione di mixité sessuale, in cui universo maschile e femminile, rigidamente separati durante il resto della settimana, occasione solo di ‘sguardi’ lontani, entrano in contatto, almeno attraverso la com-presenza nel medesimo locale, seppure in settori diversi e separati (ma che, particolare importante, essendo posti a ferro di cavallo, si ‘guardano’).
In occasione della nostra partecipazione alla medesima erano presenti nove ragazze su quindici al momento detenute, e una dozzina di ragazzi su circa sessanta, tra cui diversi musulmani. E’ tra di essi che abbiamo notato un interessante e per certi versi sorprendente tentativo di ‘adattamento’ di un rituale che non conoscono e probabilmente non prendono eccessivamente sul serio, ma che può costituire anche un’occasione di ‘riappropriazione identitaria’. Mettendomi in mezzo ad essi ho infatti potuto notare che, laddove il rituale prevedeva un “ascoltaci o Signore”, loro dicevano “Allah hu-akbar”, ovvero “Iddio è grande”: espressione certo pertinente e dopo tutto congrua, ma che essendo un forte e familiare richiamo per ogni musulmano (si ripete numerose volte tanto nell’appello alla preghiera, quanto nella preghiera stessa, quanto appunto come rivendicazione/identificazione anche in occasioni di contrapposizione anche politica nei confronti di un ambiente non islamico), ha qui chiaramente una funzione di riconoscimento interno, tra coloro che lo dicono, e, diremmo, anche parzialmente contrappositiva rispetto alla cerimonia cui stanno partecipando, e cui si sentono culturalmente e religiosamente estranei. E’ interessante notare come lo stesso celebrante non fosse al corrente e non avesse percepito questo aspetto, del resto, dal punto di vista pratico, non facilmente udibile se non dall’interno stesso del gruppo.
Un aspetto non direttamente religioso, e più di derivazione culturale generale, può essere quello provocato dalla diversa attribuzione e definizione dei ruoli, in particolare maschili e femminili, in culture diverse, e loro conseguente ‘autorevolezza’. Un problema che non è specifico della situazione carceraria, e che può portare a quello che per alcuni può essere un rovesciamento della subordinazione (percepita-come-)‘naturale’ della donna rispetto all’uomo (un aspetto che, lo sottolineiamo, anche in occidente ha più a che fare con categorie come il livello di istruzione o la provenienza da aree urbane o rurali, che non la religione in senso stretto, anche se può essere da questa rafforzato culturalmente o trovare in essa una forma di legittimazione). Ci riferiamo in particolare alla situazione di una operatrice (educatrice o agente) donna, in posizione quindi di potere sui detenuti maschi.
Tale aspetto è occasionalmente verificabile per esempio nel mondo della scuola (Favaro 2000), anche se è lungi dal costituire una categoria universalmente condivisa, e inoltre è una di quelle più soggette a cambiamento nel corso del tempo e nel persistere di situazioni di interazione caratterizzate da questo tipo di rapporti di genere.
Notiamo che, paradossalmente, tale fattore potrebbe incidere meno in una situazione, come quella carceraria, in cui, molto più che nell’utenza dei servizi sociali o nella scuola, vi è una relazione di potere comunque più caratterizzata e incisiva, e in cui la posta in gioco è maggiore, trattandosi della libertà personale stessa, e non solo di una sua modalità esplicativa.
Dire relazioni religiosamente caratterizzata vuol dire anche porre il problema delle relazioni interreligiose. Diventerebbe interessante per esempio porsi il problema di come sia percepito il personale religioso. Nel caso specifico del Beccaria tuttavia tale aspetto è posto in maniera atipica, trattandosi, nel caso di don Rigoldi, di un ‘personaggio’, in tutti i sensi, ivi compreso quello ‘televisivo’, noto e influente, oltre che personalmente attivo e disponibile nei confronti dei minori con cui si pone in relazione, a prescindere dalla religione professata (ospita per esempio giovani marocchini e albanesi, tra gli altri, in ‘uscita’), ciò che ne fa appunto un personaggio rispettato e un riferimento anche strumentalmente utile per le opportunità che è in grado di offrire, ciò che non può essere considerato un caso comune.
Alcune sommesse proposte
Sottolineiamo innanzitutto il paradosso per cui una struttura come l’Ipm abbia finito per essere, a parte il gruppo dei pari e alcuni luoghi di accoglienza nati tuttavia in coincidenza con i fenomeni immigratori e al fine di gestirli (ciò che non è vero per l’Ipm), quasi il solo luogo nella società (e, tra l’altro, un luogo ‘pubblico’, dal pubblico gestito), in cui gli stranieri sono la maggioranza, e le culture ‘altre’ costituiscono le culture numericamente maggioritarie, mentre la cultura autoctona dominante ha il potere ma si presenta come numericamente minoritaria.
Ci pare che non sia quindi inutile tentare di indicare quelle che consideriamo tuttavia solo alcune sommesse proposte di ordine pratico, né necessariamente generali né risolutive dei possibili conflitti culturali che in una situazione come quella descritta si possono manifestare.
Non tocca a una sede come questa mettere in questione quello che potremmo chiamare il ‘modello’, né quello carcerario, né quello societario, anche se ce ne verrebbe la voglia, e manteniamo il diritto dell’osservatore di denunciarne le incongruenze. Qui però abbiamo fatto la scelta di una osservazione dall’interno del modello stesso, così come è, e non come eventualmente dovrebbe essere o vorremmo che fosse. Ci sembrava quindi utile tentare di proporre quanto, in qualche modo, emerge dalla nostra analisi e dal confronto con chi nella struttura è operativo, limitandoci tuttavia, appunto, a dei suggerimenti interni al modello. In attesa, magari, di poterlo cambiare.
Ma anche senza andare così in là, il minorile è tuttavia almeno il luogo dove è possibile sperimentare, con relativa maggiore libertà e, in proporzione, maggiore disponibilità di mezzi, e innanzitutto di risorse umane, forme diverse di rapporto tra struttura e ‘utente’ (utilizziamo questa parola, presente in documenti interni quando ci si riferisce ai minori presenti, pur consapevoli della dimensione largamente volontarista che tale terminologia presuppone, essendo l’utente, in altri ambiti, persona libera che liberamente sceglie di avvalersi o meno di un servizio). Quanto meno, è possibile qui fare maggiore spazio – e diventa anzi indispensabile nella misura in cui l’utenza tende a diventare quasi monopolisticamente ‘straniera’ – agli aspetti culturali di cui abbiamo finora discusso.
Può sembrare banale cominciare evocando la questione della formazione. Tuttavia essa è – e sarà sempre di più, in un contesto culturalmente sempre più complesso – centrale.
Inserire elementi di formazione alle culture altre presenti nelle diverse strutture, e alle specificità delle dinamiche interculturali in quanto tali, in momenti di formazione che possono porsi come episodici ed essere costruiti ad hoc, secondo le situazioni e i bisogni, ma anche nei programmi delle scuole di formazione del personale, ci sembra dunque fondamentale; già vi sono del resto esperienze in tal senso, che hanno eventualmente solo bisogno di essere implementate e meglio mirate[32].
Una esigenza diversa riguarda i corsi e i percorsi di formazione attivabili ad uso dei reclusi stessi: da quelli di lingua, e intendiamo della lingua d’origine o, diciamo, nella pratica, di entrambe (su cui ci sono state esperienze previe all’interno della struttura stessa del Beccaria, quando ancora di presenza straniera ve ne era poca), ciò che può costituire un modo di alfabetizzare ma anche di motivare a una realtà estranea, a quelli relativi al recupero della propria cultura, che può costituire in un certo senso un elemento di paradossalità laddove svolto da autoctoni.
Per tutti comunque, utenti e operatori, si può parlare di una sorta di co-formazione alla gestione del conflitto culturale.
Qualcosa potrebbe forse essere fatto anche in termini di formazione atta a porsi come contraltare alla diffusione delle culture del razzismo (reciproco). La società infatti ‘entra’ nel carcere con i suoi pregiudizi, e semmai li rafforza. Facciamo un esempio: la percezione diffusa che gli immigrati siano tutti delinquenti è evidentemente più plausibile laddove tutti gli immigrati presenti sono delinquenti, o sono così percepiti ad esempio dal personale educativo o di custodia, nonché dalla società ‘esterna’. Il meccanismo di rinforzo circolare del pregiudizio è in questo caso evidente, e si muove nei due sensi: dalla società verso la struttura, ma anche dalla struttura verso la società.
Tale meccanismo tuttavia non funziona solo come circolo vizioso, ma può essere vissuto anche come circolo virtuoso da parte degli stessi immigrati. Non è infatti l’ultimo dei paradossi dell’istituzione carceraria quello di essere, nella sua struttura, meno razzista (almeno nel senso del razzismo istituzionale) del ‘fuori’: spesso infatti gli stranieri sono inseriti alla pari degli italiani nei programmi di formazione-lavoro o di studio, il trattamento sanitario è uguale, e c’è magari persino attenzione per le proprie specificità culturali. Tutte cose non necessariamente facilmente verificabili in altri contesti istituzionali, per non parlare della realtà sociale.
Un aspetto specifico di formazione per l’utenza può essere quella fornita da personale specialistico (mediatori culturali, personale di supporto psicologico, medici o insegnanti della medesima provenienza ‘etno-culturale’) nell’ambito della prevenzione dell’educazione alla salute, della prevenzione anti-droga o di pianificazione familiare o altro, eventualmente in lingua[33].
Del resto vi sono situazioni in cui occorre o sarebbe grandemente opportuna una mediazione specialistica anche dal punto di vista culturale, sia in termini preventivi-formativi che curativi: e in un certo senso l’una richiama l’altra o può servire da ponte per l’altra, anche se in questo caso il discorso passa dal campo della formazione a quello della presa in carico individuale[34].
Ci limitiamo quindi a sottolineare l’utilità della presenza di personale con conoscenza linguistica corrispondente a quelle presenti nella struttura, che è peraltro figura diversa da quella del mediatore culturale. La presenza straniera, e addirittura di una maggioranza straniera, all’interno della struttura, non è più un fatto di emergenza, e non è una fase transitoria, o comunque se di fase transitoria si tratta essa non sarà breve: questa presenza è diventata la sua normalità, la sua fisiologia. E’ dunque da porre come traguardo in una prospettiva di medio periodo la presenza di una percentuale non irrisoria di presenze legate a quelle medesime culture anche all’interno del personale, anche se siamo ben consapevoli che questo può indurre delle dinamiche conflittuali anche ‘sindacali’ interne al personale stesso (il rischio, da parte degli operatori italiani è, per capirci, di derive del tipo “ci portano via il lavoro”). Si tratta di una tendenza del resto ampiamente verificabile in tutta Europa, laddove sono in questione servizi rivolti al pubblico, nella misura in cui il pubblico stesso si fa multietnico, plurale (dalle scuole agli ospedali ai servizi di stato civile).
Idealmente anche le prossime, future case di accoglienza dovrebbero essere strutturate in questo senso. Naturalmente, ancora una volta, stiamo pensando al medio/lungo periodo, non al breve/brevissimo che è dopo tutto ancora l’orizzonte attuale di riferimento.
In concreto, nel caso dell’islam, si tratta di favorire l’accesso di questo personale, non sempre facilmente reperibile né sempre necessariamente disponibile, per lo meno il venerdì e in occasione delle festività religiose. Alcune occasionali visite nella struttura, sia nel maschile che nel femminile, non sono riuscite a costituire un’esperienza stabile; mentre in alcune realtà europee abbiamo la possibilità di accesso di personale ad hoc o addirittura la nomina di personale permanente, almeno con incarichi di rilievo nazionale.
Va purtuttavia sottolineato che anche altrove tale presenza è per certi aspetti più visibile e forse più efficace nell’universo carcerario adulto che all’interno del minorile (come nel carcere della Baumette a Marsiglia, cf. Ascaride e Meyer 1990, 296), anche se un singolo caso non può essere presentato come una tendenza (si veda per una più ampia riflessione Khosrokhavar, 2004).
Peraltro è possibile valorizzare la specificità dell’islam come ‘religione senza clero’ al fine di responsabilizzare eventuali disponibilità interne alla struttura, che possono esse, in certa misura, garantire una continuità non ottenibile altrimenti. A questo fine diventa evidentemente necessaria la disponibilità di un luogo di riunione in occasione della preghiera[35], che può essere anche sede di attività formative collegate, e di un momento esplicitamente previsto a questo fine all’interno del calendario settimanale.
Sulla questione del cibo halal e del digiuno di ramadan si è già detto in altra parte, e non è necessario aggiungere raccomandazioni ulteriori.
Un aspetto di presenza culturale è anche quello dato dalla possibilità di accesso a letteratura, in senso lato, anche ma non solo religiosa, in lingua d’origine: giornali, libri (inclusi Corani e letteratura religiosa), ma anche video, ecc.
Ci limitiamo a segnalare le possibilità di collaborazione anche con volontari esterni, che possono essere membri delle rispettive comunità etniche e religiose di riferimento o associazioni d’altro tipo[36]. Una biblioteca plurale anche dal punto di vista linguistico e cultural-religioso può essere un obiettivo raggiungibile con relativa facilità, così come l’accesso, anche regolamentato, a video e programmi televisivi via satellite dei paesi d’origine, almeno in caso di eventi particolari.
Un altro tipo di rapporto virtuoso con l’esterno, nelle sue declinazioni culturali, può essere quello del ruolo possibile, in prospettiva, delle famiglie immigrate, nel fungere da nuclei di appoggio per l’affido temporaneo degli ‘ospiti’ del Beccaria privi di nucleo familiare in Italia. Un esperimento in tal senso, all’interno di un progetto riconosciuto dal competente ministero, è partito a Torino (Giani 2000), e vi è del resto una richiesta in tal senso da parte delle comunità islamiche (Piccardo 2000). Restano comunque una serie di importanti problemi pratici da risolvere, non ultimo l’esiguità del numero e talvolta l’impreparazione delle famiglie in questione, nonché le difficoltà che esse stesse devono affrontare al proprio interno[37].
Il coinvolgimento delle comunità religiose e culturali di provenienza è del resto una scuola di ‘cittadinizzazione’ per entrambi gli interlocutori, e forse più per le comunità stesse, che imparano a farsi carico di questi problemi e a responsabilizzarsi nella misura del possibile e delle capacità organizzative: si tratta infatti di un aspetto notevolmente trascurato da molte anche se non tutte le comunità (per non parlare della ‘disattenzione’, a essere generosi, di numerosi consolati), che potrebbe avere invece anche utili declinazioni ‘preventive’ in diversi ambiti: dall’evasione dell’obbligo scolastico alla devianza minorile, dalla pedofilia alla prostituzione minorile, e quant’altro.
E visto che ci siamo riferiti alla prevenzione, chiudiamo con un riferimento che riguarda la società nel suo complesso.
“Français, construisez des mosquées et vous fermerez de prisons”, era la parola d’ordine, certo strumentale e interessata ma non del tutto irrealistica, lanciata negli anni Ottanta dalla moschea di Parigi, e rivolta tanto agli immigrati musulmani (molti peraltro francesi di cittadinanza) quanto alla società. Forse può essere utile tenere a mente anche questo aspetto in un momento, come l’attuale, di dibattito sui diritti religiosi degli immigrati che, in Italia, è ancora in una fase agitatoria e molto poco ponderata, che vede ancora la costruzione di moschee come una forma di autoghettizzazione e come cavallo di Troia dell’integralismo islamico, mentre sociologicamente esse costituiscono una forma di integrazione e di concezione del paese di emigrazione come dar al-islam, come ‘casa dell’islam’, cioè come luogo in cui si desidera vivere e costruire il proprio futuro, dunque anche organizzare la propria riproduzione culturale.
Quanto precede ci ha fatto riflettere su quello che potremmo considerare un ritorno delle culture, e della dimensione culturale in tutta la sua pregnanza. Le culture altre, più visibilmente ‘altre’ (per lingua, colore della pelle, costumi: cibo vestiario, religione, ecc.) delle alterità ‘interne’, che a causa degli elementi comuni passano più facilmente inosservate, ci fanno se non altro recuperare contezza del fatto che le culture esistono per l’appunto solo al plurale (pur all’interno di una comune ‘natura’ – parola anche questa, tuttavia, troppo caricata culturalmente, e che significa dunque cose diverse), che le diversità sono molte, e che vanno dunque comprese e affrontate come tali – anche quelle interne: pena il fallimento del progetto conoscitivo, e ancora di più di quello educativo, dato che l’educare non esiste in sé, ma presuppone sempre l’educare a una specifica cultura, a socializzare in essa e a interagire con essa.
Come sempre, l’alterità, lo straniero che la incarna, ci aiuta a prendere coscienza di noi stessi, della nostra stessa (frammentata e complessa) identità: alter è il presupposto di ego – si richiamano e si necessitano l’un l’altro (E. Colombo 1999). “L’étranger? L’étrange-je”, ha scritto E. Jabès, con una frase difficilmente traducibile[38] (Jabès 1989).
Un’estraneità che si innesta su un’estraneità ulteriore. Quella del carcere, non solo minorile, anche se questa fa soffrire di più la consapevolezza del corpo sociale[39].
Il carcere è davvero questo: un luogo dimenticato, nascosto. Un luogo che si vorrebbe dimenticare. Un luogo, tuttavia, da non dimenticare. Perché è la malattia che ci ricorda che, anche quando ci crediamo ‘sani’, lo siamo in maniera precaria. Perché è il cancro che ci ricorda che, forse, avremmo potuto vivere in salute: che quello, anzi, avrebbe dovuto essere il nostro stato naturale. E’ singolare, dopo tutto, che carcinoma suoni quasi come carcere, anche se la radice della parola non è la medesima. Talvolta le assonanze, le eufonie, ci dicono più delle stesse etimologie. Indicano, segnalano, anche quando non significano.
Non possiamo quindi rinunciare completamente a porre la domanda: “a cosa servono queste prigioni?”; anche nel caso di quelle per minori, pure meno ‘carcerarie’ per forma e per cultura. E’ chiaro che esse sono state e sono luoghi di cui si supponeva una funzione educativa, o quanto meno socialmente utile, correttiva (non a caso si chiamavano anche correzionali). E nel corso della storia, dopo tutto relativamente recente, del carcere, si è posto l’accento, oltre che sulla sua funzione punitiva e repressiva, e su quella preventiva e di deterrenza, anche su quella rieducativa, riabilitativa (e col passare degli anni, con pietosa menzogna sociale, l’accento è stato sempre più messo sulle ultime, anche se continuavano a prevalere le prime).
Ma di fatto, almeno nel mondo ‘adulto’, sembra aver finito per prevalere la funzione ‘immobilizzativa’, priva di qualsiasi utilità individuale e di risvolto sociale, un mero parcheggio umano. Vero è che il minorile fa in questo senso parzialmente eccezione, ma non sempre e non dovunque.
Certo, per alcuni, forse non pochi, svolge un ruolo o quanto meno consente (e al limite obbliga, impone, per il tramite dell’immobilizzazione e della ‘compressione’ spazio-temporale) una funzione di re-interrogazione su di sé, un comprendere che c’è o dovrebbe esserci un ordine sociale, che chi l’ha sconvolto deve essere punito, che ‘chi sbaglia paga’, insomma – ce lo siamo sentiti dire, come affermazione condivisa, in fondo tanto più sorprendente da parte di qualcuno che sta ‘pagando’, da più di un ragazzo e anche da qualche adulto detenuto.
Infine, per alcuni è il luogo dell’incontro, finalmente, con un pezzo di società che si mette in relazione con un soggetto che, di queste relazioni, non è riuscito ad averne in passato – come accade appunto negli istituti minorili e talvolta, forse davvero troppo tardi, negli altri: in cui per la prima volta (ma il paradosso, e lo scandalo, è per l’appunto lì), lo stato, le istituzioni, si fanno presenti in forma nonostante tutto – nonostante, in primo luogo, il fatto fisico della costrizione, della reclusione – positiva, attraverso educatori, corsi di recupero, di alfabetizzazione, magari uno psicologo, una visita medica più attenta anche al benessere generale dell’individuo e non solo al sintomo. Fa riflettere, in un istituto penitenziario per minori, vedere un diciassettenne avere lì, e non avere avuto prima, l’occasione di imparare a leggere, di fare un po’ di educazione sanitaria, di scoprire cosa significa la parola ‘progetto’ o la parola ‘responsabilità’, per sé e per gli altri.
Ma, naturalmente, in carcere non si scopre solo questo. Si può scoprire, o riscoprire, il senso o il non senso della violenza, di una vita vuota, di tempi assurdamente allungati e letteralmente in-sensati, privi di uno scopo (condizione diffusa anche ‘fuori’, è vero…: ma se non altro in apparente libertà). E avere la ri-conferma, se ce ne fosse stato bisogno, di vivere in una società radicalmente ingiusta (ingiusta cioè alla radice: non per sbaglio, per un’inefficacia occasionale – ma perché nasce e si riproduce così).
Non è difficile, in carcere, anzi è patente, avere le prove che la società è divisa in classi, meglio mascherate nella vita quotidiana, del tutto nascoste dalla realtà televisiva – comunque si voglia chiamare la divisione tra ricchi e poveri, tra chi conta e chi al contrario può essere solo contato. Lì certe persone non ci mettono piede, e se ce lo mettono fanno per l’appunto notizia; e non durano molto, del resto – perché escono presto (buoni avvocati fanno la pena corta, o una misura alternativa adeguata allo scopo), o perché in qualche raro caso, non ce la fanno proprio, e soccombono (i celebri suicidi del periodo Mani Pulite fanno testo; ma anche altri si suicidano, e più spesso – solo che non fanno notizia). Ed è ancora più facile, come ci mostra il nostro caso, vedere che ci entrano molto di più gli stranieri e i nomadi che non gli autoctoni. Anzi, il fatto è più evidente ancora nel minorile: ci sono quasi solo loro. L’ingiustizia è patente: e culturalmente, saremmo tentati di dire razzialmente, connotata. A meno di dimostrare, come tentano di fare alcune facili spiegazioni ‘essenzialiste’, che essi delinquono di più; il che fa comunque problema all’osservatore poiché ciò non accade nelle medesime percentuali con cui sono presenti in carcere. E ancora, questo non sarebbe che l’inizio di una spiegazione, che potrebbe e dovrebbe a sua volta ricondurre, o essere ricondotta, a cause ulteriori.
Certo, si fa molto, e molto anche di buono, per cercare di cambiare le cose, di migliorarle, di ‘umanizzare’, come si dice, un universo che evidentemente non viene considerato tale. Da parte dei legislatori, degli operatori, delle istituzioni, dei volontari che sempre più numerosi attivano iniziative dentro le strutture, e in ascolto di esse, anche. Ma quasi sempre, ancora, si tratta di iniziative, pur indispensabili, che concernono queste strutture come mondo a sé. Ancora troppo di rado vanno a toccare il rapporto con la società, pure cruciale: sia per il ‘prima’, per evitare che la gente ci entri, sia per il ‘dopo’, per favorire un reinserimento che è spesso drammaticamente difficile, proprio a causa dell’idea di carcere che abbiamo nella società, per i timori che, anche comprensibilmente, fa nascere, e che si fa troppo poco per cercare di interpretare, se non di fugare. E che si accentuano quando si tratta di stranieri.
Si preferisce, come sempre facciamo, sia come individui che come società, di fronte alle realtà spiacevoli, non pensare, rimuovere. Suscita ri-mozione, anziché e-mozione, la realtà carceraria. Ma in un certo senso la rimozione è anche più pericolosa, perché il carcere, così come è, è una ferita, e sanguina. E non è sano per un corpo, nemmeno per un corpo sociale, portare con sé la propria malattia senza curarla, lasciando che si aggravi senza prestarle soccorso. Come sappiamo, alla lunga infetta. E a risentirne è tutto il corpo.
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Questo libro è presente su:
Allievi S. (2004), Inmigraciones y religiones en Europa. Identitades individuales y colectivas en trasformación, in G. Aubarell e R. Zapata (a cura di), Inmigración y procesos de cambio. Europa y el Mediterráneo en el contexto global, Barcelona, Icaria-IEMed, pp. 319-350;