Talking back to white Italy: unpacking the knot of racism, colonialism and feminism from the perspective of Black asylum-seeking and refugee women

Abstract

The relationship between feminist movements and racialised migrant women in Europe remains marred by the continued marginalisation of migrant women’s political claims in feminist struggles, despite the circulation of intersectional discourses within academic and activist circles. This article documents important spaces of experimentation which Black activists are creating within the Italian feminist movement to give voice to racialised migrant women without the mediating intervention of white feminists. Rooted in an understanding of the margins as a site of resistance, such efforts engage in practices of refusal and talking back to reclaim a Black epistemic identity which powerfully interpellates Italian institutions and feminist activists. Black migrant women demand the recognition not only of their inherent capacity to speak, act, decide, but also of their ability to articulate a political analysis and a political project to challenge the intersectional discrimination and violence they face. Their struggle centres work as a site of compounding gendered and racialised exploitation, thus carrying the potential to expand feminist thinking and action on reproductive labour, labour participation and equal pay.

Introduction

The relationship between feminist movements and racialised migrant women in continental Western Europe has been the subject of increased attention over the last decade (Lépinard, 2020; Merrill, 2006; Predelli et al., 2012; Vergès, 2021). A growing number of studies have recently focused on the activism of Black and other racialised women in Europe, pointing to the emergence of a distinct Afrofeminist perspective (Bassel and Emejulu 2017; Emejulu and Sobande 2019; Hawthorne, 2022). While discussions on cultural diversity and migration have been circulating in feminist spaces since at least the 1990s, examples of successful cross-cultural or cross-racial mobilisation are scarce.

European feminist movements remain primarily dominated by and structured around whiteness, in what Bohrer terms white feminism not because of the racialisation of its members, but “because it reaffirms a white vision of the world, a white horizon of analysis, and is often mobilized, either explicitly or implicitly, to shore up white global domination” (Bohrer, 2021:xiii). Many Black and racialised women however move within and through these white spaces, either as activists, staff members of feminist organisations, or, more commonly, participants in projects designed to support (or rescue) migrant women, victims of trafficking and survivors of gender-based violence [GBV]. These women navigate, strategically deploy and at the same time contest the racialising and victimising narratives that white feminism, in its imbrication with colonial, nationalist and neoliberal projects, has constructed for them (Carby, 2000; Farris, 2017; Freedman, Sahraoui, and Tyszler 2022; Mohanty, 1988).

In this article, we propose a situated analysis of the acts of epistemic and political resistance engendered by a group of Black women within and beyond the walls of a feminist association working with migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women in Italy. We consider how Black women’s efforts to voice their specific experiences and to demand a re-thinking of feminist political priorities fit into transnational Black feminist and Afrofeminist strategies of resistance (Emejulu and van der Scheer 2022; Emejulu and Sobande 2019; Hooks, 1989, 2015). Drawing on the work of Farris (2017), we also demonstrate how these strategies reveal and denounce the complicity of feminist actors with nationalist and capitalist efforts to reduce migrant women to an exploitable, disposable, yet essential group for the maintenance of the current economic and political system.

We focus on Black women, and specifically Black African refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant women in Italy, in light of Yvette’s positionality and experience within Italian feminist movements. Our choice is also in line with Black feminist epistemologies which value the marginality of Black women at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression as a source of insight and theorisation about social divisions, inequality and resistance (Emejulu and van der Scheer 2022; Emejulu and Sobande 2019; Hooks, 1989). While many of the experiences narrated in this paper are shared by different groups of women who are discriminated against because of their racialisation, migration status and/or religion in Italy, we forefront the intersection between Blackness and migration status as a specific site from which the women cited in this article speak and resist. In doing so, we contribute to enriching the understanding of Blackness and Afrofeminist resistance in Europe in conversation with, but also beyond, dominant US Black feminist traditions (Emejulu and Sobande 2019; Ouedraogo, Fabbri, and Romeo 2022).

We begin by situating our study in the context of existing research on the relationship between Italian feminism, migrant and Black women, focusing specifically on its colonial continuities and on Black women’s activism. After presenting our methodologies and positionality vis a vis the subject matter, we move onto documenting and analysing two interconnected initiatives led by Black women within a feminist association we call Associazione Talea (all participants’ and association’s names are pseudonymized). By centring their words, we put forward a specific Black feminist perspective on the work of Italian feminist associations working with migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women. We document an intersectional political vision and project that could expand both feminist and anti-racist thinking around issues of reproductive labour and rights, gendered and racialised exploitation, socio-economic integration, and citizenship. We thus make the case for these highly marginalised voices to be meaningfully included not only in feminist and anti-racist movements in Italy, but also in the production of knowledge about migration and racism in Europe.

Black women and feminism in Italy

Feminism and migrant women: colonial continuities and rescue narratives

Italian women’s organisations started engaging with questions around migration, cultural and racial diversity in the 1990s (Menin, 2012; Merrill, 2001; Pojmann, 2006). Dominant feminist framings at the time, however, relied on uniform narratives of migrant women, especially from the Global South, as “poor victims of traditional and backwards countries, especially in regards to gender roles” (Pojmann, 2006:5). Merill’s study of the Alma Mater association in Turin, for example, showed that despite its origins as a migrant-led project where foreign women could offer their cultural and professional expertise, relations within the organisation replicated assumptions of migrant women as ‘social minors’ which required instruction on how to live in Europe (2001). Bernacchi’s research with intercultural feminist associations over a decade later confirms the prevalent attitudes of paternalism towards migrant women (2018).

Such reductive representations are especially persistent across feminist organisations that encounter migrant, asylum-seeking and refugee women in the course of providing assistance to them. Feminist anti-violence centres and feminist associations that provide services towards migrants’ integration (such as accommodation, legal assistance, job seeking, language courses) remain white-dominated spaces which engage women first and foremost as helpless victims of violence and gender discrimination. These organisations, despite their strong feminist and pro-migration ethics, are embroiled in dynamics of saviourism and rescue politics which rely on the construction of a hierarchy between saviour and victim (Bernacchi, 2018; Bonfiglioli, 2010; Menin, 2012; Ouedraogo et al. 2022; Pojmann, 2006; Sahraoui and Tyszler 2021; Vergès, 2021). This hierarchy is created and maintained through discourses and visual representations that fix Black, migrant and Muslim women in a position of victimhood and, through this very act of Othering, reinforce the notion of white European women as liberated (Carby, 2000; Corossacz, 2013; Mohanty, 1988; Yegenoglu, 1998).

Feminist rescue narratives have clear colonial roots. At the time of European imperialist expansion, the situation of Asian, African and Middle Eastern women was leveraged by early feminists and colonial officers alike to justify occupation and ‘civilising missions’ which resulted in the imposition of European Christian heteronormative and monogamous gender orders (Lugones, 2007; Spivak, 1993; Yegenoglu, 1998). Narratives of – paraphrasing Spivak (1993) – saving Black women from Black men are less documented in the context of Italian colonial efforts¹ in Africa than in those of other European powers. Still, these efforts undeniably developed within an Orientalist and gendered perspective which juxtaposed Italian and African culture alongside binaries of superiority/inferiority and modernity/tradition, adapting on a transnational scale the internal prejudices which already animated relations between the North and South of the country (Bonfiglioli, 2010; Pesarini, 2021; Sabelli, 2010).

In contrast with this historical reality, the myth of the Good Italian”² remains dominant today, obfuscating not only the violence perpetrated against African people during the colonial period, but also the racist culture upon which the Italian nation has been built (Boca, 2014; Kan, Romeo, and Fabbri, 2022). As a result, colonial stereotypes about Black women have not been problematised. Rather, the reversal of movement between Africa and Italy has led to a shift in Black women’s representations from temporary wives and domestic workers in the colonies to badanti (care workers) in the homeland, perennially inserted in care functions and always available to the demands of the white patriarch and his (white) wife (Bonfiglioli et al., 2009). This denied history continues to mobilise racist and sexist ideas in popular culture, advertisement, media and political discourse to construct the image of the passive, submissive, illiterate Black woman, either a prostitute or a victim (Sabelli, 2010).

Contemporary Italian feminism is necessarily anchored in these hegemonic visions and discourses emerging from colonialist Orientalism (Capussotti, 2007). For instance, activists express solidarity with transnational feminist struggles for Iranian or Afghani women, while ignoring the political battles of migrant, refugee and second-generation Black women which challenge structural and institutional discrimination within Italy. Feminist campaigns and debates continue to uphold stereotypical representations of foreign women as prisoners of patriarchy, victims of supposedly cultural forms of violence, and women oppressed in their countries of origin who seek, and achieve, freedom in Italy (Bernacchi, 2018; Bonfiglioli, 2010; Carbone, 2022; Di Martino, 2023; Kan, 2021; Merrill, 2001).

Feminist complicities

In Françoise Vergès’ analysis of contemporary European feminism, colonial continuities within feminism are not simply to be deplored as an unfortunate historical legacy. Rather, they need to be viewed and addressed as civilisational feminism, a counter-revolutionary, reactionary strategy which mobilises feminism to impose and maintain a system of domination based on class, gender and race (Vergès, 2021). Within Europe, the tools of civilisational feminism include narratives that pit an innate orientation towards gender equality within Western, European modernity against a natural tendency towards women’s oppression within cultures and religions associated with racialised and migrant populations (Vergès, 2021).

Assimilation thus remains the dominant framework to discuss and manage migration (as well as other minorities like the Roma) through integration projects across Western Europe (Erel, Murji, and Nahaboo 2016; kennedy-macfoy, 2012; Magazzini, 2020). In Italy, migrants requesting a one-year residence permit are required by law to sign an ‘integration contract’ (Accordo d’Integrazione) which commits them to fulfilling a certain number of integration activities such as Italian language, civic culture and professional training courses (Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali, Ministero dell’Interno, and Ministero dell’Istruzione n.d.). These strategies reinforce the notion, widespread across the European Union, of integration as a unilateral duty which migrants must comply with to obtain residency and, eventually, citizenship (Farris, 2017; kennedy-macfoy, 2012). Often, compulsory integration programmes prominently include messages around gender equality as a fundamental European value. Those specifically targeting migrant women focus on informing women about their legal rights and forms of GBV associated with migrant populations such as early and forced marriages or female genital mutilation. Violence is portrayed as something women suffer at the hands of their community rather than in European society or in the workplace (Farris, 2017; kennedy-macfoy, 2012).

Contemporary integration discourses have been analysed as modalities of neoliberal economic and political governance which allow institutions to shape and discipline migrants’ behaviours and choices according to moral, economic and political imperatives (Farris, 2017; Sahraoui, 2020). Feminist and other civil society organisations supporting asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant women act as frontline agents in integration policies by setting standards that women must meet or comply with in order to be seen as successfully integrated and thus be granted basic rights (Sahraoui, 2020). While these standards range from cleanliness to parenting, the role of paid labour appears to be particularly important for institutional policies and feminist ideologies alike.

Farris (2017) proposes the concept of femonationalism to describe European feminisms’ involvement in civic integration policies which are:

informed by the neoliberal logic of workfare and individual responsibility and have blended together with the right-wing ideology of homogeneity and superiority of the (western) nation as well as with the “westocentric” feminist notion of emancipation through work. (Farris, 2017:8).

Femonationalism is a response to the neoliberalisation of social care and the retreat of the welfare state. As migrant women take up care responsibilities formerly provided by the state or by European women in their homes, femonationalist rhetoric supports the gendered and racialised segregation of the labour market, and society more broadly, while appearing to promote women’s rights. Western feminist models of womanhood and freedom are exalted to reinstate the superiority of European society and of its feminist struggle (Farris, 2017). Within this frame, the employment of migrant women in the highly exploitative domestic and care work sectors is actively promoted as a necessary step towards both women’s liberation and migrants’ integration.

An (emergent) Italian Black feminism

Migrant, refugee and racialised³ women in Italy have always mobilised in defence of their rights and against their inaccurate representation. As early as the late 1970s, African (especially Cape Verdean and Eritrean) women started forming associations in response to the lack of support they found both in feminist and mixed-sex migrant groups. Working primarily, but not exclusively, in single nationality groups, these early associations focused on the immediate needs of migrant women, but also on maintaining cultural and political links with their countries of origin (Pojmann, 2006). As they were mostly employed as domestic workers, African women also prioritised issues related to working conditions, labour rights and their right to have a family in such exploitative conditions (Andall, 2000).

Throughout this period, while efforts to bring together Italian white women and migrant women took place, tensions continued to emerge in relation to paternalistic attitudes of white feminists and the side-lining of domestic work as a political priority (Menin, 2012; Pojmann, 2006). In particular, migrant women activists complained about their silencing within feminist spaces, where they were invited “to be witnesses, talking documents” (Ainom Maricos, Eritrean social worker and activist, quoted in Pojmann, 2006: 125) rather than seen as equal allies with whom to build a shared political path. Therefore, even when Black women joined the Italian feminist movement, their issues and priorities, including an intersectional analysis of violence and oppression, remained marginalised (Andall, 2000).

In more recent years, academic literature and media have focused on antiracist and, to a lesser extent, feminist activism of so-called second generations, meaning children of migrants born in Italy. Key issues for this new generation of activism have been the struggle for citizenship and the need for Italian society to reckon with its colonial history and legacy (Bernacchi and Chiappelli 2021; Fabbri, 2022; Ouedraogo et al. 2022; Schwartz, 2022). Italian feminist organisations have been visibly absent in these mobilisations and debates (Kan et al. 2022; Schwartz, 2022). New generations of Afro-Italian women have made ample use of digital tools for their political activism, partly due to their exclusion from mainstream institutional and political spaces, and have highlighted issues of racism, white privilege, institutional violence and stereotypical representations (Fabbri, 2022; Frisina and Hawthorne, 2018; Kan et al. 2022). In doing so, they have not only created connections and favoured political identification amongst the so-called second generation, but they have also built “spaces for theoretical elaboration that inform both the forms of activism outside digital platforms and the production of anti-racist and feminist knowledge” (Fabbri, 2022:724).

Yet, for all the efforts of Afro-Italian women, established feminist anti-violence organisations have struggled or in some cases, we argue, actively refused to incorporate an intersectional analytical and political perspective in their work. This article thus seeks to explore strategies that Black women have been able to deploy within feminist spaces and the impact that such efforts can have.

Methodology

This paper and our broader collaboration are rooted in a Black feminist epistemology which centres the situated and experiential perspective of Black women, arguing that their position of ‘outsider within’ systems of power provides them with a unique standpoint to understand their functioning and challenge conventional framings of social issues (Collins, 1985; Emejulu and Sobande 2019; Hooks, 1989). In contrast with Western traditions of social theory that devalue individual and collective experience, Black feminist epistemology sets out to “value experience as a rich source of insight, and tak[e] social action as a way of theorizing” (Collins, 2019:118).

In our work, we seek to centre the ‘outsider within’ and value lived experience in two ways. Firstly, Yvette writes from her perspective as a Black migrant woman active within the Italian feminist anti-violence movement and a Black feminist scholar. The article presents her auto-ethnographic reflections on working with feminist and anti-violence associations and networks across Italy for the past five years. Yvette has worked with multiple anti-violence centres in different regions of Italy, both as an occasional cultural and linguistic mediator and as a staff member. She has also collaborated with the largest Italian feminist network of anti-violence centres and with international organisations supporting GBV programmes for migrant women in Italy, thus spanning the whole spectrum of feminist actors engaged in the fight against gendered violence. From her standpoint of researcher, writer, worker, migrant, woman, survivor and activist, Yvette connects decolonial, postcolonial and Black feminist theory with the realities of Black life and work in Italy. Ilaria, throughout her work as a white Italian anti-violence practitioner and feminist scholar, has both been implicated in and highly critical of the perpetuation of white norms in feminist spaces. While we both bring a background in Black feminist theory to our collaboration, we strive to maintain Yvette’s standpoint as the focus of our analysis and writing. Being based at a UK university, Ilaria offers institutional access and the opportunity to tap into and contribute to the dominant sphere of Anglophone academic publishing.

Secondly, we strive to speak and think with the voices of the Black women we have worked or done research with, quoting them at length whenever possible. It is by simply sharing their words in context that we can best make the argument that Black migrant and refugee women are more than capable to articulate and pursue a distinct political vision for and beyond feminism. Estelle, Miriam, Pamela, Blessing, Aline and Paridise (all pseudonyms) quoted below are Black African women who participated in either the seminar series Ti Racconto Chi Sono (I Tell You Who I Am) and/or the event for World Refugee Day on 20th June 2023. The seminars included an average of 12 cisgender women per session, primarily originating from Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria and between 25 and 40 years of age, while the 2023 event also included women from Tunisia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Most of the women involved had been in Italy between 6 and 18 months, with a handful having been in the country for longer periods of up to four years.

This article presents an in-depth case study of the work of Associazione Talea (a pseudonym), where Yvette works as an Operatrice Interculturale di Genere (an intercultural gender worker) and where Ilaria conducted ethnographic research on the operationalisation of intersectionality in feminist organisations working with GBV survivors. Talea is an intercultural feminist association which works with both Italian white and migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women in a medium-size town in Northern Italy. Its work is articulated along three axes: support for GBV survivors; hospitality and support for asylum-seeking and refugee women as part of the national migrant reception network; and intercultural activities to bring together migrant and Italian white women, raise awareness and campaign for women’s rights in Italy and abroad. At the time of data collection, the association counted between 20 and 30 staff members, several of whom, like Yvette, had themselves migrated to Italy. All the women quoted in this article were currently living or had previously lived in migrant reception accommodation managed by Talea upon arrival in Italy and while they pursued their asylum claims.

Part of the data presented in this paper was collected by Ilaria using mixed qualitative methods (interviews, participant observation and audio-diaries) between September 2020 and January 2022. This research project received ethical approval by the Sociology Ethics and Risk Assessment for Research Committee at the University of Cambridge. The remainder of the data includes auto-ethnographic reflections by Yvette on her work within Talea from July 2021 until July 2023, alongside texts, statements and field notes collected with the women’s informed consent during group and public debates with Black asylum-seeking and refugee women hosted by the association. After meeting during a research visit, we both decided to initiate a collaboration, first as a long-distance exchange and conversation, then as a series of co-writing projects. These have allowed us to elaborate an analysis of the association’s functioning and of the specific dynamics of Italian feminism starting from an intersectional and global Black feminist perspective.

“If I can speak, I do not need to represent myself as a list of categories: migrant, woman, Black, African, refugee”: defining oneself at the margins

In the rest of the article we present two initiatives Yvette facilitated within Talea. The activities aimed at bringing together and mobilising Black women, the largest group of women hosted by the association, not simply as users of services, but as political actors within a feminist space that most of them had not chosen but found themselves accommodated in. These initiatives allowed women to not only articulate a specific Black feminist position, but also to put forward a set of political claims towards the institutions that marginalise them through narratives of victimhood and incapacity. Within these activities Blackness emerged as a non-essentialist concept, far from the stereotypes and narrow confines created by colonial and white supremacist representations. Rather, Blackness was taken as a capacious notion allowing for a variety of Black experiences, identities and positionalities while recognising a shared history of colonisation, enslavement and negative racialisation (Hooks, 2014).

For a period of six months (October 2021 to March 2022), Yvette organised and facilitated a weekly seminar series called Ti Racconto Chi Sono involving women hosted by Talea. The objective of Ti Racconto Chi Sono was to valorise the words and writings of women and (re)construct an explicitly political space for Black women’s voices. The starting point for this project was the distinction proposed by Bell Hooks between marginality “imposed by oppressive structures and marginality elected as a site of resistance” (Hooks and Nadotti 2021:134. Authors’ translation). The social and political exclusion of Black women from feminist movements has led them to build and theorise the margin as a position of social observation, analysis, and struggle. The margins are also a space of possibility where alternative communities, political projects and social world can be imagined, constructed and lived (Emejulu and van der Scheer 2022; Hooks, 1989).

Yvette invited participants to re-elaborate their condition of marginality from a mere space of exclusion towards an analysis of Italian society based on their specific positionality as migrant and racialised women. From this point of departure and rooting their reflections in their contexts of origin, Black women were able to foster an environment for critical thought and theorising about migration policies, feminism, and their concept of womanhood. They refused to give in to the historical, cultural and geographical determinism which confines them into spaces of non-modernity, backwardness, tradition and illiteracy. They discussed their identity as inextricably connected to their Blackness, their culture, their socialisation and claimed their right to be fully “themselves” without shame or compromise to fit into Italian models of womanhood. Rather than being considered an object of study or pity, women participating in Ti Racconto Chi Sono reclaimed their subjectivity and their desire to be known through their own knowledge, skills, and experiences by stating: “I know how to speak, and I can speak” (Estelle).

A key objective of Ti Racconto Chi Sono was to give value to Black identity and propose a positive reading of the female Black body on Italian soil (Frisina and Hawthorne, 2018). The seminars created a space for alternative narratives which diverge from the Black victim or the badante. The concepts of gaze and ‘white gaze’, positionality and ‘white space’, acted as starting points for Black women to go on a journey of self-definition, first, and articulation of a political claim, second. Thinking individually and collectively through four questions (Who am I? Where do I speak from? To whom do I speak? How do I speak?) enabled women to analyse how structural oppression in Italy prevents Black women from finding their voice and representing themselves beyond Eurocentric images and narratives.

A strong need to self-define and value oneself within the Italian context emerged during the seminars. Collins (1985) considers the sequential processes of self-definition and self-valuation as core strategies of Black feminism. Self-definition allows Black women to reclaim the power to define themselves, wrestling it from the hands of dominant groups who have, over centuries, arrogated themselves the right to define others and, through that process, control them. Acts of self-definition allow Black women to put an end to stereotypes and controlling images that play such a critical role in the dehumanisation, subjugation and exploitation of Black female bodies. Self-valuation follows this step by replacing such images with “authentic Black female images” (Collins, 1985:S17), not to create new stereotypes but rather to reject internalised oppression and to assert Black women’s capacity and right to set their own standards for womanhood independently of hegemonic white femininity. For Afro-Italian activist and writer Djarah Kan:

Having control of the narrative of one’s self has absolute political value. We talk about freedom, choice, and self-determination, where self-determination means the act of being able to choose the terms by which to be identified. (Kan et al. 2022:592).

During the seminars, Black women were able to affirm their Self, their uniqueness, and reclaim their names and life paths beyond the labels of ‘migrant’, ‘refugee’ or ‘victim’. In doing so, they reclaimed their humanity and their right to take a stand, acknowledging Black women as subjects that have historically produced resistance (Proglio et al. 2021). They challenged totalising colonial narratives that constructed Black identity through the body and not the mind (Hooks, 2016), and thus called for the recognition of the epistemic identity of Black women in Italy today. It is from this identity and positionality that Black women determine their political priorities, as clearly expressed by Aline:

“Wherever we go we experience racism through stereotypes and representations: at work they see me as a badante or a cleaning lady, without finding out whether I have other skills. In the street I’m a prostitute and everyone thinks they have the right to harass me; my body is objectified. How can one imagine that I can think like a white woman who only speaks of patriarchy, who only sees herself as a woman and nothing else? I see myself as a Black woman, a migrant, a refugee…all of this produces only one impact: racism”.

Exposing the racist representations they are constantly confronted with, Black women claim their right to speak about their experiences of racism and challenge acts of resistance and silencing they are constantly confronted with:

“They chastise us when we speak about racism, as if it bothers them. It is us who are bothered, who are annoyed. Why should we feel guilty when we say that term out loud? Why does it annoy you?” (Paridise).

Indeed, despite Black women’s regular attendance and enthusiastic participation, Ti Racconto Chi Sono was not welcomed by all of Talea’s staff. Ines, a white migrant staff member, lamented the construction of the seminar series as a space by and for Black African women:

Ilaria (interviewer): “For me there is something interesting about the fact that it is a safe space just for African women. I think you can tell the difference.”

Ines: “Actually I regret that. […] They need another voice in there. For example, adding an Italian voice in there […] to be a partner in the space. Because there is another kind of racism there.”

Evoking the notion of reverse racism, Ines voices her desire to insert white persons, preferably Italian, within the self-organised Black space, which she considered inappropriate for an intercultural and feminist association. These examples, alongside accusations of “being obsessed with racism and skin colour” (Field notes, World Refugee Day event) and reminders of the oppression of white Italian women in most conversations, act to reproduce white privilege within these spaces and silence Black women’s voices and concerns.

“Today I decided, since you like testimony, to tell you how we really live”: Refusing performative victimhood to articulate Black feminist claims

Ti Racconto Chi Sono officially ceased to meet in March 2022, but the women involved in the group continued their collective reflections, leading them to propose an activity in occasion of World Refugee Day in June 2023. Such commemorative occasions are often centred around acts of witnessing, a mechanism of discursive authorisation which prevents any form of critical reflection, rather creating a moment where the Black woman can only reproduce and legitimate her condition of need and the actions of those who rescue her (Mohanty, 1988; Narayan, 2018; Pojmann, 2006). The obsessive focus, on these days and events, on women’s conditions in their contexts of origin, where they necessarily lived in a situation of constant oppression, serve the purpose of reiterating the superiority of Western civilisation and the hierarchisation of womanhood. Bell Hooks summarises this act of performative witnessing in these terms:

“No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. […] I am still the colonizer, the speaking subject, and you are now at the center of my talk” (Hooks, 2015:152).

Black women hosted by Talea refused to give in to this narrative on World Refugee Day:

“I do not want to tell you how women live in my country, nor say that here everything is going well and I am grateful to be here. That would be a lie.” (Miriam).

They proposed instead a debate amongst equals to the various institutional representatives present at the event:

“We want to know today what you think. We want to hear you speak, because as you can see, we are able to speak and thus we want a debate.” (Estelle).

Their framing of the event can be interpreted as a form of politics of refusal, “an act of subversion that is meant to spotlight the arbitrariness of the current social order and provide alternative spaces for other ways of doing and being.” (Emejulu and van der Scheer 2022:15). In their rejection of the witness role, Black women in Talea are effectively refusing to be seen through the dichotomies of modernity/tradition, saviour/victim, liberated/oppressed.

To honour their intention, we reproduce in its entirety the opening speech given by the group of Black women during the World Refugee Day event.

“We are not welcome anywhere. That is something we can feel. In this space, we have been granted the opportunity to speak. On this day, we decided to finally speak up and tell our truth.

We want to welcome you all.

In all these years, we have been given many names: migrant, asylum seeker, badante, refugee, cleaning lady, dishwasher. My name is Blessing, Miriam, Estelle, Stephanie, Aline…and my name is not ‘migrant’! I never understood what refugee meant, being a refugee.

They tell me I have rights, but every day I experience discrimination and racism; I am invisible. For this reason, today I would like to understand from you what you mean by ‘refugee’. I will tell you how one lives as a refugee in this country, in this city and in this place.

I cannot dream, because I am not allowed to. I can’t have ambitions because they cannot be realised and they don’t fit in the list established by the [integration] projects. They decide for me, they think they know what I need more than I do.

I must live with 46 euros per week. I ask everyone present here today: is it possible? We all walk into a shop. What can you buy for 46 euros? I left my children in my country, how can I support them? I cannot open my own shop after having trained independently because I am Black, African, I do not have citizenship. I cannot work because none here helps me with my daughters, I am a single mother. I am scared for my son every day, that like me he won’t have the same opportunities as Italian children, that he will end up racialised.

When they talk about women’s rights, we don’t have a say in the matter. Are we women or not? What do we need to do for our voices to be heard? We are exposed to every form and type of gendered violence but the responses do not take us into account.

Today, we do not want to be the only ones who speak, because it would end up with none taking responsibility and, as usual, we are the only ones talking and you listen. Then you happily return to your homes. Today we want to hear what you think, not just what you expect [of us]. Proposals will emerge only if there is an exchange.

Thank you”.

With their statement, Black women established their social location as the starting point for discussions within the event and, hopefully, beyond. Yet, the simple act of explicitly centring Black women’s experiences during a day dedicated to refugees immediately brought to the fore white feminists’ refusal to adopt an intersectional perspective in their analysis of oppression and activism. During the meeting, white feminist speakers reminded Black women that “Italian women are also subjected to discrimination”, seeking to reframe discussions around the idea of a universal female experience. Such statements erase the reality that women experience patriarchy in different ways across different geographical or historical contexts (Carby, 2000; Mohanty, 1988). Further, they deny responsibility towards others’ oppression and claim a form of victimhood or innocence which appears particularly inappropriate within the context of migrant women’s labour, as will be explored below. Thus, Black women in the meeting rejected the invitations to adopt a universal viewpoint because:

“You cannot compare the discrimination we face with that of Italian women, because, for a start, they don’t experience racism. They would never do the work we do in the conditions we do it. For once, we are talking about Us, and just about Us, so that what we have to say can be passed on to the decision-maker. We need interlocutors, not someone who politely reminds us that we cannot complain because Italian women face the same issues”. (Pamela)

By taking an explicit stance against universalist notions of womanhood during the event, Black women challenged empty claims of sisterhood. Solidarity was however problematised not only within feminist struggles, but also within anti-racist movements led by Black diaspora members:

“We do not only speak to white women today, but also to Black women who have some privilege and believe they know, as Black women, what we are going through and thus speak on our behalf. Skin colour is not enough to be like us, this must be said” (Blessing).

Asylum-seeking and refugee Black women see themselves as a distant category from the Black Italians centred in anti-racist discourse, whom they perceive as privileged bearers of a middle-class point of view which does not include them. Indeed, Afro-Italian activists have at times insisted on their difference from recently arrived migrants in an attempt to claim their belonging to the Italian nation, thus contributing to the exclusion of racialised migrant subjects from the boundaries of citizenship (Hawthorne, 2022). In pointing out this distance, Black women shine a light on gendered, classed and legal hierarchies which cannot be wished away by appeals to a common Blackness. Like all categories, Blackness is inflected by class, gender, sexuality, citizenship and many more factors (Hooks, 2014). Yet, when Black women speak, they are assumed to represent all Black women and are thus rarely challenged, although they can reproduce normative models of (Black) femininity and invisibilize refugee and asylum-seeking women. For this reason, Black women in Talea wish to speak without intermediaries of any sort.

“Because I am a Black woman, it has been decided cleaning is the right job for me, and it is poorly paid”: Denouncing labour exploitation in integration policies and feminist teleologies of emancipation

During the World Refugee Day event, Black women chose to forefront issues of employment, labour exploitation and integration. In this regard, they found themselves, once again, refusing the narratives that were being uncritically presented to the audience and talking back at institutional representatives. For Hooks, talking back “is an act of resistance, a political gesture that challenges politics of domination that would render us nameless and voiceless.” (Hooks, 2015:8). For instance, when a representative of the regional government invited the women present to learn Italian and attend trainings to secure themselves a job, Paridise responded:

“I speak Italian, which you can tell because you can understand me. I have several training certificates. Do you think that all of this gives me the opportunity to have a dignified job? I have been exploited several times because employers and potential employers, I do not know why, see me as a group to be exploited. Perhaps we can try and figure out why and try to eradicate that. Otherwise this remains the usual discussion which evaporates the moment you step outside”.

With this intervention, Paridise immediately frames the issue of social and economic integration facing Black women in Italy as one that is primarily determined by structural forces rather than individual initiative. She refuses to accept her characterisation as someone who has not tried hard enough and, at the same time, demands that institutions assume their responsibility in challenging the racial and gendered hierarchies that place her in a condition of exploitability.

Racialised and migrant women have extremely limited opportunities to find employment beyond the domestic and care sectors across Europe. In 2020, 40.6% of foreign women resulted employed in these two sectors in Italy, a country with one of the highest rates of domestic work in Europe (Bernacchi, 2018; Bernacchi and Chiappelli 2021). Over the past few decades, as Italian white women entered the professional labour market and the middle class, their domestic and care duties were passed on to migrant women, maintaining a highly gendered and increasingly racialised division of labour within Italian society (Ambrosini, 2001; Andall, 2000; Bernacchi, 2018; Decimo, 2006). Yet, while this paradox has been raised as a crucial feminist issue by migrant and racialised women, civil society organisations continue to promote economic autonomy via paid labour as an essential step towards women’s self-realisation and integration (Bernacchi, 2018; Merrill, 2001; Pojmann, 2006).

Neoliberal and nationalist policies cast employment as a primary tool of social integration, based on an ethos of individual responsibility and a framing of citizenship as a benefit, deriving from productive contribution to society, rather than a right (Bergman et al., 2012; Farris, 2017; Le Feuvre et al., 2012). At the same time, European feminists are committed to facilitating migrant women’s access to the labour market in an echo of their own struggles to liberate women from domestic work and engage in paid work during the 1960s and 1970s. Building on these feminist histories and on years of support to domestic violence survivors trapped in abusive relationship by economic dependency, Italian feminists have constructed what Farris (2017) terms a teleological notion of emancipation through paid work. Migrant women, perceived as universally subordinated and victimised, must thus prioritise finding work to initiate their process of integration and feminist liberation.

Talea’s internal narratives reflect such a teleology of emancipation by stressing women’s self-sufficiency and independence, primarily interpreted as freedom from male economic control, in all their work with asylum-seeking, refugee women, and GBV survivors. Women’s autonomy is interpreted strictly in reference to a universal figure modelled on Italian white women and their liberation from unpaid care work, while the replacement of white women with foreign women in the realm of personal assistance and domestic work is obscured. Black women, on the contrary, are fully aware of their unique position at the bottom of the labour market, as explained by Pamela:

“I realised, one day, that despite cleaning more rooms than my Tunisian colleague, she earned more than me. I did not know how to explain this. Then I realised that, as I am Black, I did not have the same privilege as ‘white’ women of colour”.

If work outside the home might have represented a path towards increased economic and social independence for Italian women in the 1970s and 1980s (a claim that has in any case been debated, see Andall, 2000), it certainly holds a different value in the lives of Black women. Given the severe undervaluation of care work, including within feminist circles, they are ‘frozen’ in underpaid and highly exploitative jobs which, far from guaranteeing their economic independence or social mobility, expose them to further violence and discrimination (Bernacchi and Chiappelli 2021; Le Feuvre et al., 2012; Marchetti, Cherubini, and Geymonat 2021).

Observing the work of an association like Talea, Black women’s confinement within the domestic and care sectors is revealed as a structural condition. For example, the SAI⁴ national project database, which collects individual-level information about asylum-seekers and refugees, only allows social workers to select forms of trainings and employment which correspond to low-skilled, racialised and gendered forms of labour. Seeking to report a teaching qualification that an asylum-seeking woman had pursued through independent means, Yvette discovered there was no option to list it as a form of professional training in the database. The woman thus risked being marked as not compliant with her integration commitments for having failed to undergo one of the pre-determined trainings in areas such as personal care, catering or domestic work. This example clearly points to the exclusion a priori of refugee women living in reception centres from vast areas of the labour market. This is not merely a form of sexist discrimination, but an intersectional discrimination that combines Black women’s gender, racialisation and legal status to segregate them in poorly paid and highly exploitative positions.

Talea’s teleology of emancipation based on the idea of work outside the home goes hand in hand with nationalist discourses of integration. Within this frame, working, learning Italian and abandoning one’s own culture become obligations that Black women must submit to if they wish to justify their presence in Italy (Farris, 2017; kennedy-macfoy, 2012). Ambrosini (2001) refers to this process as subaltern integration, which purports to incorporate migrants into society while maintaining their subaltern position. Black women hosted by Talea feel that their presence on Italian territory is made conditional on a range of attitudes which reproduce and, at the same time, subjugate them to Western European culture.

Besides their orientation towards employment, Black women perceive a series of mandates intruding in multiple aspects of their lives, from motherhood to hygiene and their appearance. Sonia, a racialized migrant staff member of Talea, reflected on the association’s work as contributing to a vision of Italian society which demands migrant women lose their identity:

“Here in Italy, I think people must forget their identity. I must forget it. Why? Because accessing a service, for instance, let’s talk about educational services: the fact of teaching the child that they need to eat pasta, the woman that she must give him milk this way, that she needs to breastfeed the child, she must put him to sleep in a certain way, must speak to him in a certain way, you must teach him this song. […] They must take another identity to enter, to be accepted and recognised in this world.”

In this respect, as in the world of work, a clear racialised hierarchy was visible amongst migrant women hosted by the organisation, as recounted by Viola, a white Italian worker:

“I felt racism against Nigerian women, that was there. Because they are the ones who bother the most, who are dirtier […] there was this terrible thing, when [name] got in [the programme], Albanian, perfect, obsessed with tidying and cleaning. We needed to give her a clean, spick-and-span, new sofa […] What about the others??? […] That happened a lot, this thing that Nigerian women did not respect our Italian standards, while Albanians, Moroccans, they were already more socially acceptable, so they got more stuff.”

The association of Black women with poor hygiene and aggressive behaviour often served as a justification, as in Viola’s example above, for adopting discriminatory treatments and demanding stricter compliance with Italian (i.e. white) norms. As was found in other associations in Italy (Bolzoni, Donatiello, and Giannetto 2023), Talea also provided preferential treatment to Ukrainian refugee women. For example, they displaced long-term residents from their apartments so that Ukrainian women could be housed together and not be asked to share with Black asylum-seekers.

Talea, alongside other femonationalist agents, becomes complicit in neoliberal, nationalist and racist integration policies. By promoting a model of feminist emancipation based on the abandonment of cultural practices and their entrance in a capitalist and exploitative labour market, feminist associations uphold racial, gender and class inequalities in favour of the current economic and political status quo.

Conclusion

The time is coming where to contrast ‘native’ and ‘migrant’ will become redundant terminology when the implied ‘migrant’ subjects are young African or Arab Italian women born in Italy and where different groups of women are able to speak and have dialogue with each other from a more structurally equal position and using a common language. (Andall, 2007:84).

Over fifteen years after Andall’s statement, we see a multiplication of Black feminist voices in Italy and the proliferation of young Afro-Italian women’s initiatives who create, or take, space for their voices among generalised indifference. At the same time, our experience and analysis point to limited change in how feminist associations working with migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women approach Black women, who certainly do not find themselves in a ‘more structurally equal position’.

In the Italian context, the Black woman often remains a voiceless victim who requires rescuing by white feminists, except in the isolated cases when a Black voice is co-opted to demonstrate the movement’s inclusivity without ever critiquing its basis or its leadership (Bernacchi, 2018). As a consequence, an analysis of the intersections between sexism, racism, classism and other axes of oppression which marginalise Black women emerges neither in the discourses nor in the everyday practices of feminist associations. Strong resistance emerges whenever a critique of the feminist movement or simply an encouragement to reflect on historical, colonial and racial dynamics is put forward (Lombardi-Diop and Romeo 2014; Romeo and Fabbri, 2022; Schwartz, 2022). Feminist organisations refuse to incorporate political analyses and claims emerging from racialised and marginalised subjectivities, instead reiterating the ‘historical’ objectives of a white, middle-class feminist movement which originated in a country with very different social and racial features.

The issue of labour rights is a case in point. Whereas migrant-led groups have prioritised questions of labour exploitation, violence in the workplace and segregation of the labour market in Italy since their inception in the 1970s, feminist organisations prefer to maintain a focus on ‘cultural’ forms of violence such as forced or early marriage, an area where Talea claims significant expertise (Predelli et al., 2012). The association’s hypocrisy is particularly visible in discussions around economic independence, when Black women are encouraged to work in care and domestic occupations, reinforcing the class, gender and racial stratification of contemporary Italian society.

Nevertheless, Black women continue to participate and invest their energies in feminist movements, seeking to create alternative spaces of expression and circulation of voices, thoughts and experiences which go beyond stereotypes and narratives of suffering. The initiatives described in this paper, Ti Racconto Chi Sono and the ensuing debate in occasion of World Refugee Day 2023, demonstrate, first and foremost, Black women’s capacity to exercise their voice to directly contest their discursive and political marginalisation. Yet, Black migrant women demand the recognition not only of their inherent capacity to speak, act, decide, but also of their ability to articulate a political analysis and a political project responding to the intersectional discrimination and violence they face. Their struggle centres both racism as a structural force which shapes their daily life in Italy and work as a site of compounding gendered and racialised exploitation. Their actions of refusal and talking back engender “a different kind of dialogue – one that this is led by and for Black women in Europe.” (Emejulu and Sobande 2019:6). Their political proposals, expressed in no uncertain terms, contribute to and at the same time demand a transformation of Italian feminism towards an expansive, intersectional, decolonial agenda that is informed by the multiplicity of voices emerging from the margins. It is from this location that Italian feminism can and should draw new energy, to survive and to mobilise a new resistance movement in a context increasingly marked by the intersection of sexist, racist and neoliberal politics and violence.