‘Parallel Emergencies’ in Italy and Australia: Marginalised and Racialised Romani and Aboriginal ‘Camp Dwellers’

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on Romani and Aboriginal peoples who live at the margins of Italian and Australian societies, often in city ‘camps’ that show signs of institutional abandonment, neglect and extreme decay. To address this socio-economic disadvantage and improve the quality of life, the governments of these two countries have implemented what we have defined ‘parallel emergencies’, extraordinary policy measures of intervention, surveillance and control. This paper argues that these policies that aim to improve the everyday lives of Romani and Aboriginal peoples, however, often re-produce a ‘tradition’ of institutionalised racism that can be traced back to the post-Unification period in Italy and the Federation period in Australia. By drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, we highlight the approach adopted by Italian and Australian institutions in terms of ‘inclusive exclusion’. On the one hand, the government makes significant investment in schooling and employment projects; on the other, it keeps promoting the use of emergency measures, which leaves slender scope for Romani and Aboriginal voices.

KEYWORDS:

• Romani peoples
• aboriginal peoples
• ‘campi nomadi’
• ‘town camps’
• states of emergency
• Agamben
• institutional racism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Armillei, Until December 2015, worked for the UNESCO Chair team and the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) as an Associate Research Fellow. He recently won a grant to conduct research on ‘new Italian migrants’ to Australia. This study, which is promoted by the COMITES (Committee of Italians Abroad) of Victoria and Tasmania with funds from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is undertaken by the Alfred Deakin Institute of Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University together with the Faculty of Health, Arts and Design at Swinburne University of Technology, both based in Melbourne. Dr Armillei undertook his Ph.D. at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research where he examined the social exclusion of Romanies (‘Gypsies’) in Italy.

Dr Michele Lobo is an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellow (ARC DECRA) at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a social and cultural geographer whose work focuses on emotion, affect and encounter to explore whiteness, ethnic/ethno-religious diversity, Indigeneity and shared belonging in cities.

Notes

1 On 6 June 2013, the Tribunale di Roma (Ordinary Court) declared the census to be discriminatory against the Romani people (Redattore Sociale 2013).