The ring and the street: young immigrant boxers in the Bolognina neighbourhood of Bologna

Abstract

This article describes the social organisation of the ‘Tranvieri’ boxing gym in Bolognina, a working-class neighbourhood of Bologna that has been rapidly changing over the last 20 years due to the closure of factories and the arrival of immigrants, especially from the Maghreb. The gym population has changed accordingly: currently about two-thirds of those attending the gym as a leisure centre have immigrant parents. The author studied the everyday life of these young boxers, born in Italy but without citizenship, who visit the gym daily after finishing vocational school, work and family responsibilities. For them, boxing is not a solution to the frustration inflicted by a society they perceive as indifferent if not hostile towards them, but it does offer them the possibility of not being represented as persons excluded from that society.

Keywords::

• leisure
• urban space
• boxing
• young immigrants
• neighbourhood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. To protect privacy, all the real names in this paper have been changed.

^2. Almost all the old boxers of the gym emigrated from southern to northern Italy after the Second World War to find jobs in the local factories.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giuseppe Scandurra

Giuseppe Scandurra is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ferrara. He has published numerous essays and books on the subject of urban anthropology. Among his most recent publications are: Tranvieri. Etnografia di una palestra di pugilato (with F. Antonelli, Aracne, 2010), Memorie di uno spazio pubblico. Piazza Verdi a Bologna (with E. Castelli, L. Tancredi and A. Tolomelli, Clueb, 2011), Tracce Urbane (with A. Cancellieri, Franco Angeli, 2012) and Antropologia e Studi Urbani (Este Edition, 2013). He is currently conducting research on a group of football ‘ultras’ in Bologna and an ethnographic study on the relationship between the ‘Arab Spring’ and the art world in Tunisia.