Transnationalizing cultural pluralism? The case of migrants from Ukraine and Lebanon in Italy

ABSTRACT

This article explores, on the basis of interviews with migrants from Ukraine and Lebanon, the role that the linguistic pluralism of Ukraine and the religious pluralism of Lebanon could play in the migrants’ discursive challenges to the norms of cultural homogeneity in Italy, as a country of destination. I define such pluralisms as symbolic and rhetorical resources. The ‘Ukrainophone’ and ‘Russophone’ subnational identities were used by some interviewees to affirm a positive self-image in light of a declassing migratory experience, but the same interviewees were reluctant to advance cultural claims in relation to the Italian context. Similarly, Lebanese interviewees preferred to depict their country as ‘Western’ and to use ‘Italian’ discourses to refer to homogeneity norms. I argue that ‘diasporic’ policies, the context of residence and the migratory experience are among the aspects that influence the use of such discursive resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural pluralism
• transnationalism
• migrants
• Italy
• Lebanon
• Ukraine

Acknowledgements

A preliminary version of this article was presented at the Ethnography and Qualitative Research Conference, Bergamo, 5–7 June 2014. I wish to thank the participants to the ‘Ethnography of multicultural practices’ session, the editors of the special issue, and the anonymous reviewers of Critical Discourse Studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Djordje Sredanovic has obtained a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Padua and, after working as a teaching assistant at the University of Bologna, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Migrations Asylum Multiculturalism research group, the Group for research on Ethnic Relations, Migration & Equality and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research interests include citizenship and migration, in particular migrants’ conceptions of citizenship and experiences of rights, media studies, and sociology of work. Institut de sociologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, GERME, bur. S14-216, avenue Jeanne, 44 CP 124, B-1050, Brussels, Belgium.

Notes

1. The research was conducted in 2010 and 2011, and all the references to Ukraine are relative to the condition of the country prior to the Euromaidan movement of 2013–2014, which brought about the ousting of the ‘Russophile’ Yanukovych government and conflict between ‘Ukrainophones’ and ‘Russophones’. Currently, there is uncertainty not only as to the outcome of the Crimea and Donbas crises which emerged in the last years, but also as to what role cultural pluralism will have in the politically transformed country.

2. Such discourses are also promoted by right-wing parties. Other than criminalization, anti-immigration positions in Italy also focus on migrants as a welfare burden and/or competitors to the local workforce, and on cultural incompatibility (e.g. M. Colombo, 2013). However, the interviewees I met focused especially on criminalization as a discourse which damaged them.

3. While this was not the central argument of the interviews, it is worth noting that even some of the Ukrainian interviewees who did not feel legitimated to comment on the Italian citizenship legislation did express judgments about the norms for obtaining legal residence in the country.