Empowering Migrants' Voices and Agency in Postcolonial Italy

Abstract

Originally started as a repository of migrants' storytelling, the Rome-based Archive of Migrant Memories (AMM) gradually developed into an autonomous NGO geared to collect migrants' voices and to represent their agency at a national level. AMM's aim is to extend the uneven boundaries of national memory with new and creative self-narratives concerning postcolonial Italy and its silent unfolding as a multicultural country. Sharing filming and video-making with recently-arrived migrants has been AMM's own way of documenting/representing this important change in Italian society.

Notes

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/rcin.

1 Literally donkeyness, after Giordano Bruno's “In praise of donkey” (1585) (Bruno, 1864, p. 7).

2 The pacchetto sicurezza was introduced by the Italian government on May 2008 and, in spite of strong opposition, was approved by Parliament in July 2009. Law n. 94, July 15, 2009.

3 In 2008 the CPT (Centres of Temporary Permanence) were changed into CIE (Centres for Identification and Expulsion).

4 Zakaria Mohamed Ali films a similar return to Lampedusa in his short To Whom It May Concern (2013). The film has been selected to be kept and shown at Brussels' House of European History, which is due to open in 2016 (www.europarl.europa.eu).

5 Va' Pensiero. Storie ambulanti (AMM 60' 2013), English synopsis.

6 The official partners of the now-named Mutti-AMM Prize are the Cineteca di Bologna, Amici di Giana, AMM, lettera27, Prendiamo la parola, Unicredit and HumanRights Night.

7 See www.va-pensiero.org/scuola.

8 See Nationless press release: The Nationless Pavilion. A process to represent the 25th nation, October 2015.

9 Among these are Armenia, Brazil, Estonia, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, South Africa, and Venice's European Cultural Center, but none of the main countries of the EU.

10 AtWork workshops have been held so far in Dakar, Abidjan, and Kampala; the next one will be held during Cairo Biennale Off. AtWork Labs have been held in Bahrain, Bolivia, Italy, and Nigeria. See www.lettera27.org and www.atwork27.org.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Triulzi

Alessandro Triulzi ([email protected]) was coordinator of doctoral research in African studies at “L'Orientale,” Naples. He is cofounder of the foundation lettera27 in Milan, coordinator of the project Confini (Borders), and Director of Archivio delle Memorie Migranti (AMM; Archive of Migrant Memories). Sandro has conducted research in Ghana, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Recently, he coauthored Long Journeys. African Migrants on the Road (Brill, 2013) and Bibbia e Corano a Lampedusa [Bible and Koran in Lampedusa] (La Scuola, 2014).