Introduction
Recent scholarship on the working of racial formation processes underscores the intersection between discursive and structural components in the emergence of “race,” and the agency of individuals at the local level as well as of institutions or global movements, in articulating its meaning (Winant Reference Winant2000:182).Footnote 1 As Howard Winant notes, a major challenge for the scholarship on race today is to link “the micro- and macro-aspects of racial signification and racialized social structure. Such a multileveled and interconnected account is a general obligation of social theory in the present” (Winant Reference Winant2000:181; emphasis in original). This article offers such a link toward understanding how racial formation processes operate in face-to-face interaction, by highlighting how people do racialization.
I will look at the role of conversational agreement in racial formation processes, through an analysis of conversations about immigrants in Tuscany, Italy. I will explore how conversationalists deploy agreement to co-construct a racialized image of the immigrants, to “other” them, and to construct a parallel sense of the (White) “us.” I will argue that this deployment leads to a reinforcement of the racist stances expressed, in the conversation itself and possibly beyond it, and contributes to emerging racial formation processes present in contemporary Italy. These processes center exactly on the creation of racialized differences between the immigrants and the native Italians.
“Conversational agreement” refers here to a stance in conversation, or a way in which people align with each other. In this article, I will show that when racializing statements are introduced in a conversation, agreement from the other participants leads to their reinforcement, and in turn to the reinforcement of anti-immigrant discourses already present in the larger society. Agreement allows conversationalists to produce racist/racializing discourse cooperatively as ordinary, as unaccountable (Garfinkel Reference Garfinkel1967), and as such as “common sense,” as shared feeling in front of shared experience. Racializing statements end up being reified: that is, the memory of their social production is erased. Discourses about immigrants are apprehended as if they preceded the interactional activity itself (cf. Berger & Luckman Reference Berger and Luckman1967:106–107).
In addition, the repeated occurrence of agreement during the co-construction of utterances produces what I will call a spiral effect around racializing discourse: a progressive deepening of the racialization itself and, in some cases, a strengthening of racist stances. At the same time, agreement leads to a decrease of personal responsibility for the statements made, which come to be co-constructed among conversationalists; in this way, the responsibility – including, as I will show, moral responsibility for what can be classified as hate speech – comes to be shared and thus diluted.
In using the word “racialization,” I refer here to the processes of racial formation or, as Omi & Winant (Reference Omi and Winant1986:55) define them, a “sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.” Following Miles, the concept can be used to indicate the process through which social relationships among people are structured by attributing meaning to “particular biological features of human beings, as a result of which individuals may be assigned to a general category of persons which reproduces itself biologically” (Miles Reference Miles1989:75). Miles sees racialization as the result of a racist ideology that transforms any intergroup difference into a racial one. This means that racialization is a consequence of the presence of racism in a society, and in turn it creates “races.” Miles underlines that racialization categorizes not only the Other, but also, at the same time, the Self (1989:75).
The concept of racialization, over the decades, has been used with rather different meanings in various contexts and by various authors (see Barot & Bird Reference Barot and Bird2001, Murji & Solomos Reference Murji and Solomos2005). While such a multiplicity of frameworks is at times confusing – to the point that some authors have advocated abandoning it altogether (e.g. Goldberg Reference Goldberg2002) – racialization is, I believe, still a useful concept that, as Rattansi (Reference Rattansi2007:107) notes, “moves research and political argument away from the unproductive debates about whether any particular individuals, propositions, claims, and doctrines are simply ‘racist’ or ‘non-racist’.”
Considering racialization as a product of racist ideology has the additional advantage of reminding us that not everybody is affected by racialization in the same way. Racial formation processes work at sustaining the privilege of some and the oppression of others. In Italy today, these processes work at reinforcing the privilege of citizens over immigrants.
It is important to emphasize that any difference can be racialized, not just skin color differences. In fact, skin color categories (like others based on biological difference) are invented as a result of racial formation processes, rather than existing before them. Nor can we immediately uphold a division between “biological” and “cultural” characteristics, lest we forget that what is ascribed to culture in one historical context has been attributed to nature in others (for example, gender roles).
This is particularly so when one considers the so-called New Racism, a name that has been used to indicate a shift in racist ideologies from basing racial differences in biology to basing them in a reified and naturalized concept of cultural differences seen as innate and unchangeable (see Taguieff Reference Taguieff1987, Balibar & Wallerstein Reference Balibar and Wallerstein1991, Gilroy Reference Gilroy and Raphael-Hernandez2004, Baumann Reference Baumann1996). The emergence of these conceptions of race, particularly strong in Europe today, reveals the shifting quality of racism and racial categories.
Connected to this naturalization of cultural difference is a substitution of the term “ethnicity” to replace the scorned term “race.” As Stolcke (Reference Stolcke and Valle1993:24) notices, the use of the concept “ethnicity,” notwithstanding its original purpose to avoid a reification of “race,” had the effect “to downplay or side-step racism,” becoming a euphemism to avoid discussing “race.” This is particularly clear in Europe, where the word “race” and its equivalents have been avoided for decades both by politicians and by the common people, and even by social scientists. Unfortunately, while the intent was to negate the existence of biological races, in effect this has stifled an analysis of their social creation – a social creation that, at the same time, was not at all deterred by the silence over the term “race” and “racism”; on the contrary, it was aided by it. Racism (both as an ideology and as a structural arrangement of inequalities) is strengthened by its erasure and its disguise as ineffable but inexorable “cultural” differences. As Stolcke notes, discussing Taguieff’s analysis of New Racism:
The French right began orchestrating its anti-immigrant offensive by espousing what Taguieff has termed a “differential racism,” a doctrine which exalts the essential and irreducible cultural difference of non-European immigrant communities whose presence is condemned for threatening the “host” country’s original national identity. A core element of this doctrine of exclusion is the repudiation of “cultural miscegenation” for the sake of the unconditional preservation of one’s own original purportedly biocultural identity.
(Stolcke Reference Stolcke1995:4; emphasis added)We can see a consequence of this in Italy today, where naturalized views of culture and ethnicity are associated with discriminatory statements against Southern Italians or immigrant groups (Allievi Reference Allievi, Leveau, Mohsen-Finan and de Wenden2002). For example, the Northern League Party in the past staged protests against Arabs and Muslims (the terms “Arab” and “Muslim” are generally conflated in everyday discourse and in the media), and pressured the government to prohibit their entrance in Italy, following the right-wing Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori, who wanted Arab/Muslims excluded “to avoid an upsurge of ‘defensive’ racism which, he said, would be quite justified” (Allievi Reference Allievi, Leveau, Mohsen-Finan and de Wenden2002:45). In this case, racialization invests religious differences as well as reified cultural differences to define an Arab/Muslim Other. These forms of racialization pose a challenge to any restrictive understanding of racism that sees it as expressed through the “White/Black” divide, and that can lead one to ignore forms of racism that cannot be subsumed under this categorization (Lentin Reference Lentin2004:18). In this perspective, racial hate in Italy against Albanian or Polish immigrants, or against Southern Italians, gets obscured under the label of “ethnic discrimination” and becomes invisible. An analysis of racism and racialization needs to consider, on the contrary, how discourses around race can be shifted away from skin color and repositioned on assumed characteristics of immigrants’ behavior, including dress, living habits, and moral qualities, complicating and blurring the theoretical boundary between race and ethnicity.Footnote 2
In my research, I start from an understanding of racism as interactionally achieved and as connected to processes of formation of modern nation-states and national identities (Lentin Reference Lentin2004:19). As Silverman (Reference Silverman1992:26) notes, “Racism is not an external evil which periodically plagues the body politic; it is an integral part of the very constitution of modern nation-states.” As such, racism is a structural phenomenon in society.
However, a focus on the nation-state level or global dynamics and on racism as structural must not lose sight of the contributions of single individuals to that system. Such an oversight could, among other problems, furnish an alibi to individuals and absolve them of responsibility for discriminatory actions. Rattansi (Reference Rattansi2007:134 ff.) reports an enlightening case. In the inquiry over the failed investigation of the murder of a Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, in 1999 London, Lord Macpherson, responsible for the inquiry, invoked the institutional racism of the London police. He wrote that such institutional racism could be “detected in processes, attitudes and behavior which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people” (cited in Rattansi Reference Rattansi2007:134; emphasis added). While this may appear as a clear indictment of an institution and its racism, the outcome was quite the opposite. As Rattansi informs us:
The confusions endemic in the Report’s usage of ‘institutional racism’ enabled many in the London Metropolitan Police to argue that no individuals could be held responsible for the failure of the investigation, which was instead attributed to organizational procedures, a collective ethos and unintentional prejudice.
(Rattansi Reference Rattansi2007:137)Notice the use of the word “unwitting” in the original report. In this case, individuals come to be seen as “unintentionally” prejudiced because of where they are situated in the system. This removes responsibility from those same individuals, negating their agency and, in the end, furnishing a possible excuse for discrimination. While the substitution of the term “structural” for “institutional” in recent scholarship was intended to avoid limiting racism to single institutions (see Grant-Thomas & Powell Reference Grant-Thomas and Powell2006), individual responsibility must still be addressed, and a vague reference to individual prejudice, “culture,” or lack of knowledge simply is not sufficient.
Looking at racism and racialization as interactionally constructed allows us to see that racism is not simply something that people “are” but something that people “do.” They do it, among other ways, through how they interact, and how they use racializing discourses in their interactions. I argue that to assume that a person simply is racist can hide the problem, making it unsolvable. To say that a person is racist is, in a sense, a way of removing their responsibility. People can then be assumed to be the “uneducated victims of the system” rather than active constructors of that system. To say that people do racism, on the contrary, (i) highlights that they are active, not passive, in the process, and (ii) means that, to a degree, they could choose to do otherwise.
In the rest of this article, after giving some information on the Italian context in terms of immigration, I will show agreement constructed in everyday conversations through three examples. The first two are taken from video recordings in barbershops, a situation in which the people present may be acquaintances or know each other relatively little. The last one is taken from a dinner among people who know each other relatively well or are friends.
The Italian Context and the Tuscan Metropolitan Area
Italy is quickly becoming an immigrant-receiving country. While the 5.0% ratio of immigrantsFootnote 3 in respect to the general population is not as high as in traditional receiving countries like the United States, the pace of arrival has accelerated dramatically during the past two decades, reaching a total of roughly 3 million out of a total population of nearly 60 million. The composition of the immigrant population is quite diverse, with almost 200 nationalities represented. The largest groups come from eastern Europe’s former communist countries (42.7%) and Arab countries (19%) (Cesareo Reference Cesareo2004:8). Only 7.2% come from sub-Saharan Africa, although they are often over-represented in the mass media (ISTAT 2006, 2001: Papavero Reference Papavero2004:356). In terms of structures for receiving immigrants, laws, educational system, and so on, Italy has been generally unprepared for their arrival. One of the major problems for immigrants is finding suitable homes (Granata, Lanzani & Novak Reference Granata, Lanzani and Novak2004:161), and many of them remain homeless or live in substandard housing. Legislation addressing immigration was practically absent until 1987, and still today is in flux, keeping many immigrants in a legal limbo (Macioti & Pugliese Reference Macioti and Pugliese2003).
My research focused on the Tuscan Metropolitan Area, which includes the cities of Florence, Prato, and Pistoia, in the northeast of Tuscany.Footnote 4 This is an economically prosperous area that has been governed since World War II by parties of the Left. Industrial development has attracted a large number of immigrants. Today, they constitute 6.44% of the total Tuscan population, but almost 50% of them live in the Metropolitan Area. Here they reach 8–12% of the total population. The three cities also show important differences. A large proportion of Chinese immigrants are concentrated in the city of Prato, where they constitute 50.9% of all immigrants (the largest Chinese community in Italy); the second largest group in the province is Albanians (22.03%), followed by Pakistanis (7.89%). In the city of Pistoia, by contrast, 56.5% of the immigrants come from Albania, followed by Romanians (15.5%) and Moroccans (10.6%). In the province of Florence, immigrants are distributed more evenly: 20.7% of the total immigrants are Albanians, followed by 16% Chinese and 9.98% Romanian.
The high concentration of immigrants has quickly transformed the three cities into a high-contact area. Here, the “immigrant” argument has become a prominent focus of discussion both in the local media and among native Tuscans. Notions of what “the immigrants” are like or act like are continuously proposed in conversation; anecdotal evidence of their behavior and nature, and the implications of their presence (often gathered by hearsay or from the media), are discussed. An interplay of narratives is deployed to create racialized images of the Self and the Other. The stories are often repeated time and again, always supposed to be true (“they said it on TV” or “it happened to a friend,” people say), and they lead (or are expected to lead) to a construction of agreement between interlocutors. In addition, the rapidity of change and the large presence of Chinese and Albanian immigrants renders these two groups highly visible and contributes to the sense that native Tuscans have of having been recently “invaded.” Sheer numbers, however, do not explain which groups get to feel the heat of racist discourse the most. For example, Arab immigrants have been a growing focus of racist discourse in recent years, in part connected to the post-9/11 image of Arabs as terrorists offered by Italian and other European media.
Discourses, Performance, and Agreement in Conversation
My study aims to bring together cross-disciplinary theories developed as part of Critical Race Studies, with analytical tools developed in Conversation Analysis, and with attention to the larger context of interaction proper to ethnography of speaking. The focus on discourse also connects my study to a tradition of inquiry on the emergence of racist discourses in everyday life pursued by researchers such as van Dijk Reference van Dijk1987, Wodak Reference Wodak1989, and Essed Reference Essed1991. This perspective, part of Critical Discourse Analysis, adopts Foucault’s (Reference Foucault1972:49) definition of discourse as “practices which systematically form the objects of which they speak.” Discourses are seen as constituting “situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people” (Wodak Reference Wodak1996:15). Thus discourse practices can “help produce and reproduce unequal power relations … through the ways they represent things and position people” (Wodak Reference Wodak1996:15).Footnote 5
During my fieldwork in Tuscany, I noticed that once the topic of “the immigrants” was brought up in conversations, people would participate by telling stories (including those of personal experience), giving assessments, and expressing agreement or disagreement with those assessments. People would discuss at length the meaning of immigrants’ presence and their behavior. In these conversations, speakers often referred intertextually to discourses about immigration in the media, or available in the larger society, or to narratives they had previously heard, as background information on which to build their arguments. Discourses about immigration were of particular importance, and they were used as “common knowledge” or “truth statements.” By being shared in the interaction in conditions of agreement, in turn, their status as knowledge not subject to argument, as “given fact” was reinforced, at least in the context of the conversation itself.
As Goodwin (1990:10) notes, “Activities align participants toward each other in specific ways … and this process is central to the way in which activities provide resources for constituting social organization within face-to-face interaction.” In the articulation of participant frameworks around the talk about immigrants and their behavior, conversationalists may align toward each other through agreement. When they do this, they tend to co-construct the conversation in a way that projects their identity as if they were part of the same in-group (Italian, European, White, etc.), at the same time underlining sameness among them and difference from the immigrant Other.
Language scholars have often seen agreement in conversation as the preferred behavior (Sacks Reference Sacks, Drew and Heritage2006, Pomerantz Reference Pomerantz, Drew and Heritage2006, Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks Reference Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks1977), while disagreement is the dispreferred one, understood as communication trouble or a problem to be resolved. Agreement is preferred because, according to scholars, it protects face and is considered as favoring social solidarity (see Heritage Reference Heritage, Drew and Heritage2006, Brown & Levinson Reference Brown, Levinson and Goody1978, Goffman Reference Goffman1955). For example, Heritage (Reference Heritage, Drew and Heritage2006:11) writes: “There is a ‘bias’ intrinsic to many aspects of the organization of talk which is generally favorable to the maintenance of bonds of solidarity between actors and which promotes the avoidance of conflict.”Footnote 6 He goes on to discuss agreement as such an “organization of talk.” Disagreement and other “disaffiliative” actions are seen as dispreferred and considered “destructive” of social solidarity (Heritage Reference Heritage, Drew and Heritage2006:15). In this article, however, I will bring to attention what can be considered a rather undesirable result of agreement in conversation: It can lead to the reinforcement of racializing discourse.
This effect may be due to the same reason that makes agreement “desirable” in conversation: Whenever stances, opinions, topics, or assessments (including racializing ones) are introduced, the conversationalists are doubly pressured to agree with them to continue upholding affiliation and/or identity and to protect face.Footnote 7 Disagreement, instead, can separate the participants into different and opposite teams (see Kangasharju Reference Kangasharju1996), thus introducing differential identities. Agreement keeps the conversationalists, in a sense, on the same team. It orients them to the same values, principles, and shared beliefs. As we will see, this also contributes to create a sense of the immigrants as Other.
Everyday conversations also entail continuous co-performance. Bauman (Reference Bauman1986:3; see also Hymes Reference Hymes1981:132) defines performance as “a mode of communication, a way of speaking, the essence of which resides in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of communicative skill.” In the case of the co-performance of racist and racializing topics, responsibility is implied in the choice to consider the interlocutor as part of a class that can share and appreciate the speaker’s footing toward the narrative itself, and thus his or her attitude toward the immigrants to whom the narrative refers. In this way, the co-participants can mutually reinforce the “truth” of the racial categorization of the Self and Other that they are constructing (cf. Shuck Reference Shuck2004:211).
Performance also influences the discourses that are proposed as part of it. The narratives around immigrants define the immigrants’ behavior, and they become increasingly powerful in reifying the images of immigrants they carry as they are performed anew in new conversations. As Shuck (Reference Shuck2004:217) notes, while successive repetitions of a story can introduce variations, and modify ideological premises with it, “some of those premises become increasingly fixed: Foreigners are scary. People with accents are incomprehensible. Stories about scary, incomprehensible foreigners are performable.” Thus, performance does not simply represent but contributes to the creation of social identities, including those Italians are claiming for themselves and those they are attributing to the immigrants.
When Racializing Statements are Introduced, Agreement Leads to Their Reinforcement
Moving on to the analysis, I will first show an exchange in which the participants display agreement to each other by picking up and expanding the proposed topic, co-constructing utterances, giving positive feedback to statements, approving and confirming views and opinions, and bringing up additional information to uphold certain “truths.” You will notice that this creates a spiral effect whereby the participants “rally” each other in making increasingly racializing statements. You will also notice a chain of associations that progressively expands the topic itself. Following Müller Reference Müller, Couper-Kuhlen and Selting1996, I will show how this effect is created through the prosody of the “continuers” (Schegloff Reference Schegloff and Tannen1982) or “acknowledgments” (Müller Reference Müller, Couper-Kuhlen and Selting1996). Finally, you will notice a progressive amplification of the racialization itself. Toward the end, you will see a clear categorization of Self vs. Other emerging. You will also notice that several discourses and much background knowledge are brought into the conversation to stand as factual evidential bases for truth claims.
The exchange happens in a barbershop (Barbershop 1). The barbers are Barber1 and Barber2. The clients participating to this conversation are here called Mr. Fabbri and Mr. Giuliani. A third barber and two other clients are present but do not talk during this exchange. Mr. Fabbri has had his hair cut and is now standing on the door, smoking a cigarette and watching a pornographic movie shown on the barbershop’s TV. The piece starts with Mr. Fabbri asking Barber1 where he bought the movie. Barber1 answers that it was brought by il solito negro, ‘the usual Black’ (he does not talk any further in this piece). Barber1 is referring to a door-to-door vendor, an occupational niche often filled by recent immigrants, especially those from Africa. From here a conversation begins about the immigrants’ arrival in Italy that continues into a discussion of the French national soccer team and its recent win (this piece was recorded in summer 2006, during the international soccer games) against the Spanish national soccer team.
(Noises in the background from the movie and from the barbers’ working. Fab(bri) and Giu(liani) are standing side by side, slightly oriented toward each other, looking up toward the TV. Barber1 is a few feet away to the side, cutting a client’s hair, moving around the client and not looking at Fabbri and Giuliani. Barber2 is off camera. Fabbri turns from the screen toward Giuliani briefly before starting to talk.)
*Raising eyebrows communicates that something is problematic, worrisome.
**This gesture means “no more” or “I do not need it” or “stop it is enough.”
Example #1: Part 1
Co-constructing the person from the Maghreb
While Barber1 had referenced the door-to-door vendor through a racial label (‘Black’), in lines 1–6 Fabbri and Giuliani define him through national affiliation. They do so by cooperatively “relaunching” each other’s utterances. In proposing different national labels, they give nonverbal and verbal acknowledgments of each other’s utterances that are not neutral, but instead offer agreement and function as directives to the other to continue on the topic (Sacks Reference Sacks1971:5; Müller Reference Müller, Couper-Kuhlen and Selting1996:135–36). Giuliani produces several raises in intonation (questioning intonation), which invite and obtain positive feedback acknowledgments from Fabbri. The speakers are also continuously overlapping. The effect is one of incremental co-production of one utterance, a list of nationalities that is finally capped by Giuliani’s summary in line 6: ‘they are all from Maghreb’. At this point Fabbri goes back to the racial characterization in line 7, and Giuliani promptly “uptakes” it by stating that such racial affiliation is evident, in line 8.
Co-producing assessments
Fabbri and Giuliani are not simply describing a situation; they are also producing assessments of that situation. Note the negative headshakes. For example, Fabbri’s negative headshake in line 5, just as he contributes the label ‘Tunisians’, expresses disapproval not of his own words, of course, but of Tunisian immigration to Italy. The use of the word tutti/e ‘all’ (repeated in lines 2, 6 and 7), while used to underline the supposed similarity of all immigrants, is pronounced in a way that shows disapproval. Fabbri and Giuliani are thus co-producing a negative assessment of the immigrant presence and showing each other their stance toward immigration: one of disapproval. A spiral effect can be noticed as Giuliani produces more direct and stronger negative assessments in lines 10 and 15 (‘May God save us’).
Racializing Maghrebians as Black
Barber1 had referenced the vendor as Black, and now Fabbri and Giuliani construct him as Maghrebian. The term ‘Black’ is thus enlarged to include North Africans. This is important if we consider that from the point of view of simple phenotypic characteristics there is a large overlap between the appearance and skin color of Italians and North Africans. However, here Maghrebians are instead equated with racial Other (evident in lines 8–9) in respect to the Self, which is later cast as White as the conversation proceeds (see lines 34–37).
Expanding the topic
Fabbri’s words in line 7 are fundamental to understanding what happens later in the conversation. He first concurs with Giuliani, showing agreement, by repeating the word Maghreb. Immediately after, he seems to contradict that conclusion by saying that ‘there are of all kinds/races’. This is not a contradiction, though, if we understand that here Fabbri is referring to immigrants in general who are present in Italy: those from the Maghreb and those from other places. That this is not a disagreement is clear from Giuliani’s following utterance, timed to follow with no pause, which confirms Fabbri’s words, and Fabbri’s subsequent agreement through positive headshake in line 9. Thus the conversationalists have now expanded their topic of discussion from Maghrebis to all immigrants while defining them as “visibly different” (line 8–9).
Co-constructing the different as dangerous
Starting from line 22, Fabbri and Giuliani co-construct an utterance that is a list of negative things brought by immigrants: diseases, syphilis, malaria, and dirt.
*This gesture means “you said it” or “there you say it.”
Example #1: Part 2
Positive acknowledgments, functioning as display of agreement and as directives to continue with the topic, create a progressive deepening of the negative stance: The conversationalists are now producing racist statements. What is being co-constructed here is what Conquergood (Reference Conquergood1988:197) calls the “Difference-Disorder-Dirt-Danger Sliding Continuum.” In his analysis of health workers’ perception of Hmong refugees, Conquergood (Reference Conquergood1988:197) writes:
People and actions that disturb order, violate categories, mess up the system are branded unclean: ‘The unclear is the unclean’ (Turner Reference Turner1967:97). Labeling someone or something ‘dirty’ is a way of controlling perceived anomalies, incongruities, contradictions, ambiguities – all that does not fit into our categories, and therefore threatens cherished principles. ‘Dirt,’ then, functions as the mediating term between ‘Difference’ and ‘Danger.’ It is the term that loads the perception of ‘Difference’ with a moral imperative, and enables the move from description to action, from ‘is’ to ‘ought.’ Defining something as unhealthy, harmful, dangerous establishes the premise for ‘moving in,’ for control.
The lurking image is one of the dangerousness of the ‘who knows how many’ immigrants arriving. Together with it is an association with contamination, evident in the mention of diseases. The Tuscan word sudiciume has also a moral undertone, implying dubious morality. In fact, one of the diseases Giuliani names, syphilis, reveals how immigrants, especially immigrant women, are stereotypically associated with prostitution. While it is true that some immigrant women are forced into prostitution, they are a very small percentage of the total. Of this small percentage, though, the media speak very often, and they are also particularly visible because of the very nature of prostitution. The other disease mentioned is malaria. From a factual point of view, bringing up malaria is particularly absurd, given the absence of cases of malaria today in Italy. However, Tuscany has been until recent times an area of endemic malaria: Here the illness belonging to the past-self seems to have been displaced on the present-other. Both illnesses are thus pregnant with meaning in terms of racialization and othering.
Disaffiliation and its management
At this point, in line 29, Barber2 enters the exchange, seemingly to contribute a further item to the list being constructed: pornographic movies. His contribution seems to fit with the immigrants as bringing prostitution idea: It follows the same prosodic pattern as the previous incremental parts of Fabbri’s and Giuliani’s utterance, the rhythm of production and intonation are the same, and Barber2 does not let the intonation fall at the end, just like somebody producing an item in an ongoing list. However, Barber2 produces his piece after Giuliani has produced a summary of the list in line 28 (‘everything’), concluding the utterance with a falling intonation. As such, the status of Barber2’s piece is ambiguous: It sounds like an increment, but it is produced when the previous utterance is done. The ambiguity is compounded if we recall that Fabbri and Giuliani have been watching a porn movie. Thus Barber2 is saying that the immigrants are bringing something Fabbri and Giuliani are obviously enjoying. The fact that Barber2 follows the same prosody pattern, then, can be read as a disguise, a veiling of a disagreement.Footnote 8 This kind of “camouflaging,” as Müller (Reference Müller, Couper-Kuhlen and Selting1996:160; see also the related study by Couper-Kuhlen Reference Couper-Kuhlen, Auer and di Luzio1992) notes in his work on radio conversations, allows the speaker “to insert the proposal for topical rupture and closure of the conversation in an inconspicuous manner.”
Barber2’s intervention is followed by a long silence, and the other participants do not produce any acknowledgment of it. In fact, Barber2 takes a turn again in line 30 to request an acknowledgment (‘right?’), but does not obtain it. This points to the possibility that the other speakers indeed perceive Barber2’s ambiguity and possible disagreement. In fact, in line 31 (below), Giuliani passes to a new, but connected, argument: the presence of ‘Blacks’ on the French national soccer team. This new argument is built actually to reinforce his previous position. Thus Giuliani shows himself to have perceived Barber2’s contribution as a possible critique of his previous stance, and he is producing further evidence to sustain what seems by now to be his general theme: the excessive presence of immigrants as a negative thing, and their fundamental otherness.
*Probably meaning “it just was not right.”
** This gesture means “go, go” or “go on.”
Example #1: Part 3
Racialization of nationality
In passing to this new argument, consideration of racial affiliation and the dichotomization of people into Blacks and Whites becomes more apparent and defined. There is a hidden message in Giuliani’s words: Blacks cannot be French and French cannot be Black. This is expressed in line 41, as he questions from where, and how it could happen that the French could have ‘Blacks’ among them. Race is rendered equivalent to nationality, and Italy is cast as White. The extension of Whiteness from France to Italy happens in his comparison with the Spanish team. The racialization of national affiliation and the discourse about citizenship and citizenship rights connected to it emerged often in my data. In this example, being both French and Black is seen as ‘not possibly right’. Nationality is naturalized and biologized as an inherited trait and cannot be changed: Immigrants are racialized and forever othered. Their presence on the “national” soil is forever delegitimized. In fact, people of immigrant origin, including Italian-born children of immigrant parents, are most often perceived as foreigners in Tuscany, with no regard to citizenship.Footnote 9 Moreover, the presence of the inassimilable (racialized) foreigner in the midst of us is rendered problematic.
Giuliani’s words also underscore an interesting idea that I could call soccer miscegenation: The mixing of different races in soccer teams leads to lower moral standards owing to unfair competition. Notice how he causally connects the presence of the Blacks to the French team’s victory. There may also be at play here an underlying belief in the physical superiority of the Black player that reminds us of earlier biological-racist beliefs in the innate suitability of the Black body for sports (which continuously reemerge in contemporary discourse). A multiple set of ideas about race, nationality, defilement, morality, and gender is thus crafted together by Fabbri and Giuliani in this brief conversation.
The continuing role of agreement
The positive acknowledgments/directives the speakers offer each other have a role in creating the spiral effect of increasing racialization, and they also afford the speakers a sense of “being on the right side” as they produce increasingly racist and discriminatory statements. From line 31 to line 41, Giuliani produces a continuous narrative. Fabbri supports him by giving positive acknowledgments both nonverbally (positive headshakes and smiles) and verbally (such as his repetition of ‘me too’ in lines 36–37). These acknowledgments again work as directives, and Giuliani reinforces his assessments and produces more racializing (and openly racist) statements as he proceeds in his narrative. It is in the end Fabbri’s continuous agreement that allows Giuliani to continue and aggravate his racialization, beyond any reasonable consideration of fact or even the veiled disagreement from Barber2.
Repetition of underlying discourses
Finally, several discourses about immigrants are deployed in this exchange that have emerged time and again during my fieldwork: (i) immigrants as flood, too many, uncontrollable (lines 10, 15, 17); (ii) immigrants as bringing dangers (diseases and illegal activities, like prostitution); (iii) immigrants as illegal, arriving in Italy by crossing the Mediterranean on boats.Footnote 10 These discourses are treated as basic evidential truths, and once they have been invoked, agreement is built around them. Notice in particular the third one (immigrants are all illegal),Footnote 11 which is very briefly invoked in lines 17–21. Giuliani only mentions somebody arriving with the fair weather ‘down there’. The rest of the story is left to be understood by the interlocutor, who in fact both produces ample agreement with it and offers an assessment (line 21) through a negative headshake. The complete story is often heard from the media, generally in the context of accidents where boats have capsized in stormy seas. The landings are often shown to happen in southern Italy (‘down there’). In this everyday conversation, then, the discourse of the media is indexed and amplified, creating an effect similar to a repeated performance of (constructed) social realities.
Building Hate Speech Together
Agreement can be offered also in cases in which hate speechFootnote 12 is involved, and the speaker communicates an openly hostile stance toward immigrants. This occurs in Example #2 below. Here hostility is conjoined to racialization and to a construction of immigrants as “all dangerous/with murderous intent.” In this case, there is also an effect of reinforcement of a generalized paranoia that is, as I noted earlier, amply fostered by the mass media as well: the fear of the “Arab/Muslim terrorist.”
The exchange happens in Barbershop 2. The participants are the barber (Barber) and two clients (Mr. Iori and Mr. Livi). There is a third client in the shop who does not actively contribute to this exchange. As part of a conversation on the summer holidays, Iori laments the restrictions on the kinds of luggage that can be carried on airplanes as a consequence of fear of terrorist attacks. He goes on to talk about a recent terrorist attempt in England. The recording was done on August 12, 2006, two days after the British police announced having thwarted a terrorist plot to explode aircraft traveling from England to the United States and Canada. Allegedly, as many as ten aircraft had been targeted. Twenty-five people were arrested. The alleged plot was the focus of attention of the national mass media, and it was depicted as being of “extremist Muslim” and “Islamic fascist” origin.
As Iori speaks, he builds his story incrementally, as if inviting the others to perform the story together with him. He inflates the news and the number of aircraft involved, and the terrorists are attributed the intent and the superior ability to commit mass murder by bombing England, with a crescendo in the depiction of the danger that renders it increasingly scary. At this point, the Barber turns and enters the conversation (line 1) to affirm that ten years before ‘they’ (the identity of the subject remains unstated) should have thrown atomic bombs ‘down there’.
As in Example #1, it is apparent in this exchange that conversational agreement – through positive acknowledgments (lines 3, 5, 14, 16, 18, 20), co-construction of utterances (line 3) and the production of agreeing stances (lines 7–10) – creates a spiral effect, allowing the participants to produce a rising level of what can be seen as hate speech. The conversationalists pass from reporting a news event, to asking for radical repressive measures against a generalized “terrorist other” (Part 1), to the association of Pakistani immigrants with terrorists, to the final suggestion that immigrants should be left to drown at sea (Part 2). The participant structure created emboldens the participants to produce more extreme stances, while producing an effect of sharing of the (extreme) views proposed, confirming their views and beliefs and sustaining their emotional outburst as justified. The conversationalists thus co-participate in doing racism, and the continuous agreement works at decreasing personal responsibility for the statements made.
((Iori is sitting in the back of the shop, Livi is sitting to the side and only his hands and legs are visible to the camera. Unfortunately, it is impossible to see any eventual feedback Livi may be doing with his head. The Barber is cutting the hair of the third client. He stops working and turns toward Iori.))
*A gesture meaning ‘there you say it’, or ‘that’s it’.
Example #2: Part 1.
In line 1, while the Barber’s words are elliptical and require some background information, most Italians would immediately understand them as referring to the first Gulf war, meaning that the coalition forces should have dropped an atomic bomb on the terrorists living ‘down there’. This interpretation is fortified by the subsequent interaction. As for the proposed agent, the unstated subject probably does not refer to the Italians (who have no atomic bombs to drop) but either to the British or to the Americans, who are generally seen as the moving force in the two Gulf wars.
This is a strong statement that may appear excessive; yet immediately afterward, Iori and Livi both offer agreement, even emphatically approving. As Shuck (Reference Shuck2004:210; emphasis in original) has recently noted, performances in conversation invite “the proliferation of ideological extremes.” The Barber treats Iori’s previous inflated account of the terrorist attempt as factual truth. Given such evidential basis of the seriousness of the terrorist threat, a necessity to defend oneself with similar strength – nothing less than an atomic bomb – may start to appear justified. The Barber produces what can be seen as hate speech, yet he does so in the double bracketing of answering to Iori’s account of threat, and followed by the emphatic positive acknowledgments of both Iori and Livi.
But where are the terrorists? In fact, dropping a bomb would be counterproductive if terrorists were thought to be everywhere, or even in England itself. They are ‘down there’, says the Barber (line 2), and Iori repeats the same word (line 3), showing he has understood clearly and agrees on where exactly the terrorists are located. While ‘down there’ may appear a rather vague reference, in everyday conversation in Tuscany the term generally refers to geographical-sociopolitical coordinates and means either southern Italy or North Africa and Africa in general. In addition, the enemy countries during the first Gulf war, from an Italian perspective, were Iraq and Libya. Libya in fact launched a few missiles against Italy at the outset of the war, which luckily fell in the Mediterranean Sea without reaching Sicily. In line 8, Iori indirectly adds to the localization of where the terrorists are: in countries where ‘they’ (the British? the U.S.?) have already ‘done so many’ things: possibly Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus the place (destructible) where terrorists supposedly gather is constructed without any direct mention, in a way that heightens its dangerousness and mystery, and yet the references are quite clear to anybody sharing similar background knowledge. ‘Down there’ is imagined as a culturally other area. As nameless, it is also faceless and depersonalized: The atomic bomb would not kill innocent human beings, women or children, only terrorists.
Iori concludes by wondering again (lines 9–10) why it is so hard to fight ‘that kind of people’ – using a wider and more ambiguous label than ‘terrorists’. Next the Barber, latching onto that vagueness, extends the label ‘terrorists’ to Pakistani immigrants and then to immigrants in general. In his answer to Iori’s question the entailment is that we cannot stop terrorists because we do not stop Pakistani immigrants from entering Italy, and because we protect immigrants.
* A gesture of dismissal that underlines the “vaffanculo.”
Example #2: Part 2.
Several things must be noticed in the Barber’s utterance. First, note the equivalence built between terrorists and immigrants. Second, he maintains a very high speaking volume through the utterance, practically screaming. Third, he shifts to the first from the third person, bringing back the responsibility to find a solution to terrorism on ‘us’ (lines 11, 15, 19). I will analyze in depth each of these in turn.
The passage from terrorism to immigration
This revolves around the mention of Pakistanis, who are the fastest-growing Muslim immigrant group in the Metropolitan Area. Moreover, some of the alleged terrorists arrested by the British police were of Pakistani origin. In line 15, the Barber states that ‘we’ give them asylum, in the form of refugee status. However, it is not Pakistanis who usually receive political asylum, but others, such as Iraqis and Kurds. Then, in lines 17 and 19, he refers to the arrival of illegal immigrants by boat across the Mediterranean, recalling the possibility that some may drown in the attempt. However, immigrants attempting to enter illegally via the Mediterranean do not generally receive asylum, and immigrants from Pakistan do not have to cross the Mediterranean. Rather than referring to particular cases of immigration, bringing together these very different situations of immigration in one utterance creates a generalized immigrant Other, associated with terrorism. This immigrant Other is entirely, undifferentially guilty and punishable, in fact, bombable.
The creation of the category of the immigrant as undifferentiated Other (already seen in Example #1) who shares a set of beliefs and actions (such as being a terrorist) is part of a process of racial formation that can be seen operating at various levels, from everyday conversations, to public political discourse, to the mass media, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. In this process, we see the workings of the New Racism, in which biology has been replaced with cultural/religious belonging writ large, and culture is innately connected to a certain set of religious beliefs. Thus, in Italy “Arab/Muslims” are treated as a separate “race” both in everyday conversations and in public discourse (see also Allievi Reference Allievi, Leveau, Mohsen-Finan and de Wenden2002). Example #3 shows this in the following brief exchange from Barbershop 5. A client (Mr. Mori) and a barber (Barber) are teasing a second client (Mr. Nardi) – who remains silent – by telling him that he ‘looks like a terrorist’. This is then equated with ‘looking like an Moroccan’, then ‘Arab’, and finally ‘Algerian’. As in Example #1, different nationalities are conflated as an undistinguished dangerous Arab Other.
Mori: eh tu sei anche fatto a terrorista eh tu sembri più un marocchino che italiano vero?
you look like a terrorist, you look like a Moroccan rather than Italian, right?
Barber: sì sembra più un si-
Yes he looks more like a si-
Mori: arabo o un affare-
Arab or some kind of-
Barber: algerino algerino.
Algerian Algerian.
Example #3
Returning to Example #2, Iori’s answer of agreement with the Barber’s words (line 14), accepting as appropriate the Barber’s elliptical association of terrorists with Pakistani immigrants, can be interpreted as indirectly reinforcing this same discourse, performing its acceptance as unmarked background knowledge, a truth that needs no explanation whatsoever.
The Barber’s loudness is also notable. While he appears to produce factual information, his paralanguage and nonverbal language (shaking the scissors) do the work of communicating his stance and his feelings about that same information: anger and distress at the mentioned “facts.” The tone of voice and prosody communicate his unhappiness with the situation. It is this emotional stance that is evaluated and approved by Iori in his acknowledgments in lines 14 and 16: ‘well said’. Iori is not simply agreeing with the truth of the information, but is oriented to the Barber’s stance and emotional display of anger, and communicates approval of such anger as rightful.
Use of the second person plural
Finally, consider the shift from the omitted third person plural (up to line 9) to the stated first person plural (from line 11). The Barber starts his utterance (line 11) by saying that ‘we always keep defending’. In line 15, then, he contrasts what ‘we’ should be doing (bombing them) with what ‘we’ do (giving them asylum, sheltering them).Footnote 13 Iori gives positive acknowledgment, thus collaborating with the Barber to build the following argument: Instead of punishing the terrorists/immigrants, ‘we’ are defending them and allowing them in our country. Of course, a conclusion to this would be that ‘we’ render ourselves defenseless and exposed to harm by allowing the dangerous ‘them’ to mingle with ‘us’. The Barber continues to build his utterance as a series of oppositions: Instead of bombing them (lines 15 and 17), we search for them (line 19) if one of them drowns. Instead of caring if one of us dies, we add insult to injury (lines 19–21).
But who is this ‘we’? Who allows the immigrants/terrorists into Italy? ‘We’ is inclusive, yet the Barber’s words point to a forced inclusion: His anger seems to be caused in part by having to be part of a ‘we’ of whose actions he disapproves. In my interpretation, the unstated culprits are the government authorities (and a pro-immigrant sector of the population). After all, it is the government, through its legal system, that can grant asylum. If an immigrant drowns, it is the government authorities who spend time and funds in searching for him or her. Couched in the Barber’s utterance is a discourse that emerged time and again during my fieldwork: The government cares more for the immigrants than for its own citizens. In other contexts, this discourse may emerge as an accusation that the government is dedicating more public funds to help immigrants than to help Italians (for example, a common myth is that immigrants are favored for public housing). This discourse is important because it is often used to justify racist “reactive/protective” measures.
Finally, the same discourses deployed in Example #1 are also backgrounded in this conversation: (i) “Immigrants as flood” is evident in line 12, in the hyperbolic statement that thousands of Pakistanis arrive in Italy every day. (ii) “Immigrants are dangerous,” terrorists in this case. (iii) “Immigrants are illegal”: The mention of immigrants drowning would be incomprehensible without this background discourse, seeing immigrants as arriving illegally across the Mediterranean on unsafe, overcrowded boats.
In sum, through cooperation, agreement, and co-construction of utterances, the conversationalists have reinforced discourses that see immigrants as extremely dangerous terrorists who can be stopped only through mass slaughter, and Western governments as weakly unable to take such actions to protect their citizens, and, on the contrary, probably even in connivance with the enemy. No surprise, then, if one is righteously angry and may even be pushed to mass murder.
While it would be unfair to accuse these speakers of something they are not saying or doing, their words beg the following question: If the government does not do anything, what is left to people but to take justice into their own hands? The formation of vigilante “security squads” could be the answer: citizens thinking they need to protect themselves, because they feel the state is not protecting them. People in my interviews talked about them, about beatings at night. Just as I wrote this article, I read with horror the news of the assault and wounding of a young Chinese immigrant in Rome (October 2, 2008), in full view and in the afternoon, by a group of five Italian teenagers. Thanks to the recent “security” law of July 2009, these vigilante groups are now legal. And this is just the latest episode in a growing list. In answer to the population’s hostile feelings, we then see further discriminatory actions by the state against particular minorities, such as the recent proposal (by Minister Maroni, in June 2008) to fingerprint all Romani people, including their children. And in June 2008 First Minister Berlusconi decided to deploy the Italian army in various Italian cities with the stated goal of helping the local police fight crime. Yet the army detachments were stationed outside immigrant centers and temporary immigrant shelters: The message is clear.
Agreement and Discrimination?
A trend is now starting to become evident, in which agreement favors the expression of more extreme negative attitudes toward and statements about the immigrant Other, and thus reinforces racializing discourses. Yet one might wonder if these conversations have a direct effect on individual speakers’ behavior toward immigrants, apart from the indirect effect of the reinforcement of the discourses. After all, the conversation offers the speakers recognition that their stances and views are shared, that they are not abnormal but part of a larger group of people who have been oppressed by the immigrants’ arrival. Can the conversations lead to actual discriminatory acts? In my last example, I will show that this possibility cannot be immediately discounted. As Shuck (Reference Shuck2004:219) has noted, discourses about the Other may “intersect with material practices of exclusion.” Here, I will point out that present practices of exclusion, such as not selling real estate to Chinese immigrants, intersect with discourses that are deployed in conversation and around which agreement is constructed.
The following excerpt comes from a dinner conversation in Prato. Some of the participants were friends; others were acquaintances who simply happened to live in the same building. Four people contributed to this exchange, all males except for the research assistant, Giulia Marchetti. I have renamed them Alberto (Alb), Barbara (Barb, the RA), Cristian (Cris), and Dario (Dar). Alberto is originally from southern Italy. The others are Tuscans. Alberto is talking about selling his apartment and buying a smaller one. Then he starts in a joking way saying he will ‘sell it to the Chinese’. During the previous conversation, the participants had expressed worry that one of the apartments in their condo, up for sale, could be sold to Chinese immigrants.
Prato has recently seen a large influx of immigrants from China. Many native Pratesi are wary of selling homes to the Chinese immigrants, whom they see as invading their neighborhoods. There is, however, notable ambivalence in stance among them. Some Pratesi appreciate the immigrants’ presence because they see it as helping the economy and leading to desirable cultural diversity. Others see the immigrants in negative terms, as stealing manufacturing jobs in what is traditionally an industrial area. Some Pratesi profit from selling (or renting) to Chinese immigrants at inflated prices. While the Pratesi do not leave the areas when immigrants arrive, in recent years the city has seen the formation of distinctively Chinese-oriented neighborhoods.
((The participants are sitting around a table. All are sitting back in their chairs; they are not eating. Cristian and Alberto have been addressing each other. Cristian, Barbara and Dario are looking at Alberto; Alberto is looking at Cristian. Dario is laughing throughout this piece. Everybody is smiling throughout this piece, even when they are not laughing))
Example #4: Part 1
Alberto starts by saying that he will sell his apartment ‘to the Chinese’, and invites Cristian to tell him what to do with the money left after selling and buying a smaller apartment. Cristian had been a primary recipient in the previous turns as well, and Alberto is looking toward him. However, Cristian is momentarily distracted and does not immediately orient to Alberto’s words. It is Dario, instead, who immediately latches on to Alberto’s utterance (line 6), by repeating Alberto’s words. Dario reaffirms Alberto’s words and also keeps the same primary recipient, namely Cristian. By pointing at Alberto as he looks toward Cristian, and by using the third person, he is interpellating Cristian on the subject just raised by Alberto.
Only at this point does Cristian reorient to Alberto (line 5) and, in line 7, he requests clarification (‘You sell it? To whom do you sell it?’). Cristian’s line, however, may be more than a request for clarification. It may be carrying slight disapproval, which becomes evident in his subsequent gesture (line 10), a negative finger shake usually used to forbid something. Notice that while Cristian is asking the question, Dario is already answering it, in overlap, by finishing to repeat the first part of Alberto’s utterance (line 8). Thus Cristian’s repeating his question has the effect of emphasizing the strangeness of Alberto’s proposition, expressing incredulity (something like ‘I can’t believe my ears!’). Immediately afterward, Alberto also answers the question (line 9). Notice, however, that Alberto is only mentioning ‘selling to Chinese’, while Dario says ‘to a familyof Chinese.’ Thus Dario appears to be preparing the ground for his successive introduction of a new joke about Chinese families (lines 11 and following).
* A gesture that means ‘come on’, ‘this is OK’.
Example #4: Part 2
The joke that follows is co-constructed by Dario and Alberto: a huge Chinese family will fit in a small apartment; they will just build several internal compartments, each as large as a tomb. They talk in overlap, co-construct the utterances, and mirror each other’s gestures and paralanguage. They also skillfully build on each other’s use of hyperbole, which further reinforces that their words are to be taken as a joke, not as an actual decision to sell to the Chinese. The comic effect is capped by the contrast between building a soppalco ‘hanging loft’, generally done in a large home by affluent owners, and making too many of them, so that ‘loft’ is now a euphemism for the harsher reality of overcrowding.
Understanding, and even more co-constructing, this joke in such a synchronous fashion requires sharing a good deal of contextual background knowledge about discourses present at the local level in the Metropolitan Area. The mention of a huge Chinese family with so many cousins is worth some further analysis in this regard. The Pratesi are generally aware of the one-child-per-family policy in China, much publicized by the mass media. However, an often-repeated story in this area affirms that Chinese immigrants will produce false documents to include non-relatives in families who have already obtained a working visa, thus allowing them to get entry permits to Italy. While this is pretty much an urban legend, I have found it consistently in my data, considered as proven truth by locals. An alternative version of this story says that when a Chinese immigrant dies, the others bury him or her in secret and then reuse the documents for a new immigrant. A discourse underlying these stories is that Chinese people all look the same, so that one cannot be distinguished from another, and they are interchangeable. In this discourse Chinese immigrants are racialized, categorized as a separate “race.” Dario and Alberto deploy this racializing discourse, building on it the irony of their joke, and reinforcing its status as commonsense “truth.”
The joke highlights the supposed damage done to the structure of a house by Chinese tenants, which may also be seen as invoking, by association, a degradation of the area’s real estate values. Notice in particular, in lines 14 and 15, how Alberto describes the construction work as something done quickly (‘they pull up a wall’, something not easily done in an Italian house with thick brick walls), and in line 15 the contraposition: ‘them’ do the lofts, ‘not like-’. This contraposition is unfinished, but the meaning can be understood with some additional background knowledge: In Italy there are strict laws about what kind of modification can be done to a building, and it can take several years to obtain a permit to modify an apartment, for example by building a loft. Instead, the Chinese are described as simply ‘pulling up a wall’, implying that they do not care about the regulations. I must mention that Dario has a degree in engineering and thus can be considered an expert in this field. In line 15, the subject of the phrase, loro ‘they’ is expressed for emphasis. But why the emphasis? My interpretation is that this is done to build a contrast with ‘us’: in other words ‘they’ make the lofts, not ‘us’, since ‘we’ would hesitate before ignoring regulations,Footnote 14 but ‘they’ don’t. Here we see a reemergence of the discourse that associates immigrants with illegal activities, in this case ignoring building codes.
Dario and Alberto thus display agreement with each other and a common stance, while also demonstrating to each other shared common knowledge about Chinese families and their actions. That Chinese and other immigrants often find themselves in overcrowded housing is unfortunately true to a degree, owing to rental costs and exploitation. The media also have provided information in this regard, often through documentaries intended to sensitize the audience to the plight of immigrants. However, here the victims of such exploitation are transformed into the guilty party: It is they who try to fit an impossible number of people into an apartment.
So far I have shown dynamics of agreement and reinforcement of racializing discourses (and stereotypes) similar to those seen in the previous examples. Here, though, something more is happening that could lead to actual discriminatory behavior against immigrants in real estate sales. To see this, we have to ask: When Alberto originally proposed selling the apartment to Chinese immigrants, was he really joking? Let’s reexamine this exchange from the beginning with this question in mind.
While the first part of Alberto’s initial utterance in line 1 is picked up in the following conversation, the second part of it is not: his request that Cristian suggests to him what to do with his earnings (line 4). In fact, the previous conversation had been about Alberto’s possibility of moving, and where he might move. When Dario starts talking, well before Alberto’s utterance is finished (line 6), he offers an alternative completion to Alberto’s utterance: no longer a joking request for advice, but a new joking session on ‘selling to Chinese’. Dario aligns to Alberto’s utterance as a joke about selling to Chinese, and Alberto successively shows he accepts that interpretation by realigning with it. But that the status of such statement as a joke is partially ambiguous is shown also by Cristian’s request for clarification and disapproving answer (lines 7 and 10). It is only after Cristian’s negative finger shake that Alberto completely realigns with Dario (line 12) and co-constructs the joke. The hyperbole in the joke thus has a secondary function of underlining, just in case there could be doubt, that Alberto could only be joking when he spoke about selling to Chinese immigrants, that the possibility that he would actually do it is to be considered absolutely ridiculous. In a sense, by realigning with the joke Alberto complies with his companions’ negative reception of the possibility of selling to the Chinese. Then it appears that Dario’s stance in effect erases that possibility, deconstructed and reconstructed as something ridiculous and undesirable.
Yet Alberto could have been at least partly seriously considering the possibility of selling. In fact, later on in that same evening, he did go back to the topic of selling to Chinese immigrants, and on the positives of the higher profit to be made. At that point, though, the negatives have already been highlighted and the stances of his friends against such a sale have been clearly displayed to him. If he indeed decides to sell to people of Chinese origin, will he meet further disapproval? And in order to avoid or lessen that disapproval, won’t he be compelled to make sure he earns a lot from it by charging an unfair price?
Independent of Alberto’s original communicational goal, the interaction reinforces a discourse about Chinese immigrants and the danger associated with selling to them. The example also shows how agreement can be used to create peer pressure in favor of discriminatory behavior based on racial prejudice.
Conclusions
In this article I have shown one of the ways in which racial formation processes take shape at the micro-level of everyday interaction. I have examined the role of conversational agreement in building support and deepening racializing statements, and in particular the spiral effect created by acknowledgments and co-construction of utterances. I have pointed to some of the discourses present in the larger society, which are invoked and deployed in this process. Finally, I have connected the context of each conversation to the wider context of Tuscan society, including the role of background knowledge.
When speakers bring forth and reinforce discourses about immigrants in their conversations, they perform an everyday reification of categories of Self and Other. These categories are often racialized. They define immigrants’ behavior, their essential (group/racial) personality. With their continuous repetition, of which this article gives but a glimpse, these discourses become increasingly powerful in reifying the images of immigrants they carry as they are shared in new conversations. Racializations of Self and Other can thus be seen here as emerging in (conversational) performance (Bauman Reference Bauman1977:42).
Butler’s (Reference Butler, Conboy, Medina and Stanbury1997b) reflection on the constitution of hegemonic sexualities could be applied here as well. In her analysis of the constitution of gender through performative acts, she writes:
In what senses, then, is gender an act? As anthropologist Victor Turner suggests in his studies of ritual social drama, social action requires a performance which is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established; it is the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation.
(Butler Reference Butler, Conboy, Medina and Stanbury1997b:406)Similarly, Shuck (Reference Shuck2004:200) notes that performance generates the possibility for further performances as it engages the coparticipants, “thereby increasing the likelihood that transformed ideological propositions will become part of an ever-expanding network of beliefs.” In this repetition discourses become performed into stories, opinions, jokes, innuendoes. In this repeated performance they become real, they constitute the subject/object of the speech itself; they constitute the reality of which they speak. It is the repetition of acts of telling and participating in the telling of the “truth” about immigrants – a truth that is racialized.
While each of these performances may appear as an isolated case, they, and the discourses they invoke, are repeated in everyday encounters among Tuscans, to the point of creating, to use Butler’s (Reference Butler, McClintock, Mufti and Shohat1997a) term, a phantasmagorical reality. Consider the way they emerged without any prompting in my recordings. Racialization in everyday conversations thus may be understood as a continuous repetition of acts of performance, where discourses are invoked, repeated, given authority, and, especially, agreed upon. They are treated as commonsense and thereby made into commonsense truths.
Programs created to diminish racist attitudes among the general population should not only consider the ways in which state policies contribute to racism (Räthzel Reference Räthzel and Foundation2002:23), but also consider the mechanism through which racists discourses are reproduced at the level of everyday encounters. In addition, much more analysis is needed to understand when and how mass media presentations affect the discourses upheld by individuals in everyday life. While the institutionalization of anti-racist policies is necessary (Fortman Reference Fortman and Foundation2002:78), from the literature there emerges a need for a clear understanding of the problem of the growth of racist feelings among the general population, which should be taken into account in shaping institutional policies. By looking at how people do being racist, we can start to understand how they are able to choose to do otherwise.
The role of conversational agreement cannot be understated. It inevitably works at reinforcing racializing or racist discourses already present in the society, by reproducing them and creating consent around them. Rather than being abnormal behavior, racism here is produced as part of everyday, “normal” and relatively unaccountable processes of social communication/interaction. Racism is, I emphasize, made unaccountable. People are doing being ordinary (Sacks Reference Sacks, Atkinson and Heritage1984) while they are doing racialization and racism.
Appendix: Notation
The participants in the recordings are speaking in the Tuscan dialect. In the transcription of the examples I use a basic CA notation (Atkinson & Heritage Reference Atkinson and Heritage1984), with the following additions:
=> Looks toward
- HS Negative headshake to express “no” or disapproval
+ HS Positive headshake to indicate “yes” or approval
\\ Approximate point where gesture begins
Italics English translation
((small font in double parenthesis, above the speaking line)) Gestures
˘ ˘ Spoken while laughing
¿ Partially raising intonation (half-question tone)
