On how the 1991 image of the Vlora and its Albanian refugees is being misrepresented

I have a Tumblr account. Tumblr is a platform that is good for sharing images and so a natural adjunct to my interest in amateur photography, but it's also a platform good for sharing--sometimes quite widely--all sorts of links, and for starting all sorts of discussions. On the weekend, I saw the below pop up on my dashboard.



This image caught my attention, not least because I was completely unaware of any such desperate and massive movement of refugees from Europe to North Africa. Yes, there were some refugee movements by Europeans to Africa, this June 2012 article in New African Magazine looking at some interesting Polish communities in East Africa, while the Greek government-in-exile was based in Cairo in an Egypt that had long been a node in the Greek diaspora. Such a large and desperate flight of refugees as indicated in the photo, though, was nothing I'd heard of before. Where would these refugees have come from? Where would they have been going?

That's when I noticed the name on the ship. "Vlora" is one rendition of the name of the Albanian port city of Vlorë. As it happens, that ship is closely associated with one massive flight of refugees, one so noteworthy that it even earned an article in Italian Wikipedia. It's just that it's a different refugee movement from the one described by the above photo's caption.



Someone, I don't know who, engaged in a bit of creative photo editing, converting the colour photo above to a black-and-white one and cropping the image somewhat. That might be justifiable on creative grounds. What is not justifiable, at all, is the lie someone chose to tell about this image, one of the iconic images from the initial mass emigration of Albanians in the early 1990s.

On August 7, 1991, Albanians boarded the Vlora in the hope of heading to Italy on its way from Cuba where it had shipped 10,000 tons of sugar. The real number of people that crammed onto the ship is unknown with some figures ranging from 10,000 to 20,000.

The ship crossed the Adriatic. As the ship approached Italian ground some fell to sea to approach Italy a moment sooner, unable to handle the crushing atmosphere aboard. Others screamed “Italia! Italia!” on the ship.

Thomas Jones also noted this particular falsification at the blog of the London Review of Books this September.

On 7 August 1991, the Albanian ship Vlora docked at the Port of Durrës, twenty miles west of Tirana, with a cargo of Cuban sugar. Thousands of people, desperate to leave Albania in the first throes of its ‘transition’ from communism, boarded the ship and prevailed on the captain to take them to Italy. The Vlora arrived in Bari the next day. According to a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe report from January 1992:

After several hours of waiting in the port of Bari, the Italian authorities allowed the Albanians to disembark for humanitarian reasons and led them to La Vittoria Sports Stadium. As the Italian authorities started forced repatriation using military transport planes and ferries, clashes broke out between policemen and Albanians. The Albanians barricaded themselves in the stadium refusing to return to their country; some 300 succeeded in escaping.

[. . .]

Photographs of the Vlora’s passengers disembarking in Bari have been circulating on the internet this month: first with claims that they show migrants from Libya or Syria heading to Europe now; then, a few days later, with the facts, setting the historical record straight. (I was sent them by someone who thought they were Europeans bound for North Africa during the Second World War.) Falsification can turn out to be a useful reminder of the past, once you’ve identified it.

Another blog, The Cryptic Philosopher, also debunked this misrepresentation of the image in September. Still another blog, looked at a very similar image this September, including a brief documentary on the 1991 Vlora crisis. That blog noted that its variant was being used to represent Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe.



France 24, meanwhile, placed this image in the context of multiple other faked and misrepresented images used in relation to the refugee crisis.

Issues of misattribution are themselves annoying. It's even more annoying if this misattribution is intentional. It's particularly annoying if these images have gone viral. Most if not all of the various sources I encountered debunking this misrepresentation date to September, but I ran into this image entirely independent of these sources at the end of October. I did debunk them, first on Tumblr and later on Facebook, but I have no confidence that those debunkings, or this one, will put an end to the various misrepresentations of the 1991 image of the Vlora. This is a shame: It's already difficult enough to talk about issues without falsehoods confusing the issue.

Some demography-related links for the New Year

I've been collecting a few interesting links--articles, blog posts--for some time. Longer thematic essays will come--Ukraine interests me significantly, for instance, as do some of the topics raised here--but for now here's a selection of what I've been reading.

• First off, writing at io9, George Dvorsky argues that extreme human longevity won't destroy the planet. The Atlantic, meanwhile, featured an article by Jean Twenge arguing that popular wisdom on female fertility is wrong, that in fact it's substantially easier for women in their late 30s and even early 40s to conceive than ill-founded statistics would have it.
• Crooked Timber had two posts in November taking a look at the risks faced by clandestine migrants, one on overland Mexican route and one on the overseas route to Australia.
• In East Asia, meanwhile, the National Interest has warned that the aging and shrinking Japanese population may weaken Japan vis-a-vis China (the Japan Daily Press noting that births have reached all-time lows in the modern era while deaths have reached all-time highs). The Economist's Buttonwood blog uses Japan's fate to meditate on the future of advanced economies.
• Elsewhere in the region, the Taipei Times notes South Korea's continuing problems with integrating immigrants--at least working-class immigrants; according to the Want China Times, investor-class immigrants are doing quite well in Jeju island. The Diplomat observes that immigration from Africa is creating a sizable enclave of immigrants in Guangdong, while Marginal Revolution cited an authority who claimed that one child in five was growing up without their parents, migrant workers in the city.
• In the Middle East, a post by Noel Maurer at The Power and the Money on Syrian refugees caught my attention: of the huge number of forced emigrants, many live in Lebanon, where one resident in three is now Syrian.
• In Singapore, Marginal Revolution examined inequality in Singapore and that city-state's very low birth rate (I think there's a connection), while the Wall Street Journal's Southeast Asia blog wondered if very high rates of immigration are aggravating internal issues.
• NPR, looking to southern Europe, observed Portugal's baby bust and commented on the return of mass emigration in Greece. Eurasianet has observed that Latvia is trying to shut down an investor-class residency program that has been quite attractive to migrants from the former Soviet Union, particularly Russians and Central Asians, part of an effort to avoid a Cypriot-style economic bubble.
• According to Presseurop and the Financial Times, meanwhile, strong economic growth in Poland is starting to attract large numbers of immigrants to that country. (This immigration, it should be noted, exists alongside still high levels of emigration to western Europe.)
• France, a country of emigration? Le Nouvel Economiste warns (in French) that France risks losing its underemployed young, while a Business Week report profiles French workers who commute across the Rhine to work in Germany.
• I rather liked Jamie Mackay's Open Democracy essay explaining how Chinese migrants in Venice were being used as scapegoats for the problems of that city (and country, by extension?).
• In Canada, a recent book by Bob Plamondon critical of long-time Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau has made the argument that the shift in immigration under his rule, specifically shifting priorities from skilled workers towards family reunification, diminished the benefits of immigration.
• Le Devoir discusses (in French) the demographic challenges of Québec, with a rising (if sub-replacement) fertility rate and consistent problems in attracting immigrants. (This came out before the recent CBC report highlighting rising outmigration from la belle province.) In Ontario, meanwhile, the low birth rate means that the cohorts of new university students--as noted in MacLean's--will start to fall.
• The Atlantic Cities had an extended essay by Howard W. French talking about how the growth of African cities, in population and in economic weight and in governance, would reshape the map of the continent.
• The Atlantic Wire and the Washington Post both reported the recent American census finding that population increase in the United States is concentrated among non-white populations; white populations have started to experience negative decrease.
• On the topic of diasporas and ethnic identities, the Volokh Conspiracy linked to a study suggesting that 27% of Jewish children in the United States lived in Orthodox homes, suggesting that Orthodox Jewish birth rates are such that the Orthodox share of the Jewish community will grow sharply. (I've read of similar findings in the United Kingdom.)
• Window on Eurasia has a lot of interesting posts. Paul Goble noted that projected populations for most of the former Soviet republics made two decades ago are vastly overstated, the Central Asian republics being the big exception, and arguing that Russia has only a short time to deal with its, temporarily stabilized, demographic disequilibrium. (The Chechen birth rate is reportedly quite high, making it an exception; five of the seven republics of the North Caucasus now have sub-replacement fertility rates.)

A brief note on the restored Mediterranean periphery

At the end of the day of the most recent Greek legislative election that--one hopes--will see the formation of a Greek government capable of doing something, I just wanted to note that all this economic chaos in Europe may augur a restoration of the post-Second World War traditional patterns of migration within Europe, from the countries of the Mediterranean basin to the north.

The Eurozone might survive the current crisis fully intact, keeping all 17 of its member-states; the Eurozone might fall apart completely; most likely, I suspect, the Eurozone will crumble at the edges, particularly along the Mediterranean periphery, with Greece being the most likely candidate for exit. Peripheral countries face two options: if they remain inside the Eurozone, massive internal devaluation will be needed to bring economies to some sort of stability, creating excellent incentives for migration to more-favoured countries elsewhere in the Eurozone like northern Europe; if they exist the Eurozone, then the resulting economic collapse--especially in the context of current provisions for passport-free migration across Europe--will create excellent incentives for migration to more-favoured countries elsewhere in the Eurozone.

Mass migration from peripheral countries in the Eurozone--the Portugal-Italy-Ireland-Greece-Spain combination often cited in the press--seems inevitable. Critically from the perspective of these five countries, all save Ireland have had very low rates of net population replacement from the 1980s on. The emigration of so many people from these countries--often the young, often the talented--is going to have serious effects on the long-term futures of these countries, just as it may benefit (if all is handled well) the countries in northern Europe and elsewhere receiving these migrants.

Thoughts?

On the very unlikely Eurabianization of southern Europe

David P. Goldman, a writer and economist who first appeared writing for Asia Times under the moniker of "Spengler", has gained a lot of fame on the Internet for his articles, combining as they do hard figures with a pronounced conservatism and interest in pop demographics. Notwithstanding his sketchy past ties with the LaRouche movement, a rather conspiratorial movement claiming to favour a new industrialism and oppose genocidal conspiracies like those of the British royal family--I was told once that if the US and China combined their strengths they could destroy the old system and we'd be on Mars in thirty years--he's worth paying attention to, at the very least because so many people do just that.

A recent post at Goldman's Asia Times blog Inner Workings, "Southern Europe: Hopeless But Not Serious", takes a look at the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) and their dire economic future. The dire future of all of them save Ireland, mind; ultra-low fertility and rapid aging will do the rest in.

That is true for the moment, when the elder dependent ratio for Southern Europe stands at around 25%. Between 2020 and 2045, however, the infertility of Southern Europe will catch up with it, and the elder dependent ratio will rise to over 60%–an impossible, unmanageable number. At that point the character of these countries will change radically; they will be overwhelmed with immigrants from North Africa as well as sub-Saharan Africa, who will not have the skills or the habits of civil society to maintain economic life. And their economies will slide into a degree of ruin comparable only to that of classical antiquity. Perhaps the Chinese will operate Greece as a theme park. Spain, which can draw on Latin American immigrants, is likely to be the least badly off.

Strictly speaking, Ireland should not be included among the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain). Although post-Catholic Ireland has lost its famous fecundity, Ireland’s fertility rate still hovers around replacement. The Irish economy was far too dependent on offshore finance as a source of employment and suffered disproportionately from the collapse of the credit bubble in 2008. But this small country also has high-tech manufacturing and other industries which make the eventual restoration of prosperity possible. The southern Europeans are doomed. They have passed a demographic point of no return. There simply aren’t enough females entering their child-bearing years in those countries to reverse the rapid aging.

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with much of this. The rapid aging of southern Europe's populations and the shrinkage of the cohorts of youth, combined with the effects of the internal devaluation given the region's adoption of the Euro, and a general lack of economic competitiveness, does augur bad things. Edward Hugh has written about the very low trend economic growth rate in Italy (Portugal in passing, too). Absent very unlikely transformations in southern European demographic profiles, things can be problematic. I also think Goldman is right to suggest that Spain, with its well-established links with Latin America, may avoid many of the worst effects.

Where do I disagree? My lesser disagreement relates to the ways in which the effects of population aging may well be mitigated by better health. We've written in the past about longevity, exploring the ways in which longevity is being extended. The intriguing concept of "disability-free life expectancies" may provide a potentially very useful paradigm.

[M]any people over 65 are not in need of the care of others, and, on the contrary, may be caregivers themselves. The authors provide a new dependency measure based on disabilities that reflect the relationship between those who need care and those who are capable of providing care, it is called the adult disability dependency ratio (ADDR). The paper shows that when aging is measured based on the ratio of those who need care to those who can give care, the speed of aging is reduced by four-fifths compared to the conventional old-age dependency ratio.

Co-author Dr.Sergei Scherbov, from IIASA and the VID, states that “if we apply new measures of aging that take into account increasing life-spans and declining disability rates, then many populations are aging slower compared to what is predicted using conventional measures based purely on chronological age.”

The new work looks at “disability-free life expectancies,” which describe how many years of life are spent in good health. It also explores the traditional measure of old age dependency, and another measure that looks specifically at the ratio of disabilities in adults over the age of 20 in a population. Their calculations show that in the United Kingdom, for example, while the old age dependency ratio is increasing, the disability ratio is remaining constant. What that means, according to the authors, is that, “although the British population is getting older, it is also likely to be getting healthier, and these two effects offset one another.”

The new ratio that Sanderson and Scherbov introduce, of the ratio of disabilities in adults over the age of 20 in a population, does seem to make more sense in certain contexts notwithstanding a degree of subjectivity (what will different statistical agencies define as "disabilities"). If this ratio is adopted and if the prediction that most children born today in developed countries will reach the century mark comes true, if there are sufficient reforms conceivably southern Europe might avoid catastrophe. ("If", as the Spartan king said to the Persian ambassador.)

My greater disagreement? His predictions of Eurabian doom: "[T]he character of these countries will change radically; they will be overwhelmed with immigrants from North Africa as well as sub-Saharan Africa, who will not have the skills or the habits of civil society to maintain economic life."

No, no, no.

Let's begin by noting that trans-Mediterranean immigration plays a minor role in southern Europe. Of themore than four million immigrants in Spain, only a bit more than a half-million are Moroccan, with insignificant if high-profile numbers of immigrants from elsewhere in the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. Back in 2006 I noted that there were half again as many eastern European immigrants in Italy as from Africa, and that African immigrants were as numerous as the combined total of Latin American and Asian immigrants. Immigrants in Portugal are overwhelmingly from the Lusophone world and eastern Europe, and of the million-odd immigrants in Greece a large majority are immigrants from neighbouring Albania. There may be large income gaps between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, but income gaps in themselves do not produce immigration. All manner of ties, including human ties, gird immigration, and all of these southern European countries are regional economic and cultural powers, if not global ones (Spain comes particularly to mind, to a lesser extent Italy, Portugal via its Lusophone connections, and Greece relative to impoverished Albania). Why would geography determine everything? It clearly doesn't.

Still more importantly, if we accept Goldman's argument that southern Europe is doomed to impoverishment--easy enough to belief, especially if economic pressures lead to a sustained large emigration of youth from southern to northern Europe--why would immigrants even settle in southern Europe in large numbers? By global standards, Latvia is quite wealthy, and its aging and shrinking population could arguably benefit from immigrants and provide them with sufficient wages. Are large numbers of immigrants settling in Latvia? No: Latvia's economy is too unstable, and arguably lacking enough long-term prospects for various reasons including a contracting workforce and aging population, to keep Latvians at home, never mind attract immigrants. At most, Latvia is/will be a transit country for migrants hoping to make it to rich western Europe.

Back to southern Europe. Migration is fundamentally a rational decision, made by people who want to extract the maximum benefit from their movement from one place to another. If migrants have to decide between a declining southern Europe and a more prosperous northern Europe, I'd bet they'd prefer northern Europe. I know what decision I'd make. You? Even if--if--there are substantially greater flows of North Africans to Europe and of sub-Saharan Africans beyond North Africa, why would they settle in large numbers in countries lacking in any long-term prospects?

Everyone reading this blog and writing here--indeed, everyone interested in demographics generally--likely agrees that migration is a very important phenomenon in the 21st century world. Everyone should also take care not to make the sorts of dramatic predictions of radical clash-of-civilization-themed transformations that never come true, too. Demography matters too much for it to be treated so superficially.

Four links for you

I'd like to apologize for not posting in a while: offline life intervened. I have accumulated four links that I think might be of interest to you all.

Over at Far Outliers, Joel quotes from Ryszard Kapuscinski's 2002 The Shadow of the Sun, describing how Tanzanian Sango-speakers (from central Tanzania) found ethnolinguistic kin in coastal Dar es Salaam.

Following a ball of yarn, they will finally arrive at the house of a countryman. The neighborhood is called Kariakoo, and its layout is more or less planned—straight, perpendicularly aligned sandy streets. The construction is monotonous and schematic. The so-called swahili houses predominate, a type of Soviet-style housing—a single one-storied building with eight to twelve rooms, one family in each. The kitchen is communal, as are the toilet and the washing machine. Each dwelling is unbelievably cramped, because families here have many children, each home being in effect a kindergarten. The whole family sleeps together on the clay floor covered with thin raffia matting.

Arriving within earshot of such a house, Edu and his kinsmen stop and call out: “Hodi!” It means, in effect: “May I come in?” In these neighborhoods the doors are always open, if they exist at all, but one cannot just walk in without asking, so this “Hodi!” can be heard from quite a distance. If someone is inside, he answers, “Karibu!” This means: “Please come in. Greetings.” And Edu walks in.

Now begins the interminable litany of greetings. It is simultaneously a period of reconnaissance: both sides are trying to establish their precise degree of kinship. Concentrated and serious, they enter the primevally thick and tangled forest of genealogical trees that is each clan and tribal community. It is impossible for an outsider to make heads or tails of it, but for Edu and his companions, this is a critical moment of the meeting. A close cousin can be a great help, whereas a distant one—significantly less so. But even in this second instance, they will not go away empty-handed. Without a doubt, they will find a corner under the roof here. There will always be a little room for them on the floor—an important consideration, since despite the warm climate it is difficult to sleep outside, in the yard, where one is tormented by mosquitoes, by spiders, earwigs, and various other tropical insects.

Global Voices, meanwhile, features the story of Yao Jiaxin in China, who seems to have murdered a rural migrant, a woman named Zhang Miao because she--as ruralites would, Zhang said in his defense--would try to blackmail him after he hit her with his car. Interesting fault lines, here, and abundant quotations from an enraged Chinese blogosphere.

Zhang Miao, how silly you were?

When Yao Jaxin checked on your injury, why did you stare at him. You probably thought that he was going to take you to the hospital.

You were wrong. He was checking if you were rural peasant or city dweller.

Zhang Miao, how silly that you let him know that you were from the rural area? In Yao Jaxin's eyes, a rural peasant's life is worthless. Death would cost less than injury. But he forgot to crush you with his car. Instead he stabbed deep into your body with his knife, eight times.

Zhang Miao, how silly you were?

Even though Yao Jaxin checked on your injury with a knife,

Even though it took him awhile to figure out your rural background,

The time for a premeditated murder was too short. They called this murder out of rage, rather than intentional murder.

We are all too ignorant to hear of such a term before.

At the Population Reference Bureau's blog, Carl Haub notes the continued rise in Russian fertility rates. Along with declining deaths, this has significantly reduced the rate of natural decrease. The big problems is that the cohorts of women born in the 1990s--a time of a markedly low birth rate--are coming to childbearing years and the situation will become more difficult, and that immigration is becoming problematic.

The social scientists have offered their opinion that the only way to avoid Russia’s population dropping below 140 million is to improve health conditions and lengthen life. They have recognized the relatively small number of women who will soon enter childbearing age and also warned that the supply of Russian-speaking migrants from other former USSR Republics is dwindling, particularly since many prefer to seek higher-paying work in the European Union. Migrants from former Central Asian republics of do not have work qualifications. The scientists have recommended that greater efforts be made to assimilate those migrants and prepare them for more worthwhile participation in the labor force.

Finally, at the unsurprisingly Toronto-centered blog Torontoist Kevin Plummer writes about how Italian migrants in post-Second World War Toronto sacrificed in order to own their own, constantly improved, houses.

By the mid-1950s, the annual influx had grown to about 20,000. Over that period of rapid growth, Italian men comprised 8% of the workforce in Metro Toronto. They worked unskilled or semi-skilled jobs as construction workers or general labourers, digging sewers. With long hours in abysmal working conditions, it was gruelling work at the kinds of jobs that, one Italian man told Iacovetta, "they give only to the immigrants."

Some newcomers benefited from a network of kinfolk and paesani, and could board with earlier immigrants from their family or village. Some employers, like small construction companies, placed employees in company-owned shared accommodation. Other men lodged with other male newcomers in boarding houses run by Italian families or enterprising newcomers. In any of these shared accommodations, quarters might be tight, with several men to a room. The idea of large groups of foreigners living together also drew the attention of well-meaning outsiders who suggested that the Italians were being exploited as much in housing arrangements as in their work conditions. It occurred to few experts that, as Robert F. Harney in an essay in the anthology, The Canadian City (Carleton University Press, 1984), Italian "sojourners might prefer such a boarding system was lost in a haze of moral outrage."

Almost always, boarders were from the same region of Italy as their hosts—Calabrese boarded with Calabrese, Abruzzese with Abruzzese—so these housing arrangements also provided the comfort of cultural camaraderie. "It was better being with your own," one interviewee recalled to Iacovetta. "You had somebody to talk with at night. We talked about Italy, and about the jobs—what else?" The boarding house cuisine also reflected familiarity of home and the common ethnicity of the residents. (As a cost-saving measure, pasta-heavy diets were only occasionally supplemented with meat.)

"Familial priorities loomed large in the lives of Italian men," Iacovetta writes. And the frugal housing situation allowed the male workers—who took pride in being their family's bread-winner—to stretch their meagre wages. Maximizing savings, they could send money to their families in Italy or save for a down payment on a house. "It's common for sixteen people to live in one well-kept eight-room house," Robert Thomas Allen noted in Maclean's (March 21, 1964). "When the newcomer does land a job, he makes every nickel count. Italians are so frugal that they kid themselves about it."

Go, read.

Post-colonialism and migration in Italy

An article about the recent surge in boat migration from Africa to Italy caught my attention with an interesting comparison.

Italy has declared a state of emergency on the southern island of Lampedusa and appealed to the rest of the EU for help following the arrival of up to 5,000 people fleeing the political upheaval in Tunisia.

Silvio Berlusconi's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said he had contacted Catherine Ashton, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, to propose a blockade of Tunisian ports by the EU's Frontex agency which could "mobilise patrols and refoulement [the forcible return of would-be migrants to their country of departure]".

He said a similar exercise was carried out by Italy when 15,000 Albanians arrived in 1991. "I hope the Tunisian authorities accept the Albanian model," Frattini said in an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The Albanian model? Frattini's comparison made a certain amount of sense, in that migration from Albania to Italy only began after the collapse of Communism in Albania let Albanians leave their impoverished for work. Frattini might be imagining that Tunisia without Ben Ali would trigger similar migration. If so, his comparison is off-base: the collapse of Communism in Albania led directly to the collapse of the Albanian economy and border controls, creating the incentive and the means for Albanians to leave their country, while the end of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia coincided with harder times, yes, but not with an economic collapse comparable to post-Communist Albania's.

After I blogged here about Malta last month, I made a tie-in post at another group blog, History and Futility. Malta's current status as a democratic European nation-state embedded in the European Union is grounded on a particular interpretation of Maltese cultural and geographic realities. Other interpretations are possible.

The small light green circle surrounding the archiepelago reflects Malta’s identity as small and unique, isolated in the Mediterranean on its small land base and with its unique culture; the large purple circle to denote Malta’s location within a sort of Italian sphere of influence, more vestigial than before, thankfully, when Italy lay claim to Malta (and the other territories within the circle) as rightfully Italian regardless of local opinion; red denotes Malta’s links with North Africa, low key and unemphasized but real as evidenced by the Semitic Maltese language and the apparent popularity of post-independence Malta’s flirtations with a radically anti-colonial Libya; black, to show Malta’s location within the European Union, its hoped-for final destination. Different people can agree that Malta is located at 35°53′N 14°30′E and disagree on the relative importance of the different human factors–language, religion, migration, history, trade, politics–which assign meaning to those geographic coordinates.

Much the same sort of thing can be said about Italy, which had its own maps, its own perceptions of its neighbourhood. These perceptions were more aggressive by far than anything of the Maltese, granted.



I copied this map of Italian territorial claims under fascism from the Wikimedia Commons. As described by the creator brunoambrosio, it is a map of "the 1940 project "Greater Italia", inside the orange line and dots, in Europe and North Africa. Self-made (I have based my work on the original Commons Image:Mediterranean Relief.jpg, licensed PD-USGov). The green line and dots show the biggest extension of Italian control in the Mediterranean sea in november 1942 (while the red shows the British controlled areas, like Malta)."

Albania, source of modern immigrants to Italy, was firmly in the Italian sphere; Tunisia, then (under French protectorate) not a source of immigrants but rather as a target for irredentist sentiment and in many ways an Italian settlement colony, was included briefly; Libya, the "Fourth Shore" of Fascist Italy and core of the Fascist Roman Empire, was Italian for thirty years. Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia are not shown here.

James Miller noted that for most of its history Italy was caught by the image of the Mediterranean as a forum for expansive imperialism, as a place where Italy could show off its emergent great power status and underline its modernity.

Students of literature often construct their understanding of a topic primarily from books and readings. But that’s not the case for students in Giuliana Minghelli’s new [Harvard] course on cultural migrations between Africa and Italy, where they have witnessed a performance by one of the assigned authors and have the opportunity to develop their own creative responses.

Minghelli, associate professor of Romance languages and literatures, found her interest in the subject piqued by her study of Italy’s early 20th century modernist writers. Many of them, she discovered, were either born in or had lived in Africa.

“People like Futurism founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti chose Africa as the stage on which to perform the speed, modernity, action, and violence of his Futurist poetics,” Minghelli noted. “That is quite intriguing. Why Africa?”

On the one hand, she said, Africa represented a blank canvas onto which Italian writers could project their wildest fantasies. At the same time, the continent functioned as a land of exile and escape, initially from the fascist regime that controlled Italy in the decades leading up to World War II.

Later, in the 1960s, writers fled from the homogenization of capitalist consumer culture. For instance, author and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini traveled to Africa in search of an alternative, uncontaminated world.

Indeed, despite a desire on the part of many Italian authors to paint Africa as a primitive and exotic world, the continent is very close to Italy, perhaps uncomfortably so for many at the time. After the unification of Italy in 1861, Italians strove to present themselves as a thoroughly European culture, repressing what Minghelli calls “the Africa within Italy.”

Yet Italy also needed Africa, for economic reasons and because it was felt practicing colonialism would establish a stronger sense of national identity. The Italians were late to the “scramble for Africa,” waiting until 1936 — after the conquest of Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia — to proclaim an official Italian Empire. The desire for conquest was buoyed by archaeological excavations in Africa that unearthed Roman ruins, which Italians used to link their colonizing activities to the glory of the Roman Empire.

“If you’re interested in the question of Italian nation-building and identity formation, Africa is really central,” Minghelli said.

The post-colonial element in Italy's relationship to once-subordinate and migrant-receiving, now independent and migrant-sending, countries on its frontiers is something that doesn't seem to have been investigated that much, notwithstanding the origins of many of these unpopular immigrants in former Italian colonial or near-colonial countries (Tunisia, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia) and the importance of post-Italian Libya as a corridor. It played a role: see how Italian links encouraged a relatively much greater volume of post-colonial immigration to Italy from Eritrea as opposed to Somalia. Where else does it play a role, though? What networks have been established? What attitudes are there in Italy towards migrants from ex-Italian colonies: empathy, dislike?

Joe Sacco, "Not in my country"

A tweet from Torontonian (and Maltese-Canadian) Shawn Micallef pointed me to the news that two Libyan fighter jet pilots defected (with their pilots) Monday, and one Libyan warship following yesterday. This latest episode in Libyan-Maltese relations ads a new twist in relations between the two countries, in the 1970s and 1980s quite close owing to Maltese left-wing politician Dom Mintoff's desire to move beyond dependence on Britain and Libyan interest in establishing a close relationship with some country.

This is the latest episode in unexpected--unregulated--migration from Libya to Malta. I'd like to point our readers to Maltese-American graphic novelist Joe Sacco's 2010 graphic novel "Not in my country", available online at the website of the Guardian and providing an affecting and information look on the phenomenon of unregulated/irregular/illegal migration to Malta.



While trans-Mediterranean migration is a major issue for southern Europe, it's a particular issue for a small insular Malta that already has one of the higher population densities in Europe and few ways for these migrants to make it to the European mainland--an Italy that would be the logical (and, likely, preferable) next step is unreachable. Sacco goes into detail in his work.

Go, read.

Some Libya notes

It may not be well-known that plans were made, during the brief three decades of Italian rule, to engage in the extensive colonization of Libya, in many respects as thorough and disruptive as French colonization as neighbouring Algeria.

Once pacification had been accomplished, fascist Italy endeavored to convert Libya into an Italian province to be referred to popularly as Italy's Fourth Shore. In 1934 Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were divided into four provinces--Tripoli, Misratah, Benghazi, and Darnah--which were formally linked as a single colony known as Libya, thus officially resurrecting the name that Diocletian had applied nearly 1,500 years earlier. Fezzan, designated as South Tripolitania, remained a military territory. A governor general, called the first consul after 1937, was in overall direction of the colony, assisted by the General Consultative Council, on which Arabs were represented. Traditional tribal councils, formerly sanctioned by the Italian administration, were abolished, and all local officials were thereafter appointed by the governor general. Administrative posts at all levels were held by Italians.

[. . .]

During the 1930s, impressive strides were made in improving the country's economic and transportation infrastructure. Italy invested capital and technology in public works projects, extension and modernization of cities, highway and railroad construction, expanded port facilities, and irrigation, but these measures were introduced to benefit the Italian-controlled modern sector of the economy. Italian development policy after World War I had called for capital-intensive "economic colonization" intended to promote the maximum exploitation of the resources available. One of the initial Italian objectives in Libya, however, had been the relief of overpopulation and unemployment in Italy through emigration to the undeveloped colony. With security established, systematic "demographic colonization" was encouraged by Mussolini's government. A project initiated by Libya's governor, Italo Balbo, brought the first 20,000 settlers--the ventimilli--to Libya in a single convoy in October 1938. More settlers followed in 1939, and by 1940 there were approximately 110,000 Italians in Libya, constituting about 12 percent of the total population. Plans envisioned an Italian colony of 500,000 settlers by the 1960s. Libya's best land was allocated to the settlers to be brought under productive cultivation, primarily in olive groves. Settlement was directed by a state corporation, the Libyan Colonization Society, which undertook land reclamation and the building of model villages and offered a grubstake and credit facilities to the settlers it had sponsored.

The Italians made modern medical care available for the first time in Libya, improved sanitary conditions in the towns, and undertook to replenish the herds and flocks that had been depleted during the war. But, although Mussolini liked to refer to the Libyans as "Muslim Italians," little more was accomplished that directly improved the living standards of the Arab population. Beduin life was disrupted as tribal grazing lands--considered underutilized by European standards but potentially fertile if reclaimed--were purchased or confiscated for distribution to Italian settlers. Complete neglect of education for Arabs prevented the development of professional and technical training, creating a shortage of skilled workers, technicians, and administrators that had not been alleviated in the late 1980s. Sanusi leaders were harried out of the country, lodges broken up, and the order suppressed, although not extinguished.

This photo post examining the hybridity of the homes built in Cyrenaica, in the east, to house the new Italian residents of confiscated Arab land is worth looking at. Gary Fowler's study of colonization in Tripolitania, the western Libyan region at the heart of modern Libya and the Italian colonial enterprise, is likewise worthwhile.

Meanwhile, over at my own blog I've a brief post up pointing out that the Libyan state is a very recent creation; unlike the other polities of North Africa, modern Libya as a single state as opposed to a broad region dates back securely only to the 1930s, with identities overlapping state boundaries.

Back here, in November 2009 I speculated that Italian-era links with Eritrea and Somalia might explain a predominance of Eritreans and Somalis trying to make it to Italy. That doesn't seem to be the case, but Libya retains the potential--suppressed only under Gadaffi at Italy's behest--of becoming a destination of transit migrants from Africa as a whole, as well as a destination for migrants in itself.

The Yorkshire Ranter took a look at one interesting form of migration to Libya that's come into prominence recently, that of the mercenary from Africa or elsewhere hired to repress Libyans.

In Libya this week, it is said that the government is using mercenaries recruited from its various allies’ wars in sub-Saharan Africa as arseholes, and that it’s paying $500 a day for their services. Libyan per capita GDP is $14,884 at purchasing-power parity, so the price of privatised violence is running at a premium of over one hundred times typical earnings. Clearly, either the regime has so much less real legitimacy, or the degree of brutality required and risk involved is that much higher. In fact, those options are both consistent, as a regime with less legitimacy would need to use more force and it does seem to be doing just that.

I made the point last time out that it’s typical for mercenaries to be very highly paid relative to the countries in which they operate. This is clearly an important point here. It’s also true that Gadhafi’s Libya has often got other people to fight its battles for it – they exported Palestinians into a variety of different wars in the 1970s and 80s, notably sending PLO volunteers to prop up Idi Amin (you bet they didn’t sign on for that). Later, in the 1990s, they trained and equipped fighters in the various West African civil wars (notably Charles Taylor – there’s an arsehole for you). Now they’re doing the opposite.

Of course, being an oil state, they can probably afford to keep hiring the arseholes.

This poster is skeptical about the idea of African mercenaries, suggesting that the idea fits into an established tradition of Libyan anti-black racism and making the point that the vast majority of sub-Saharan Africans living in Libya are work migrants.

Chain migration to Libya?

The Global Detention Project's description of Libya's system of apprehending, detaining, and deporting illegal immigrants is pretty much common knowledge. Immigrants in Libya generally have it hard, with the million-odd sub-Saharan Africans attracted to this middle-income country during Qadhafi's strongly pan-African phase being confined to the margins of Libyan life, trapped amidst poverty and a negative stigma that has been known to extend to violence. Immigrants attempting to use Libya as a transit country en route to Libya and other points in Europe can find it much worse still, with the people who can't bribe their way past corrupt authorities finding themselves thrown into decidedly sub-standard detention facilities where they're mistreated badly--beatings are apparently common, for instance--before being deported, with luck actually being flown back to their homeland instead of being dumped in the desert and told to go "that way." Italy, Libya's former colonial ruler, is a prominent collaborator with this regime, turning ships with migrants back to Libya without considering the migrants' appeals for asylum and providing certain amounts of aid.

Various news sources have suggested that Eritreans and Somalis are disproportionately well-represented among the migrants using Libya as a transit country to Italy. Eritrea, Somalia, and Libya, it should be noted, are the three territories that formed the core of the Italian colonial empire. It makes sense that Eritreans fleeing their country's totalitarianism and Somalis fleeing their country's anarchy would look to Italy. Geography certain plays a role, but I wonderif the choice of Libya as a transit country has anything to do with their countries' shared history with Libya. Are there human connections surviving from the Italian era? I wonder.

Thoughts?