On Wednesday 19 June at 7.00 pm the Spine cultural association hosts the first presentation by the writer and sociologist Leonardo Palmisano on his new book “ITALIAPARTHEID – Foreigners in the peninsula of racism”, published by Fandango Libri. Also speaking on stage with him are Azmi Jarjawi (Cgil Puglia), Shady Alizadeh (lawyer), Uljana Gazidede (lawyer). Journalist Annamaria Minunno moderates the meeting.
– THE BOOK –
There is a cry that rises from the mouths of foreigners in Italy: Flee! The country that kindly welcomed them, only to fence them off behind a wall of marginalization and exploitation, does not deal with them on the left and uses them as a bogeyman to catch votes on the right. In the meantime, however, the migrants have begun to shake off their gratitude towards those who saved them from the Mediterranean (and beyond) but who stuck them, immediately afterwards, in a ghetto of marginalization in Lampedusa, in Mineo, in Borgo Mezzanone. Inside their lives, inside their desires, a demographic revolution is taking hold: the abandonment of Italy, the return home, the urgency of living free in a freer place with the right to self-determination. Under this pressure, the wall begins to crack and from this crack, day after day, thousands flee or hope to escape. Paradoxically, the Italian law on immigration which bears the name of two irreducible enemies of migratory flows, the Bossi-Fini, forces these detainees without a residence permit to remain in Italy, to wait until they have enough money to be able to pay for a another journey, far from us. Leonardo Palmisano spoke with these migrants and in ItaliApartheid he leaves them the story of the stories that brought them here and that do not allow them to leave again, demonstrating once and for all how the opening of the borders is the only solution both in and out of exit.
“In Italy there is a problem of rights not recognized by a part of the population, which is thus made fragile. It’s easy to check. It is more difficult to imagine what to do, how to escape from this spiral of exclusion and vulnerability. Palmisano, with his passionate story of the country we don’t want, can help us glimpse the country we want and for which we must commit ourselves.”
[Riccardo Noury, Amnesty International Italia]
– THE AUTHOR –
Leonardo Palmisano (Bari 1974) is a professor of Sociology of deviance at the University of Foggia, a columnist for Corriere del Mezzogiorno, president of Radici Future Produzioni, artistic director of Legalltria and co-founder of Piazze Connection. Golden Dove for Peace 2019, he has the delegation for migration and social anti-mafia for the Puglia PD. For Fandango Libri he published Ghetto Italia with Yvan Sagnet. Foreign laborers between gangmastering and exploitation (2015, Livatino prize against the Mafia), Mafia Caporale (2017), Ascia nera. The brutal intelligence of the Nigerian mafia (2019), The broken city (2021) and with Dimitri Deliolanes Mediterranea (2022, Oscar winner for the Book of Trani 2023). With Fandango Libri is the mystery series on the bandit Mazzacani: Everything returns. The first case of the bandit Mazzacani (2018), Nobody kills death. Mazzacani on the trail of Colucci (2019), Who Too Wants. Mazzacani finds his revenge (2020), Betrayal is a crime. A complicated affair for the bandit Mazzacani (2023).
