Black Spaces African Diaspora in Italy [Hardcover]

Black Spacesexamines how space and place are racialized, and the impacts on everyday experiences among African Italians, immigrants, and refugees. It explores the deeply intertwined histories of Africa and Europe, and how people of African descent negotiate, contest, and live with anti-blackness in Italy. The vast majority of people crossing the Mediterranean into Europe are from West Africa and the Horn of Africa. Their passage is part of the legacy of Italian and broader European engagement in colonial projects. This largely forgotten history corresponds with an ongoing effort to erase them from the Italian social landscape on arrival. Black Spacesexamines these racialized spaces by blending a critical geographical approach to place and space with Afro-Pessimist and critical race perspectives on the lived experiences of Blackness and anti-blackness in Italy.?

Chapter 1. Witness to the Unthought Position: Introduction

Chapter 2. Africa-Italy: A Genealogy of Relational Places

Chapter 3. Black/black Spaces: Lived Experiences and Geographic logics

Chapter 4. Unarchived Everyday Violence

Chapter 5. Reading the death of Sylvester Agyemang: Can you be BLACK and bear this?

Chapter 6. Grammar and Ghosts: Refugees and Migrants in Italy

Chapter 7. Re-imagining Future Geographies: Conclusion

Bibliography

Timeline

Glossary

Heather Merrill has done it again. While her previous book broke new ground by studying the challenges of multi-racial feminist activism in Italy, this new contribution enlarges the picture. Here she takes aim at Italian common sense concerning race, while passionately foregrounding the lives of African migrants and Afro-Italians who daily navigate the deadly politics of exclusion. For all those who read with horror the headlines emanating from an increl��