Foreign Pupils, Bad Citizens - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 93

The teacher takes advantage of the fact that G. has identified an “ethnic” fea-
ture to try to speak about the relationship between physical and cultural diversity
and to explain it: “why does s. have almond eyes? see if you can tell me, G.!”
her answer seems odd to those italian adults who have grown up in a uni-
form cultural environment, but it expresses poetically a new way of seeing that
could be created only in a context such as that of pisacane school:
“because he's always laughing!”
Notes
1. These statements by the mothers and teaching staff at pisacane school were made in
various informal conversations and collected in the course of two discussions recorded on 4
april and 24 may 2011 in places near the school.
2. The martelli law in 1990, the Dini Government's Decree law in 1995, the turco-Napol-
itano law in 1998, the bossi-fini law in 2002, and the “amnesty for caretakers” in 2009 gave
a complete amnesty to over 1,600,000 immigrants without official residence permits (iDos
2012).
3. Given the sensitive nature of this episode, i was asked to maintain the anonymity of the
persons concerned.
4. again, in reporting these judgments i am maintaining the anonymity of my inter-
locutors.
5. i have stolen this juxtaposition of alternative to us and alternative for us from Clifford
Geertz (1986).
References
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appadurai, arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers. Durham, N.C.: Duke university press.
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