Residence Roma - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 222

national diaspora but was not limited to it. it also created hybrid forms of space
fulfilling different economic and social functions.
a study of participation of different immigrant communities in the socio-
economic life of the province of Rome, taking as indicators their demographic
behavior, their insertion in the labor market, and their relationships with the
native population, shows that, during the 1990s, the level of integration of sen-
egalese communities in the city, compared to other communities, was rather low
(Casacchia, Calvosa, and strozza 2006). as part of a transnational labor dias-
pora, the senegalese in Rome show a low propensity to family reunification, a low
rate of mixed marriages, and an extremely low rate of naturalizations.
my field observations nonetheless revealed that women and children were
proportionally overrepresented within Residence Roma. They were busy with
organizing ceremonies such as weddings, baptisms, and the consumption of reli-
gious ritual meals. Their presence contributed greatly to transform its degraded
isolation in economically and culturally productive ways. b., one of the senega-
lese tenants who first moved to Residence Roma, lived with his wife in a neat
and perfectly furnished room on the fifth floor. he arrived at Residence Roma
in 2001, after having shared apartments in small towns such as ladispoli and
palmarola. he heard about it through a friend. b. first lived on the first floor, in
a smaller room, and eventually moved up to the second and third floors, where
rooms were bigger and pipes did not leak, but the apartments were also more ex-
pensive. as he moved up the ladder of Residence Roma's society and found better
rooms to rent, he called in first his brothers and then his cousins, who occupied
the rooms he had previously inhabited. at the time of the interview, b. was per-
fectly comfortable with what he had achieved. his current room was large, well
lit, and extremely well kept. his wife joined him and opened a restaurant in their
apartment. This catered almost exclusively to a clientele internal to Residence
Roma.
in order to be able to cook for many people, b.'s wife transformed the mono-
locale 's balcony into a kitchen. There she prepared senegalese dishes and sold
them at lunch and dinner for 5 euros a plate. The food was rigorously senegalese,
made with all the right ingredients, the dried fish, the bisap leaves, the tamarind
seeds, and the Maggi poullet. These she purchased at the market of piazza Vit-
torio, behind termini station, or had them brought directly from senegal. Yogurt
bought at the nearby Gs supermarket substituted the lait callè, which is not sold
in italy. This combination of different ingredients and food preparation marks
constant shifts between senegalese affiliations and Rome's ethnic mapping. in
apartment 200, m., a young senegalese woman who lived one floor below, traded
merchandise among italy, france, and senegal. she also braided hair at home or
on the italian beaches in summertime. a., in another room on the fifth floor, also
cooked for residents; like f. and l., she transformed the balcony into a kitchen.