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An Unsettling Integration: Immigrant Lives and Work in Palermo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Sally S. Booth  and
Jeffrey E. Cole
Sally S. Booth
Affiliation:
Friends World Program, Long Island University, Southampton, NY, 11968, USA
Jeffrey E. Cole
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Dowling College, Oakdale, NY 11769–1999, USA, Telephone: (516) 244 3125, Fax: (516) 589 6644. E-mail: colej@dowling.edu
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Summary

This article, based on ethnographic research, describes the precarious integration of Africans, Asians and others in the Sicilian city of Palermo. Most newcomers perform low-status jobs (particularly domestic work), have little access to state-sponsored services, lack political representation and suffer from derogatory stereotypes of non-whites and non-Westerners. In this context, immigrants express frustration at their marginality and they obtain jobs, housing, information and mutual aid from family and co-national networks that span the city, Italy itself and international borders.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 4 , Issue 2: Special Issue: The Italian experience of immigration , November 1999 , pp. 191 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

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