Six years after the brutal murder of six Africans, the migrants of Castel Volturno are still faced with violence and discrimination on a daily basis.
By Susi Meret and Elisabetta Della Corte
In the warm days of July, history repeated itself when African migrants were once again brutally attacked by armed and xenophobic locals in the town of Castel Volturno, situated in the Neapolitan hinterlands. Sadly, but not unsurprisingly, it was not the violence against the migrant workers that made the headlines, but rather the uprising of indignant migrants that followed.
This uprising contributed to reigniting political and media debates about the dangers of the ghettos; the problematic cohabitation between natives and foreigners; the plague of organized crime in the Italian South; and the ever-alarming increase in the numbers of migrants arriving from the North African coasts.
This combination of frames directed public opinion towards the need to support policies that curb, contain, discipline and reject migrants, in the process silencing counter-hegemonic approaches that would seriously question causes, responses to and consequences of immigration. Moreover, it was easy to observe how the reports and analyses of the events depicted the migrants as the ones responsible for their own situations and held them self-accountable to their own ‘downfall’.
