States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration Review

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States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration ReviewAn endorsement on the back cover of STATES OF GRACE describes it as "perhaps the first... in a new phase of anthropological research carried out on African migrants in European cities." This fact alone should make Carter's study inherently valuable. But readers looking for a window into the world of his ostensible subjects--the Senegalese of Turin--may come away disappointed. Only one of the book's seven chapters concentrates on these immigrants in any depth; the remaining six offer up disquisitions on Italian history and society, criminality and marginality, and the writings of Antonio Gramsci. The Senegalese themselves virtually disappear from view, obscured in a haze of social theory.
To his credit, Carter's analysis of Italy and things Italian is well researched and persuasive. I especially enjoyed the parallels he draws between stereotyped images of the Italian south and stereotypes of Africa. He quotes the saying "Africa begins at Rome" to illustrate northern Italian prejudices. But if Africa begins at Rome where Carter's study is concerned, it pretty much ends at Palermo; anything beyond that is given rather short shrift.
This problem would be more tolerable if the text itself weren't marred all too often by errors of style and syntax. Otherwise authoritative declarations are frequently undermined by these mistakes. Consider this one: "The economic, social, and political problems of 'over there'--that is, some imagined space beyond the West--is now 'over here,' a part of the very rhythm of life in Western democracies." A fine premise, but lacking subject-verb agreement, and unfortunately this sentence is no exception. Another example: "The growth of Mouridism is somewhat dependent on the dynamic increase in its numbers." Well, yes, that's why it's called "growth." I think ultimate blame here lies not with Carter but with his editors at the University of Minnesota Press, who apparently couldn't be bothered to examine his dissertation manuscript closely enough to catch the most basic faults. One wonders how many other, more substantial errors got past them.
Still, STATES OF GRACE is a noteworthy and ambitious study that should interest scholars of Italian social history, popular media, and Gramsci. Those of us hoping for enlightenment on a particular immigrant community, or for insight into the slippery notion called "transnationalism," would be better served elsewhere. No doubt someday we shall be.States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration Overview
States of Grace was first published in 1997. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Leaving their depleted fields for better prospects, Senegalese immigrants have made their way to Italy in significant numbers. What this migration means, in the context of both the migratory traditions and conditions of Africa and the history and future of the European nation-state, is the subject of this timely and ambitious book.

Focusing on Turin, the northern Italian point of entry for so many Senegalese, States of Grace chronicles the arrival and formation of a transnational African Islamic community in a largely Catholic Western European country, one that did not have immigrant legislation until 1991. With no colonial relation to Italy, the Senegalese represent the vanguard of population movements expanding outside of the arch of former colonial powers.

Donald Martin Carter locates the Senegalese migration in the context of past African internal and international migration and of present crises in West African agriculture. He also shows how the Senegalese migration, constituting a "phenomenon" and catalyzing new immigration restrictions among European states, calls into question the European interstate system, the future of the nation-state, and the nature of its relationship with non-European states.

Throughout Europe, protectionist immigration policies are often crafted in chauvinist and racist tones in which "migrants" is a euphemism for blacks, Arabs, and Asians. States of Grace uses Senegalese migration to demonstrate that racial conceptions are crucial to understanding the classifications of non-national "outside" and internal "other." The book is a bracing encounter with the ever-increasing cultural and ethnic heterogeneity that is the new and pressing reality of European society.

Donald Martin Carter is visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.


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