Massimiliano Giani/flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
All over Europe migration has taken centre stage in national political campaigns. Austria, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK, just to mention some, are countries where national elections or referendums have been monopolised by a struggle over and against migrants. The racialised figure of the migrant is presented as an all-purpose potential threat in a time of economic crisis: the migrant as a job-stealer, the migrant as a parasite of the welfare state, the migrant as a rapist in waiting, the migrant as a hidden terrorist. In a nutshell, the migrant appears of paramount importance in European and national politics, even in countries where physical proximity with ‘migrants’ is not part of many citizens’ daily experience.
The recent event of an Italian white man who shot at a group of black people in the streets of Macerata, an Italian town located in a region historically governed by the centre-left wing, brings the often overshadowed question of racism to the forefront of the European discussion over the ‘migrant crisis’. As Nicholas De Genova has convincingly put it, “the putative ‘migrant crisis’ of Europe must be understood to be an historical moment of racial crisis”. Neofascist movements, which are gaining ground everywhere in Europe, profit from this racial crisis, while democratic political parties underestimate the risks of what is happening.
