Race Matters: The Materiality of Domopolitics in the Peripheries of Rome

Abstract

This essay explores the political struggles around the making of the peripheral neighbourhood of Nuova Ponte di Nona in Rome, examining the place that housing occupies in securitarian domopolitics as a politics of protecting one's home while at the same time (re) producing the materiality of the neighbourhood along class and race divides. The essay calls for a greater analytical focus on issues of materiality in the recently emerging debates on 'domopolitics' or 'the politics of home'--a politics which constructs various scales of territory as a 'home' to be protected against invading outsiders cast as enemies. It conjoins debates around urban materiality with debates around the fear of racialized others outside the home as constitutive of the development of the 'domestic fortress'. In this regard, the essay takes up the argument on the centrality of race in securitization moves, providing empirical support for the increased analytical emphasis on the workings of race alongside those of class, and on the embeddedness of racializing practices in corporeality and urban material culture.1The fieldwork covered a range of actors (police, a neighbourhood patrol, inhabitants of a nearby Roma camp) whose practices I examined through interviews and participant observation--including during police and neighbourhood patrols--and digital ethnography.

“The State Cannot Protect Us”

“…Over the span of six months since my fi rst contact with the group, the leader managed to mobilize two other groups in neighboring areas. I have written extensively on the group, analyzing the centrality of visuality in their discourses and practices (Ivasiuc 2015(Ivasiuc , 2019, as well as the moralities undergirding their mobilization (Ivasiuc 2018), and the materiality of patrolling practices securitizing the home (Ivasiuc 2020).…”

“…In fact, the special police unit stationed in the neighborhood knows the group well and appreciates its support. When the new mayor of Rome announced in 2017 the plan to close this police precinct, the group mobilized in protest and stopped the plan (Ivasiuc 2020). Yet, their support to the state is ambivalent at best: on the group's Facebook page, praise for fascism is recurrent, and the leader confessed to me that he really hopes for a military coup: the only possible solution to save Italy from crime, corruption, and disorder ruling everywhere.…”

On the perpetuation and contestation of racial stigma: Urban Roma in a disadvantaged neighbourhood of Szeged

“…The effect of corrective policies on the neglect of everyday experiences and interactions is also present in contemporary debates (Grill, 2018;Pulay, 2015), leading to increasing discussions of securitisation issues around the Roma people in Europe (van Baar et al, 2019). Moreover, the threat of racism in the current neoliberal times is obvious (Goldberg, 2019), with more racial trends against the Roma people on all levels, including housing and socioeconomic practices (Ivasiuc, 2020;Teodorescu, 2019;Vincze, 2019).…”

“…By being less focused on relevant relations, interactions and experiences of the Roma people (Grill, 2018), the existing literature on Roma tends to focus more on disadvantages visible in relations with the state institutions, as well as the impact of punitive policies. State discrimination and the mechanisms of governing Roma migration (Humphris, 2019;Picker, 2017;Toma & Fosztó, 2018;van Baar et al, 2019;Vrăbiescu, 2017), as well as its ghettoised and racialised education and socioeconomic position (Berescu, 2011(Berescu, , 2019Clough Marinaro, 2017;Filčák & Steger, 2014;Ivasiuc, 2020;McElroy, 2020;O'Nions, 2010;Picker, 2017;Vincze & Raţ, 2013;Vincze, 2019;Voiculescu, 2019) are issues that have been extensively debated, yet little is known about the everyday manifestations of contemporary stigmatisation of the Roma (see Creţan et al, 2021;Pulay, 2018).…”

Home Matters: The Material Culture of Urban Security

“…In many suburbs, as illustrated by Ivasiuc's essay on Nuova Ponte di Nona in Rome, middle-class white residents engage in what she calls 'domopolitics' to defend their neighbourhood against delegitimized immigrants: Roma and other groups depicted as the culprits of material decay. In addition to protecting one's house with bars and cameras, the essay shows, the defence of the home expands into informal policing practices--routine night shifts as part of a self-organized, and illegal, night watch--that fights against the 'material signifiers of blight' (Ivasiuc, 2021(Ivasiuc, : 1050(Ivasiuc, , 1053. The night shifts of the patrolling white males build on a discursive and morally acclaimed 'us' (the property owners) versus 'them' (the invaders), incriminating the latter for creating 'heaps of waste, streets with pot-holes and broken traffic signs, but also, and importantly, spaces "tainted" by the presence of others' (ibid.…”