Citation

Herzfeld M. J. Ethn. Migr. Stud. 2007; 33(2): 255-274.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13691830601154237

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Globalisation is not only about commercial goods. It is also about the migration from centres of cultural authority of increasingly standardised but locally inflected forms of racism and other varieties of prejudice. It is often marked by disclaimers that, while appearing to mask racist attitudes with reason and etiquette, actually accentuate their destructive implications by rendering them rhetorically palatable, especially within the intimate spaces of local and national society. Using examples from Italy and elsewhere, I suggest that both racism and its associated disclaimers have migrated together, reflecting the powerful expansion of a global hierarchy of value as well as of intimate forms of resistance to that hierarchy. I suggest that such 'polite' racism is ultimately more dangerous than its more brutish variants because it appropriates legitimacy from collective notions of high civilisational standards. In this sense, immigrants of European origin in countries such as Italy may face its negative consequences with particular force precisely because they phenotypically resemble the host population and therefore represent, for the far right, a threat of racial and cultural miscegenation in an age of declining local birthrates.