The Social Centre "Officina 99" and the Coordination "No Borders No Masters": our contribution to the Tampere counter-summit
The urgency of a European network for the citizenship right, for the free circulation and for the support to the struggles for the needs of the migrant proletariat, is on the agenda. The politic of the governments of Maastricht in connection with the migratory phenomenona, could he summarised in few words: to share out the foreign workforce through the same mechanisms used for tomatoes and milk, shutting the one in excess in the concentration camps (only the catho-labourist Italian hypocrisy can call them "camps of temporary permanence"), and finally expelling-dismissing the portion definitively cut out from the productive system (do you remember: "ARBEIT MACHT FREI"!?).
This is the real meaning of the Schengen Europe, citadel opened to the free circulation of goods and capitals, but closed to the women and the men to better blackmail them in conformity with the dogmas of neo-liberalism. And to cover the shame of these abuses: thousands of media mystifications!
Italy is a country in which the migratory flow is rather recent (still attested at about the 1,5% of the population, even if its function of country-gate of Europe makes the real flow larger than the one only referred to the immigrants who settle in Italy). Besides, because of the different development levels between the south and the north of the country, the migrants continue to shift across the territory, preferring for a first phase the arrangement in the south, because of the low cost of living, and then moving to the north, because it's the only opportunity to find a regular Job.
These are the general conditions in which we developed our experience as comrades of the social centres "OFFICINA 99" and "SKA" and of the regional anti-racist coordination "NO BORDERS NO MASTERS". We speak about that because we consider that the reciprocal acquaintance of all the local experiences, and of their limits and resources, is an important premise to our co-operation.
Our experience is rather recent (about 4 years), but we've already seen two phases of mass with the mobilisation of some thousands of immigrants:
1) in 1996, in opposition to the first step of the Italian government to conform the Italian laws about immigration to the repressive directives of Schengen. The decree-law was retired by the government after a national demonstration (3rd of February), born without big organisational support and snobed by all the parties, that has seen the spontaneous participation of further 50.000 immigrants.
2) in 1997 with a regional mobilisation against the Immigration Police Office of Naples, that blocked two thousands residence permits. After two months of continuous mobilisation, that, because of the forms of the conflict, has represented for us a great improvement in comparison with the model of a coloured but sporadic antiracism.
There have been many others significant moments with the construction of various local and regional demonstrations, with the creation of informative and operative windows, with the birth of a "popular medical department". It was a route refined on the way, in which there have been perhaps problems about the clearness of long-term aims, but rich in the presence of immigrants and, principally, in its huge potentiality of antagonism. In a territory in which the rule of the work and of the social relationships constitute, because of the released submersion that characterises them, an anomaly depth in comparison with the rest of Europe, we tried to get over the self-pity and the "simple accusation" mechanisms, so that the innumerable antiracist initiatives did not result into a series of temporary explosions destined to empty themselves of all the meaning (because not expression of a subject able to interact constantly and in an organised way with its needs and with the contradictions of the territory).
The autorganization and the centrality of immigrants have been the characteristics that we have looked for also in the organisational models, preferring, whereas possible, the form-collective, and referring to the more advanced European experiences (like the French one), but always maintaining flexibility (For example: in the relationships with the immigrants communities, that are constituted on an ethnic or national base).
The main characteristic of the struggles conducted by the Co-ordination, maybe because of the centrality of immigrants in taking decisions, was the very disputing setting out, most of all about the release of the residence permits. The first limit of this setting out is the only sporadic involvement of the "democratic community", that is closer to the "fights of opinion", in to these disputes. The second limit is linked to the internal migrations. The more politicised immigrants have been forced to go towards the north of the country to find a regular Job (because without it, it's impossible to renew the residence permit). Therefore, we think that its indispensable the construction of a net of structures that allows to collect the contamination potentialities of this nomadism, offering to the immigrants many datum points on the territory where to convoy the political energies.
However the birth of this net has lived alternate phases also on a national scale, showing traces perhaps of the too much political factions.
The characteristics of a recent migratory flow (like in Italy) make it difficult to settle immediately autonomous organisational forms of the immigrants and take up the movement structures in a role of catalyst towards a subject practically deprived of a social net. Anyway, the growth processes in the autorganization of the immigrants are fundamental, and the reduction of the delegation mechanisms is functional to make some aspects not belonging to our organisational traditions, but consistent with the peculiarities of this new subject, come to the surface. For example: the importance of mutual benefit instruments, totally missed in Europe after the second world war, is present in all the organisational forms of the immigrants. We've seen that during the dispute for the residence permits that we made in 1997, discovering some mechanisms that can be considered a phenomenon of the modernity: a Bengali and Pakistani association contacted us because, in Naples, there was the possibility to obtain some residence permits. At the same time, hundreds of Pakistani moved from Paris and from other European towns to constitute, in less than three months, a Pakistani community in Naples. Once we won the dispute and they obtained the residence permit, they came back to the origin towns! The nomadism and an alternative informative tissue have constituted a weapon, spontaneously autorganizated, to individualise the weak points in the European legislation and to avoid clandestinity. This consideration supplies us an approach to the migratory phenomenona that eludes the self-pitying tone and prefers an other vision: The migratory flows are the product of the unequal exchange, of the continuous and violent depredation of resources and destruction of the territories, but they represent also the destabilisation capacity that an important part of the class develops against the structures settled by their exploiters, and the expression of a strong character of insubordination. Unfortunately, until today, this huge antagonist potential has been recognised much more rapidly by the counterpart (first of all by the E.U. governments) than by the natural allies: the exceptional control system constituted with the centralisation of the data about immigrants and the homogenisation of the laws about immigration imposed by the Schengen and Maastricht agreements are (definitely also a response to the sabotage forms used by immigrants against the bureaucratic control.
Only a class approach allows to intercept all these aspects, and this approach is possible only if (here is a link between the struggles for the civil rights of the immigrants and the class needs that move behind them. The right of citizenship is all empty idea if it is not considered as functional to evade the blackmail of the working overexploitation, if this struggle doesn't become the occasion to come out of the social and politic clandestinity and to meet the native proletarians in the struggle for the fundamental needs. The immigrants, besieged by the repression of the E.U. governments, are no more a residual division of the class cut out from the guarantee ambits of the Welfare, but they are the more advanced subject of experimentation of the capitalist modernity: lack of stability in Job, mobility, regimentation of the nomadism of a workforce pressed by poverty, by the media and by repression, capacity of linking the citizenship rights to the exploitation rates.
An European campaign for the shutting of the detention camps, symbol of the repressive legislation, could be a first response of the movement against these politics, but it could also be the preamble to collaboration forms always more coordinated. The question of the detention camps, that seems to monopolise, in an humanitarian key, the media space granted to that part of society that doesn't see its country menaced by a Mars attack (also because the dangerous clandestines don't arrive with futurist flying saucers, but with floating old crocks), is only the last ring of an hateful chain. This chain ties the existence of immigrants together with the necessity of accepting any Job to preserve the residence permit, it makes the police offices the only and powerful referring for all the bureaucratic aspects of the theirs life, it produces clandestinity introducing always more restrictive norms about the residence permit. In Italy, for example, the most of the expulsions happens directly at the border, and the peculiarity of a sea border, like the "Puglia", emphasize the importance of a struggle for the circulation freedom as a support of that one for the right of citizenship. Given the circumstances we have to aim at becoming rapidly a real strength, otherwise it becomes unrealistic to propose solutions alien to the existing political situation.