‘Integrated in the World of human Beings’: national Narrations in current Stories of Senegal clandestine Immigrants in Italy

Abstract

Current nationalist discourses in Europe are accumulating force and blaming mainly undesired immigrants, especially from Africa. Meanwhile, the latter continue to arrive in boats, often simply hoping for a better future. These two tendencies–the strengthening of nationalist discourse on the one hand, and a growing internationalization on the other hand–are observed by Homi Bhabha in his introduction to Nation and Narration (1990). However, how do these undocumented African immigrants take part in constructing the narration of the nation? Se Dio vuole (2011) by Papa Ngady Faye and Il mio viaggio della speranza (2011) by Bay Mademba relate such a situation. Without an official residency permit, the immigrants represent a double national absence: in Italy an administrative absence, and in Senegal a physical one. Nonetheless, both migrated narrating subjects obtain a narrative and social presence.

The present paper examines how the narrations of the Senegalese immigrants in Italy represent a national construction from below and how these narrations address the ambivalence mentioned. We will observe how the subjects present themselves as mediators between the two nations, which corresponds to a former-colony and a former-colonizer dynamics, and how they underline the conceptualization of nation as mainly human.