Roma in Sicily:  Informal Economy and Social Advancement

The present paper focuses on Trasto, Sicily (a fictitious name for a town placed in the southwest coast of the island). It aims to show how a group of Roma from Kosovo, living in the area since the 1970s, has gained a livelihood through such enterprising methods as music, improvised handicrafts, and small-scale drug dealing. Their precarious situation is conditioned in large measure by the complex interplay of state regulations and the practice of local authorities. Nevertheless, these individuals have been able to exploit the ambivalence of the authorities as well as opportunities presented by the thoroughgoing informality of this Sicilian town. Although a culture of poverty perspective would suggest that they are merely reproducing poverty from generation to generation, in-depth observation shows that the informal economy represents a paradoxical means for social advancement.  

Keywords: Roma, Sicily, Informal Economy, Nomadism.

1.      The Framework

In this paper, I discuss the experience of a group of Roma, composed of about 35 households and 120 individuals originally from Kosovo, who have been living in Trasto, a town placed in the southwest coast of Sicily, since the 1970s.[1] In particular, I focus on the jobs that some of the members of this community perform, and show the role played by the informal economy in shaping the life course of the Roma. Paradoxically, I argue that years of precarious, informal, illegal, dangerous, and poorly paid activities have allowed these immigrants to experience social advancement.

Moreover, I argue that reflection on informality and immigration is needed because contemporary Italy is characterized by repressive and xenophobic tendencies, inclinations which rightly cause concern among EU institutions and which should be answered with a call for human rights.[2]

To discuss the roles played by informal and/or illegal labor markets offers a means to deconstruct current rhetoric on security and shed light on the complex functions of informal and illicit activities both for the illegal immigrants and for those who struggle for maintaining their legal status.[3] Most of the informal and self-entrepreneurial activities performed by the Roma I studied in fact represent only a faint criminal impact, either because they are “irregular but legal” or because they do not involve a victim. In the formalistic perspective which dominates the Italian debate on immigration in the mainstream media and the public discourse in general, Roma’s jobs are irregular and, therefore, illegal. The “zero tolerance” policy that Mr. Berlusconi’s administration intends to pursue at the very heyday of its cycle[4] is unlikely to concern itself with distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable forms of irregularity. Nevertheless, I claim that such a distinction would help by not interrupting the slow process of insertion in the Italian society being pursued by many immigrants. An ethnographic examination of the activities performed by those who have been labeled as public enemies among makers of public opinion (politicians, media, and the people) may provide a better understanding of the dynamics operating in these criminalized communities.   

The informal economy of Trasto has several salient features. First of all, “informal” actually defines two very different kinds of economy.  There is the principal, twofold one produced by Sicilians; this is composed either of individuals who have regular jobs and augment their wages by pursuing further activities, mostly in the countryside, and by entrepreneurs who hire irregular workers on a regular basis. The other kind of informal economy is the one created by the immigrants.[5]

These two kinds of informal economies differ from each other because only the former one presents systemic traits, in my estimation. We can see the informal economy not as a parallel and separate articulation of the markets for goods and labor but, rather, as an intertwining of the formal and informal sectors. Their partial fusion determines forms of mutual dependence, based on the costs of production. However, in Trasto, only the informal enterprises owned or run by Italians participate in these interactions: the informal activities of immigrants and Roma (with the possible and notable exception of drug dealing) do not enter the official market and do not affect it.

With regard to the characteristics of the research site, Trasto is a city of about 50,000 inhabitants located in the southwestern coast of Sicily, distinguished by a high ratio of immigrants, mostly Tunisians (5% of the population), and an economy mostly based on fishing (the city is home to the biggest fishing fleet in Europe) and agriculture. The city is slightly depressed relative to similar areas elsewhere on the island. The undocumented segment of the local labor market employs a consistent number of workers, both of Italian and immigrant origins (Saitta, 2007).[6] 

From a purely socio-economic perspective, which neglects the important relationship between underground economy and the current criminalization processes operating in Italy, I am aware that to focus on the role of foreigners is quite unfair, and it is a choice that hides a sort of prejudice. In fact, there is no reason to study the Tunisians and the Roma while ignoring the Sicilians operating in the same market. However, if one is interested in debating about informal economy, then local low-income households are in general more likely to be inserted in a “mixed” market that combines both formal and informal economies (of which at least one of the members of the family has a regular job) (Gallino, 1990; Portes 1994; Borghi and Kieselback, 2000). And immigrants and especially Roma are much more likely to depend on an enterprising means of survival, whether “legal but irregular” or totally illegal. Therefore, I think that immigrants’ case in general, and the Roma’s one in particular, is more interesting because these individuals’ survival depends almost entirely on informality. Moreover, their situation is even worse than the one experienced by the Italian “poor” because they have not only to struggle to make a living, but they also face the risk of deportation on a daily base, and, besides the ghosts of poverty and hunger, they also struggle against the Italian state (Spencer 1995; Mezzadra 2006). Several authors have already largely discussed the Italian regulation of immigration, its contradictions, its hidden “nationalist ideology,” and its effects on biographical paths. As Joppke (2003: 381) puts it, “Italy is perhaps the most complex and fascinating European ‘latecomer’ to immigration. The core contradiction of the contemporary European immigration scene is nowhere more evident than here.”  The words used by this author summarize a situation in which the objective demographic and economic need for more immigrants is accompanied by a political process under the sway of populism and public order and safety issues. This process produces increasingly tough and exclusive stances toward the immigrants together with purposely ineffective policies.[7]

2.      Methods

The data on which this account is based were collected in the course of an ethnographic research I initiated, together with Alvise Sbraccia, in 2002. Our study originally focused on Tunisians, and it resulted in books, articles, and a film-documentary on the immigrant condition and the trajectories followed by these workers in the local and national markets. In the course of the time, we shifted our focus to the Roma.

The study took place over different periods of participant observation (from two weeks to two months) over the course of five years (Spring 2002 to Summer 2007).  It involved in-depth interviews and unrecorded conversations with the members of the Roma community and the local stakeholders, social workers, and privileged witnesses. Conversations took place in Italian and, occasionally, in German.

During longer periods of residence, we rented an apartment in the same urban area where the Roma and the other immigrants live. For shorter stays, we were  hosted by an household composed of 6-12 members (the number has changed in the course of time due to the mobility of those members of the family who succeeded in their search for an healthier and roomier residence).

As noted above, the Roma households living in the area total 35, and the community is composed of about 120 individuals. Although we happened to meet a considerable number of members of the group, our study is centered on a relatively small figure of people and families: about 35 people and 6 households. Inside this group of people, it is possible to distinguish a core of 12 “informants” representing different age-classes (from 15 to 55).

3.      The Process of Community Formation

 Members of the observed community reside mostly in Trasto, but they are typically involved in transnational networks that play a multi-purpose role in their social world. In a nutshell, these networks, linking Sicily with various places in the North of Italy, Germany, and Macedonia, provide members with different options, all of them viable depending on the needs and the moment (a simple evasion from the daily routine, the search for a job, troubles with the institutions, etc.).[8] This is an important element in the variation in the number of people residing in the area; it also points to the process of community formation.

The settlement dates to the second half of the 1970s and was begun by one young man, Radjo, who was at that time in his very early twenties. Like so many others, Radjo had left Kosovo in 1975.  He was pushed not only by the extreme poverty of his people and ethnic group, but he was also following his fantasies and spirit of adventure. Contrary to common understanding, neither Radjo nor the other Kosovars were nomads.[9] Rather, for generations he and his ancestors were settled in Gilane. Nomadism was not a cultural trait of this group, and the event that initiated the exodus of the Kosovarian Roma (and a subsequent nomadic condition) is the civil war in the 1990s. But this mass escape happened much later. In the 1970s, when Radjo approached Sicily for the first time, ethnic strains were not so apparent. He was just an “explorer,” a young man with no skills who aimed to discover new worlds. For a few years, he travelled all over Yugoslavia to work in the fields as a day-laborer and outside restaurants as a musician. Soon, he realized that Yugoslavia did not offer much in the way of a better life. He came to the decision that he had to try to go abroad, no matter where. When Radjo reached Sicily, he and an associate travelled randomly around the island until they met a small group of “gypsies,”[10] that is, nomadic Roma living in the trailers, who made a living by begging money on the street and steeling from homes. In this very early period, Radjo learned how to become a professional beggar: in fact, he started to sell for small change sacred pictures, bought from local print shops, outside of churches and cemeteries. Trapani, the chief city in the area, and the other towns in that province, including Trasto and Marsala, became the sites of “begging raids.” At this point, Radjo was not really an immigrant. Today, we would say that he was still following a “circular trajectory”: He used to return to Gilane quite often; Italy, and Sicily in particular, where just the places where he liked to go from time to time because the life was easy, the police were not too tough on the foreigners, and the strong religiosity of the older inhabitants allowed him to make some money with little efforts. By living in this nomadic way, and augmenting his wage by further activities (as a musician in the restaurants, a thief, and by swindling car insurance companies) in less than five years he was able to save enough money to buy an old car and a trailer. At that point of his life he was already married and had three children. Their life in Kosovo started to appear extremely miserable to him. Moreover, this “circular migration” had become tiring. So he loaded the trailer and with his wife Ferida and the children, left Kosovo.

The second part of Radjo’s story is quite complex as it includes stays in several cities, both in Italy and Germany. There are in it many elements that are interesting and which involve the economic structure of the places where he chose to be as well as the law (e.g., the local asylum seekers legislations as well as the police attitude on minor crimes, etc.). But with regard to the topic at hand, we should notice that Radjo’s activities in the course of his life have mostly consisted of the same elements. The only difference now was that he could ask Ferida and some of the children to help and beg for money in the street. Because of space limitations, I will not describe every single stage in their family history, and I will not mention how they happened to move from town to town. Rather, I will focus on the past 10 years of their life; that is, on the years that this household has spent in Sicily, together with the other 34 families (mostly close relatives) who joined them before the civil war blew up at the beginning of the 1990s. In other words, I will focus on a phase of this household’s life in which children became grown-ups and created new families, everybody’s legal status became regular after a long struggle, but their resources remained scarce and kept deriving mostly either from informal or illegal activities. Later on, I describe these activities in some detail. For now, I simply note that many of the young Roma we studied are mostly musicians, improvised artisans, mechanics, and drug-dealers.

4.      Housing and Policies: Necessary Conditions for the Settlement Process

Before describing these jobs and their organization, I will say something about housing. The Roma whom we studied do not live in the trailers, in fact. Rather, they live in houses. This is something that had positive consequences on their self-esteem and identity, and it should be central in our analysis.[11] I already said that these people have not only to struggle against poverty, but they have also to face the state. In this case, the state and housing are interrelated. The nature of this relationship is not of the kind one may expect – aiming at supporting low-income families by standardized procedures. The state or, more precisely, the local authorities have not in fact provided housing. These Roma do not live inside projects. Rather, they mostly live in “ruins,” that is, in houses which have been seriously damaged by earthquakes that hit the area in the 1960s and 1980s, and which have been abandoned by Italians. When the Roma reached Trasto in the 1990s, the municipality faced a sort of humanitarian emergency. A number of poor families were in the territory; each of these families was composed of 6 or more members (usually 2 adults and about 4 minors), mostly unemployed, unable afford housing available in the rental market, and unqualified to receive public assistance (apart from medical care or education for the children). The law did not provide any means for confronting this grave situation. The solution consisted of admitting this mass of beggars into the old ruins of the historical center. These ruins consisted of bare walls, with no facilities, almost collapsing. But they were free for the taking and nobody would have claimed any rent for them, no dangerous competition would have started, no public money would have been spent on these miserable foreign families without legal status. The Roma were in fact admitted in the houses and improved the area. They fixed up the buildings, signed the water and electricity contracts, paid no taxes. In a short time, two small areas in the historical center the city were occupied by a number of families.

I suppose that this an important part of the process I am describing. We notice in fact that the word “informality” does not mean only “not officially recognized”; it may also indicate something that is recognized, accepted, tolerated, but not officially…. Not officially what? What term should we use to describe this situation? If I am allowed to borrow a word from the legal jargon, I would say that in this specific case we are witnessing a legal fiction. A fiction, as we know, is slyness, a rhetorical and logical artifact that pushes us to act as if something is happening.[12] What I want to say is that in this specific case as well as in many others which are described in the existing literature on the South of Italy (see Naples),[13] the custom between formal and informal is a fictitious line drawn for the sake of appearance, one that often has no real meaning. In particular, the state – and it does not matter whether local government and state are not exactly the same thing, as the latter is not that different from the former – seems to be shoved by ambivalent forces. One can read this action – admitting people to live inside ruins – as a peculiar expression of negligence and reprehensible behavior. Nevertheless, there is a sort of a paradoxical humanism in this choice. A humanism based on the refusal to draw hypocritical distinctions between acceptable and inacceptable forms of poverty and degradation. In a milieu characterized by extreme misery, where the black labor market is the norm in the agriculture, in the construction sites, on the fishing fleet, and also in the commercial sector, and in which hovels can be found at every corner, to refuse to admit that small army of gypsies in the name of human dignity would sound ridiculous and grotesque.

In my opinion, the distinction between formal and informal is often inaccurate. In a context like the one we investigated, “formal” and “informal” are just two artificially separated segments of the same line. This distinction reminds me of the classes on an airplane: What is separating the business and the commercial class is merely a curtain. Of course, the former class has plenty of privileges, room, and better service. But the bottom line is that occupants in both fly to the same destination and do so thanks to the same engines and body. As in an airplane, most of the privileged passengers in business class need, at some level, the travelers thronged in the back. Without this much bigger group of people, many of the passengers in business class could not afford the trip. One finds similar dynamics in the ethnic neighborhoods. The area where the Roma settled is a subarea in a broader neighborhood that, at the beginning of the 1990s, has been mostly occupied by Tunisians. Most of the North Africans live in rented houses only slightly better than those occupied by the Roma. In other words, what has been created is an underclass neighborhood. Here and here only the settlement of Roma could be tolerated by the institutions. Today, we may say that, paradoxically, the choice was not wrong as it resulted in the integration of the Roma population into the marginalized population of foreign workers needed by the local economy.

5.      Work

Turning to jobs performed by the Roma, these typically involve handicrafts, drug-dealing, and diverse forms of “self-employment.” The population also forms part of the larger reserve labor army that includes other immigrants and Sicilians as well. Occasionally they wait tables and clean dishes in the restaurants, work in the countryside, and paint houses. They are irregularly employed, and they contribute to the vast informal economy created by the natives.[14] But as mentioned above, the Roma in particular have created their own informal economy, one which scarcely transects the Sicilian-dominated one. 

5.1 Bottles

The Roma engage in mostly entrepreneurial activities that involve no more than two people. For instance, the artisanal production I mentioned earlier consists of bottles being melted and reshaped in an artistic manner. In one case, the activities involve two people in the household – the father and one son. There is a division of labor: The son produces the bottles, and the father sells them in the local fairs and street markets. Both of them find the bottles in the street, in the bars, etc. Then, the bottles are cleaned and production starts. Using a technique they invented, the father and son melt the bottles by means of a homemade electric device and asbestos. Given the components of the process, this manufacturing activity is dangerous: bottles may explode, electric shocks may occur, and asbestos is likely to cause serious diseases. To make a bottle takes five minutes, and each piece is sold at the fair for 5€ (or 10€ for three bottles). On a quite regular basis, they provide a shop in Palermo with 200 bottles. In this case, each bottle is sold for 2€ to the shopkeeper (who will send it for 5€).

5.2 Selling Hash

Another typical activity consists of selling hash. Here the interplay between state and immigrants is more obvious. Roma are not “big fishes,” so to say. They sell relatively small quantities of this substance (they never buy more than 500€ of it, usually much less). The quality of the drugs they sell is generally inferior. Moreover, other drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, have become more popular among consumers. Although such drugs promise greater profits, the Roma do not want to enter that market. They do not really consider hash a drug, a notion which helps them not feel guilty.[15] Furthermore, they think that the police share this opinion will turn a blind eye to their activity. Subsequently, clients are not many and the earnings are quite limited. Buyers are mostly young Tunisians and lower-class Italians. Transactions take place in apartments, and the pushers try not to let parents notice what is happening. The individuals who knock on their doors are usually known people, and the Roma try to avoid bigger concentrations of buyers near their houses in order not to raise the attention of the police.

What of the police? Is it possible that they do not know what happens in Roma neighborhoods? I claim that they do, but, as the Roma themselves suggest, the cops pretend not to notice because the scale of the traffic is so small and they know that this activity provides Roma households with minimal means of survival. I claim that there is a tacit agreement among the cops and these small size pushers: As long as the Roma limit their activities, remain unobtrusive, and avoid the street, the police do not intervene. I suggest that, from the officers’ perspective, hash represents a non-problem that is an acceptable trade-off in terms of public order.

5.3 Music

Finally, I turn to a third kind of activity, music. The anthropological literature has largely highlighted the importance of music in the Roma’s economy.[16] Although in Italy one would not find entire communities of professional musicians like the Lautari in Romania (Beissinger, 2001), music fulfills an important role in the life of these groups.[17] In Roma communities, life is accompanied by a permanent soundtrack. The music comes loud from the speakers all the time. Parties without musicians cannot even be conceived. Also, celebrations and parties in general are extremely frequent: circumcisions, marriages, religious festivities, and events of every sort represent good reasons to party. Moreover, the fecundity rates in these communities guarantee steady flow of new baptisms and circumcisions. For this reason, music represents one of highest form of entrepreneurial behavior among the Roma.  Moreover, it is important to bear in mind that keyboards have replaced the bands composed of three or more musicians, making playing an ever more individual activity. Yet, famous musicians have the chance to play all over Italy and also abroad, mostly in Germany. For each party, a musician is expected to earn at least 2,500€; but he is likely to earn much more than that thanks to the guests’ gratuities.

Any analysis of the economic aspects of the music would be incomplete without noting the role of new technologies and the industry that has developed around it. Recording and video studios, homemade cd and dvd print shops, and graphic studios have been started. You-tube, Myspace, and other similar networks are utilized by the musicians in order to enlarge their audience. Producing videos has become a must for musicians, and many directors and technicians have appeared on the scene to assist in their production. As a result, this particular ethnic music market has become so crowded that it is as hard for these musicians to gain fame, popularity, and money as it is for mainstream artists.

6.      Conclusions: Informal Labor Market and Social Advancement

In conclusion, with regard to their structural characteristics and role, the activities described above have a very limited impact on the official economy. In other words, they do not create mutual forms of dependency and do not intersect each other by influencing the cost of labor and the price of the goods. We may describe this specific ethnic niche in the simplest way as a parallel articulation of the market. Research suggests that milieus that are very complex with regard to extension of informal activities do not provide social groups with equal chances of insertion. Informal markets are generally as articulated as formal ones. As we know, the success of informal business depends on the extension of the networks, the skills of the individuals involved, and demand.

Although the cases of informal economic activity I studied are certainly not successful, they do play an important role at an individual level, and the importance of this element should not be undervalued. In my view, the informal and self-entrepreneurial activities I described should be read as acts of resistance (Scott, 1990; Bourdieu, 1999). By performing these jobs, in fact, Roma can earn as much as they would by working for others (typically, Italian employers seeking undocumented employees). But they would work much harder than they do now, and in a hostile environment as the “black labor” relationships are characterized by strain and suspicion (Saitta, 2007)). Certainly, one may claim that entrepreneurial activities of this sort do not represent resistance in itself, either because they are embedded in the normal dynamics of capitalism or because they are part of a common process of insertion that characterizes immigrants’ trajectory in liberal states. Nevertheless, the refusal of these immigrants to enter the local, underpaid, and exploitative labor market should not be understood in merely rationalist terms, that is, as logical economic choice. None of these jobs provides these people with chances either of succeeding or “living comfortably” – that is, by the standards of the working-class (the only class they may aim to emulate). Roma are totally aware of it but would never join the army of immigrants employed in fields, in restaurants, and on fishing boats. Even when they are distressed, and their fridges are empty, this tiny group of “resistants” would never accept surrender and join the “slaves” who sell their lives for so little money. Indeed, from time to time they are likely to go against their principles. For example, when their children are really starving, and there is no way to earn money otherwise.[18] But their relation to subordinate work is purely instrumental and mostly occasional.[19] This attitude may reflect an irreducible lack of self-discipline. But this opinion would be ethnocentric and class biased. It would not take into account that the deliberate decision not to work and to challenge misery and poverty as these Roma do requires more courage than the average person has. It is easy to object that many ordinary jobs require a lot of courage as well – jobs in industry, in construction or in greenhouses, for instance. That kind of self-discipline, consisting of waking up early in the morning, heavy duty, sweat, hostile environments, poison, deadly risks, etc., requires in the view of the average Western person much courage and self-respect. In fact, our conception of personal dignity, status, and our social and political organizations are based on this specific idea of courage and discipline.[20] But I claim that in order to sound persuasive, this idea of dignity requires people’s efforts not be embedded in the framework of labor exploitation. The chances of having either a regular job or a job that does not imply any form of abuse or exploitation[21] are quite low in the research site. Illiterate or semi-illiterate, unskilled, with no reputation, undocumented for most of their lives,[22] most of the Roma I studied have never had any chance of cultivating dignity and respect as we understand them. In fact, they are just pariahs who learned their status and position in society very early. Notwithstanding that, in the course of time they decided to struggle against their eternal destiny as outsiders, and their settlement in Trasto is the clearest evidence of their “resistance.” Not only have they resisted the state, but also themselves and the “misery routine” that lead so many of their co-nationals accept to live in junkyards (how else may we call the “camps for nomadic people” in which thousands of miserable Roma live?). Their approach to work is an expression of their will to resist the social order and its hierarchies.

One may object that this is a romantic view, but there is no shade of idealism in this description. On the contrary, there is much bitterness and all the negative feelings that accompany a population that is deprived but does not want to get loss its own concept of dignity – a notion that is close and, at the same time, so far away from ours. Therefore, one may argue that informal and autonomous jobs affect the identity of these immigrants positively. Although they often experience frustration and find these jobs not remunerative, they feel that they are experiencing a sort of advancement. They do not beg for money as their parents and themselves did during their own childhood. Although they perceive themselves as poor and in fact are in comparison with the natives, their pride and self-consciousness are widely remunerated. Finally, in the state’s view, these individuals are unwanted[23] but realistically cannot be easily deported. Actually, the new disposable legal tools would make this task easier than in the past,[24] but the implicit contradictions in the legal apparatus (amnesties and regularizations) have allowed the Roma to provide themselves with permits and visa. At this point, the Roma became part of the landscape and they cannot be easily removed. Their presence is not structural, that is, needed by the local firms. Nevertheless, due to the small number of people belonging to the group, they have been included in the new Italian underclass. The combination of ethnic informal economy, informal legal practices, and the ambivalence of national regulation has produced the conditions needed to stabilize the presence of this group. Therefore, I claim that “informality” acted as a paradoxical means for a first-level inclusion – an occurrence that suggests the opportunity of avoiding repressive policies inspired by “zero tolerance” principles and the importance of supporting the slow process of insertion of those immigrants who live on the borders of legality. If this support should not be provided, Italy will likely witness new generations of Roma and other immigrants be denied the opportunity for any kind of social mobility, and this situation will increase the number of incarcerations and reproduce the worst forms of marginality. Moreover, one should bear in mind that groups such as the one I studied have already reached the third generation. Classic studies show that second and future generations tend to have higher crime rates than the first ones (Sellin 1938; Hirshi 1966; Killias 1989; Sampson, Morenoff, and Raudenbush 2005). In fact, Radjo and his relative’s children, who are second generation (or “1.5 generation,” if one employs Rumbaut and Portes’ (2001) label), are involved in crimes like drug trafficking that require a better knowledge of the local environment and are, from the perspective of the law, worst offences than those perpetrated by their parents (although the idea of performing legal jobs is still part of the mental horizons of the young Roma). I argue that Radjo’s grandchildren, who are now between 0 and 9 years old, in the future may consider criminal careers and exclude legal jobs from their perspective. In fact they have already learned “to open cars” and sneak in the shops’ storage areas to steal sweets. Their parents do not tolerate their behavior and scold them severely. Nevertheless, parents do not have the necessary moral authority to discipline their children because they themselves express ambivalence with regard to the law, and the children perceive the ultimate contradictions which characterize their parents’ approach to legality.

Authorities may be tempted to solve this problem by getting rid of the immigrants who cause problems and reinforce the law. But as I have said, these Roma are not illegal anymore and they can hardly be mass deported. In the course of time, some of them may lose their regular status but most of them are quite likely to maintain their positions in one way or another. Far from being deported, they are joining the class of national subproleratians and adopting the same means for getting by.[25] In a scenario of this sort, authorities should intervene to force new and old outsiders to choose not to occupy marginal positions. But the police measures which have hitherto been implemented by the present government are likely to reproduce marginality and siphon off resources that may be destined to other initiatives. In fact, one should bear in mind that the new right-wing government ruling Italy based much of his success on the promise of cutting taxes. A few days after the 2008 Berlusconi government started its activity, the first tax to be cut was the ICI – a local imposition related to real estate that represented the main source for the budgets of the cities. City services depend mostly on local taxes, and so these cuts are only apparently beneficial for the citizens: In fact, the trade-off is indirect and will probably result in fewer services and a worsening in the performance of the public administration. Yet, one should put these cuts in the context of rising xenophobia among voters, who complain about the competition immigrants represent in housing, school, etc. [26]. In short, the risk is that the local administrations will prefer not to invest in services addressing the needs of foreigners, and increasingly assign the police the task of addressing marginality by means of arrests and expulsions. For a significant part, this picture already corresponds to the present situation in Italy. But I claim that an effective response should aim to address social disorganization rather than at adopt new criminal policies.