This book traces the formation of Italian migrant
belongings in Britain, and scrutinizes the identity
narratives through which they are stabilized. A key
theme of this study is the constitution of identity
through both movement and attachment. The study follows
the Italian identity project since 1975, when community
leaders first raised concerns about 'the future of
invisible immigrants'. The author uses the image of
'invisible immigrants' as the starting point of her
inquiry, for it captures the ambivalent position
Italians occupy within the British political and social
landscape. As a cultural minority absorbed within the
white European majority, their project is steeped in the
ideal of visibility that relies on various 'displays of
presence'. Drawing on a wide range of material, from
historical narratives, to political debates,
processions, religious rituals, activities of the
Women's Club, war remembrances, card games, and beauty
contests, the author explores the notion of migrant
belongings in relation to performative acts that produce
what they claim to be reproducing. She reveals how these
acts work upon the historical and cultural environment
to re-member localized terrains of migrant belongings,
while they simultaneously manufacture gendered,
generational and ethnicized subjects. Located at the
crossroads of cultural studies, 'diaspora' studies, and
feminist/queer theory, this book is distinctive in
connecting an empirical study with wider theoretical
debates on identity. Nominated for the Philip Abrams
Memorial Book Prize 2001
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