If you thought Lega Nord images stereotyping Southern Italians and immigrants were bad, check out this new poster against the opening of Swiss borders to Italian (and other European – presumably Romanian) workers. Given that hordes of Milanese commute to Ticino and vice versa and that, uh, Italian is one of Switzerland’s official languages, this point to paint the Italian as ‘other’ seems particularly desperate. Corriere has good coverage in English, although the article suffers a bit from some self-pity. One wonders if anti-immigration proponents reading this — particularly the bit at the end about American perceptions of Italians a century ago — will note the parallels.
But is the ship really sinking?
Even in an article decrying racism against Italians in Switzerland, there’s a subtle bit of anti-Southern sentiment:
‘There was the closure of the third-class waiting room at Basle to “Italian gypsies” in transit, most of whom came from Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto.’
And so what if they were? Is an Italian from Sicily, Calabria or Puglia any more or less deserving of a crude racial epithet?
It’s no better in the original. Nothing lost in translation here. A rare bad mark for the usually-dependable Milan chronicle.