Black Spaces ― African Diaspora in Italy

Black Spaces examines how space and place are racialized, and the impacts on everyday experiences among African Italians, immigrants, and refugees. It explores the deeply intertwined histories of Africa and Europe, and how people of African descent negotiate, contest, and live with anti-blackness in Italy. The vast majority of people crossing the Mediterranean into Europe are from West Africa and the Horn of Africa. Their passage is part of the legacy of Italian and broader European engagement in colonial projects. This largely forgotten history corresponds with an ongoing effort to erase them from the Italian social landscape on arrival. Black Spaces examines these racialized spaces by blending a critical geographical approach to place and space with Afro-Pessimist and critical race perspectives on the lived experiences of Blackness and anti-blackness in Italy.?

Heather Merrill is Professor of Africana Studies at Hamilton College. Her research examines place, space, race, belonging, Black Europe and the relationship between Europe and Africa. She is an anti-racist critical human geographer whose theoretical work is grounded in ethnography of African Diaspora in Italy. She is the co-editor of Spaces of Danger: Culture and Power in the Everyday and the author of An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race.