On the annoying hoax of migrants acting as guides in museums instead of Italians

“On online hatred against immigrants one could collect real anthologies. Between artfully put into circulation hoaxes, xenophobic Facebook pages and irresponsible politicians who, in order to make propaganda, daily feed a racist and intolerant form of thought, the network once again rises to a favorite platform for those who choose to vent anger and frustrations against a chosen target.” The excerpt just quoted is from Far Web, the latest book by Matteo Grandi, a journalist and social media expert. These are words that describe a reality that, until not so long ago, we thought was as far removed as ever from anything having to do withart and museums. Museums are places of confrontation, of exchange, of dialogue, of cultural enrichment: it would seem ridiculous to think that they could become hunting grounds for racists and “before-the-Italians” fanatics. Yet, we touch on the fact that intolerance and xenophobia are in fact much closer than we might think. This was demonstrated by the case of theEgyptian Museum of Turin’s initiative aimed at the Arabic-speaking public. And it is being demonstrated in these hours by an episode that is perhaps even more obnoxious, since it directly calls migrants into question and has been instrumentalized to fuel what psychologist David Sears has called "symbolic racism."

It happens, therefore, that in Lecce certain political parties (and with them many citizens: just scroll through a few social networks) are outraged because, according to their representatives, there is a museum guilty of employing migrants instead of Italians in some cultural projects (and there are even newspapers that have headlined “migrants and refugees will act as ciceroni at the museum”). The affair has also led to protests with banners, such as the one that CasaPound activists attached to a gate near the headquarters of the Sigismondo Castromediano Museum in Lecce, where the project that has attracted so much media attention was presented. And, of course, to outraged comments from those who use the usual, cloying rhetorical weapons of symbolic racism (migrants gaining privileges despite having no merit, Italians making sacrifices to acquire titles and being outnumbered by the latest arrivals, moreover unskilled, and again migrants getting jobs by taking them from Italians, migrants living better than Italians, and so on) to get the attention of those who are clearly unfamiliar with in-depth research and Google searches.

A room in the Castromediano Museum in Lecce. Ph. Credit Francesco Bini

Particularly interesting is the post of such Mario Spagnolo, city secretary of “Noi con Salvini,” who on Facebook writes, among other things: “I personally addressed a prayer to Saint Helen and Jesus beautifully reproduced in LECCESE stone and present in the room set up as a mosque, so that they may enlighten the minds of those who design such amenities without giving priority to our young cultural heritage graduates who have been waiting for two years to take the final exam for tour guide by paying in advance the course registration fees and related manuals.”

Now, anyone might think: first, if it doesn’t sound a little strange to you to be, in Lecce, the secretary of the support movement for a party that officially, in its statutes, is still called “Northern League for the Independence of Padania.” Second, if you don’t know that Jesus was also a migrant and refugee. Third, that the real news, net of the hoaxes artfully spread by assorted intolerants, is this: at the aforementioned Sigismondo Castromediano Museum, the project Musei accoglienti was presented. The project plans to turn the civic museums of Lecce and Brindisi into community presidia, with an experimental action aimed at migrants and refugees from the provinces of Lecce and Brindisi who, together with the operators employed by the Castromediano Museum in Lecce and the Ribezzo Museum in Brindisi, as well as students from the University of Salento, will be involved in the co-design of new visiting routes within the museums. The initiative is certainly not bizarre to those who know how to work in museums: the civic museums of the two Apulian cities are redefining their routes and, since, as we read in the project presentation, “museums cannot continue to be islands but must become nodes of a relational system, [....] open, in tune with what surrounds them, functional to a context that has changed,” and since a community is made up of different subjects who with their differences enrich society, it was thought to involve refugees and migrants (also part of the local community) in the operation. Migrants and refugees who, moreover, will be properly trained and, the presentation further states, “also prepared to become ’mediators’ to the heritage of the two museums.” To get this information, simply log on to the website of the Italian Refugee Committee, where the project is presented in full detail.

From the above, some simple and trivial considerations can be drawn. The first: there is no migrant stealing jobs from Italians, much less are there unskilled migrants getting skilled work instead of the Italians who have sweated to earn it. In fact, this is a special project of inclusion, which sees the museum as a meeting place and community garrison: since a community is also composed of migrants, it would have been, if anything, much more senseless to see them excluded from operations. The second: migrants will not be guides, because the professions of museum guide and tour guide in Italy are subject to certain rules that cannot be overridden even by inclusion projects. If anything, migrants will work alongside museum operators to act as mediators, to illustrate the heritage of Lecce and Brindisi to other migrants, perhaps newly arrived and unfamiliar with Italian. Third, this is a project financed with a special fund, so it makes little sense to ask that the money earmarked for the project be used to hire staff (staff expenses are part of current expenses).

In conclusion, the only thing that should really be ashamed of (besides the grammar and spelling errors of those who say “Italians first”) is the fact that it is never possible to talk about integration without someone stepping in to spread instrumental news, half-truths, useless scaremongering. Instead, it would be a case of starting to welcome any project that promotes the integration of newcomers. After all, it is the intolerant people themselves who are the first to rant about migrants’ alleged unwillingness to integrate. So who better than they should take action to ensure that integration projects succeed in the best possible way?

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