Plural Ghetto. Phaswane Mpe’s "Welcome to Our Hillbrow" (2001), Neill Bloemkamp’s "District 9" (2009) and the crisis in the representation of spaces in post-apartheid South Africa

As Phaswane Mpe’s novel "Welcome to our Hillbrow" (2001) convincingly shows, the crisis suffered by post-apartheid ideological discourses is intimately related to a crisis in the representation of spaces. As a matter of fact, the demise of the apartheid regime of racial segregation has not led to a completely new spatial organization, producing, rather, a multiplicity of boundaries which range from the apartheid model of the township to newly constituted “migrant ghettos” such as Hillbrow, in the heart of Johannesburg. While South African spatiality is interrogated by Mpe’s novel though issues such as inter-African migration, AIDS and persisting forms of prejudice and racism, a comparison between Mpe’s novel and Neill Bloemkamp’s blockbuster movie "District 9" (2009) hints at the permanence of corporate violence as a major cause for this political and economic failure, by connecting it to a global scenario

Review of Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam.

Review of Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam

Review of A History of Silence by Lloyd Jones

Review of A History of Silence by Lloyd Jone

Rosa Benéitez Andrés, José-Miguel Ullán. Por una estética de lo inestable

Review of the book José-Miguel Ullán. Por una estética de lo inestable by Rosa Benéitez Andrés.Recensione del libro di Rosa Benéitez Andrés José-Miguel Ullán. Por una estética de lo inestable

The Economic Impact of Migration: Productivity Analysis for Spain and the United Kingdom

Increased internationalization over the past 20 years has meant that labour has become increasingly mobile, and whilst employment and earnings effects have been extensively analysed in host and source nations, the implications for firm and industry performance have been largely ignored. This paper explores the direct economic consequences of immigration on host nations’ productivity performance at a sectoral level. We consider its impact in two very different European countries, Spain and the UK. Whilst the UK has traditionally had a substantial in-flow of migration, for Spain, the phenomenon is much more recent. The paper provides an overview of the role played by immigration on per capita income, highlighting the importance of demographic differences. We then go on to analyze the role of migration on productivity using two different approaches: i) growth accounting methodology and ii) econometric estimation of a production function. Our findings indicate that migration has had very different implications for Spain and the UK, migrants being more productive than natives in the UK but less productive than natives in Spain. This may in part be a function of different immigration policies, particularly related to the skill requirements on entry, but also in part a feature of the host nations’ ability to ‘absorb’ foreign labour.Key words: migration, productivity, industries

Epidemic Management via Imperfect Testing: A Multi-criterial Perspective

Diagnostic testing may represent a key component in response to an ongoing epidemic, especially if coupled with containment measures, such as mandatory self-isolation, aimed to prevent infectious individuals from furthering onward transmission while allowing non-infected individuals to go about their lives. However, by its own nature as an imperfect binary classifier, testing can produce false negative or false positive results. Both types of misclassification are problematic: while the former may exacerbate the spread of disease, the latter may result in unnecessary isolation mandates and socioeconomic burden. As clearly shown by the COVID-19 pandemic, achieving adequate protection for both people and society is a crucial, yet highly challenging task that needs to be addressed in managing large-scale epidemic transmission. To explore the trade-offs imposed by diagnostic testing and mandatory isolation as tools for epidemic containment, here we present an extension of the classical Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model that accounts for an additional stratification of the population based on the results of diagnostic testing. We show that, under suitable epidemiological conditions, a careful assessment of testing and isolation protocols can contribute to epidemic containment, even in the presence of false negative/positive results. Also, using a multi-criterial framework, we identify simple, yet Pareto-efficient testing and isolation scenarios that can minimize case count, isolation time, or seek a trade-off solution for these often contrasting epidemic management objectives

Variazioni della voce. Intervista con Rosaria Lo Russo

This interview with Rosaria Lo Russo focuses on her recent poetic and essayistic production – including her translation of Anne Sexton’s The Book of Folly –  in order to underline the crucial importance of voice in her approach to poetry, performance and translation. This red thread – as well as the one concerning female authorship and several others – can be retraced in Lo Russo’s essays about Dante, Pirandello, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, in her longstanding translation work on Sexton’s poems and in her latest poetry collections, Anatema and Unamedea.This interview with Rosaria Lo Russo focuses on her recent poetic and essayistic production – including her translation of Anne Sexton’s The Book of Folly –  in order to underline the crucial importance of voice in her approach to poetry, performance and translation. This red thread – as well as the one concerning female authorship and several others – can be retraced in Lo Russo’s essays about Dante, Pirandello, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, in her longstanding translation work on Sexton’s poems and in her latest poetry collections, Anatema and Unamedea

Paola Bacchetta – Laura Fantone (eds.), Femminismi queer postcoloniali. Critiche transnazionali all’omofobia, all’islamofobia e all’omonazionalismo

Review of the book Femminismi queer postcoloniali. Critiche transnazionali all’omofobia, all’islamofobia e all’omonazionalismo edited by Paola Bacchetta and Laura Fantone.Frutto di una lunga tradizione dialogica e al tempo stesso conflittuale tra posizionamenti femministi diversi – lungo le linee di separazione tracciate un tempo tra “Primo”, “Secondo” e “Terzo Mondo”, oggi tra “Nord” e “Sud” globali – Femminismi queer postcoloniali è un testo prezioso sia per il dibattito accademico sia per il dibattito culturale e politico più generale. Pur restando ancorata a un linguaggio non di rado ostico e affrontando tematiche che potrebbero sembrare di pertinenza strettamente specialistica (come ad esempio la “queerfobia” nei movimenti nazionalisti indù, nel saggio di Paola Bacchetta), l’antologia di saggi sembra poter valicare i confini della produzione accademica per proporsi come utile strumento interpretativo per una molteplicità di situazioni culturalmente e politicamente urgenti

Review of A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie edited by Ernest N. Emenyonu

Review of A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie edited by Ernest N. Emenyon

Andrea Corrado – Igor Mariottini, Cinema e autori sulle tracce delle migrazioni

Review of the book Cinema e autori sulle tracce delle migrazioni by Andrea Corrado and Igor Mariottini.Nel dibattito pubblico così come, inevitabilmente, nel senso comune, l’interpretazione della storia post-unitaria italiana alla luce delle migrazioni – prima come flussi in uscita, poi sia in entrata che in uscita – ha innescato la costruzione di un preciso discorso retorico, alimentato da pubblicazioni come L’orda. Quando gli albanesi eravamo noi (2005) di Gian Antonio Stella