This book recreates the world of peasants who streamed into late-medieval and early modern northern Italy to carry containers of wine, brenta. It focuses on Saint Alberto, who was a wine porter in the city of Cremona, which imported workers in the thirteenth century - Fernand Braudel called them 'indispensable immigrants'. Alberto's legend is a mix of significant and recurring forms of behaviour - after finishing his daily work as a field hand, kneeling before a cross to say his prayers. It is from the annals of Reggio Emilia, Piacenza, Parma, and Cremona that one can glean information about Alberto. Alberto's transformation from historical non-person to celebrity began within a few days of his burial. Claims of his frequent praying in Saint-Mattia derived from the news of his healing miracles, and the book presents factual accounts of his posthumous reputation. The ecclesiastical authorities of Cremona consigned the chapel of Saint-Alberto to the wine porters of their city. The book deals at length with brentatore, the Italian wine porter, and brenta. It is from the scatological imagination of Teofilo Folengo and other works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that one gets a glimpse of how wine porters were perceived by others. The book looks at who orchestrated Alberto's cult as campaigning for one's own sainthood is really rather unseemly.
Immigrant England, 1300–1550 provides a comprehensive account of the identities,
nationalities, occupations, families and experiences of first-generation
immigrants to England during the later Middle Ages. It addresses both official
policy and public responses to immigration in the age of the Black Death, the
Hundred Years War and the early Tudor monarchy, revealing how dramatic changes
in the English economy fundamentally affected the levels of tolerance and
discrimination allowed to immigrants.
Drawing on data unique in Europe
before the nineteenth century, the book provides both a quantitative analysis of
immigrants and a qualitative assessment of the reception that these incomers
received from English society at large. Accounting for 1 per cent or more of the
population of England in the fifteenth century and coming from all parts of
Europe and beyond, immigrants spread out over the kingdom, settling in the
countryside as well as in towns, and in a multitude of occupations from
agricultural labourers to skilled craftspeople and professionals. Often
encouraged and welcomed, sometimes vilified and victimised, immigrants were
always on the social and political agenda in late medieval England.
Whilst the arrival of people from the constituent parts of the British Isles was clearly a considerable feature of life across medieval and early modern England, it was only part of the wider process of migration into England across this period. Of the 5,106 aliens taxed in 1440 whose nationalities can be readily identified, some 38 per cent (1,936) came from elsewhere within the British Isles and the Channel Islands. However, this leaves almost two thirds of immigrants taxed in 1440 originating from further afield – and some considerably further. The
within England, regional identifiers were also used, so that immigrants could be named as ‘Normans’, ‘Bretons’, ‘Gascons’ and so on. Similarly the term ‘Dutch’ denoted a linguistic rather than a political status, and might cover people who in other tax returns were labelled as originating in the many principalities of the Low Countries and western Germany. These ambiguities help to explain some of the cases of inconsistent identity found in successive returns to the alien subsidies. In Lincolnshire, for example, John Browne of Bourne was recorded with no nationality in
Immigrants as Outsiders in the Two Irelands examines how a wide range of
immigrant groups who settled in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland
from the 1990s are faring today. It asks to what extent might different
immigrant communities be understood as outsiders in both
jurisdictions.
Immigrants as Outsiders in the Two Irelands brings together
research on a wide range of immigrant communities. The book provides a sharp
contemporary account of integration that situates migrants’ diverse experiences
of exclusion within a detailed overall picture of the range of ways in which
they have succeeded socially, economically and politically in building their
lives in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Chapters include analyses of the specific
experiences of Polish, Filipino, Muslim, African, Roma, refugee and asylum
seeker populations and of the experiences of children, as well as analyses of
the impacts of education, health, employment, housing, immigration law, asylum
policy, the media and the contemporary politics of borders and migration on
successful integration.
Immigrants as Outsiders in the Two Irelands offers
a unique cross-border perspective on migrants on the island of Ireland today
which situates the Irish experience within the wider politics of migration
control, Brexit and integration policy. This book is a significant and timely
analysis suitable for students of migration at any level in a wide range of
social science disciplines.
The position of immigrants – individuals who move permanently to a foreign country – in society is influenced by the structures and policies of the receiving society, as well as the characteristics of immigrant families themselves. International research has highlighted the crucial role of schools in helping immigrant-origin children and young people to settle into the new society. 1 Like all other children, immigrant-origin children spend a large part of their day at the school, where they encounter students and teachers from the
Much of this book is taken up with studying the European immigrants who are readily visible in the official records as having a presence in England between 1300 and 1550. As we have seen, English jurors, administrators and politicians used a well-established range of labels to describe these incomers, ranging from the readily recognisable labels of ‘French’, ‘Scottish’, ‘Irish’ and ‘Icelander’ to the more generic forms of ‘Dutch’ and ‘Teutonic’ and the various descriptors used for Iberians, Italians and ‘Greeks’. In that they were
The category of ‘alien’ ‘Alien’ is a word that has strong legal connotations today, since it is often used in relation to the non-naturalised immigrant. Until the thirteenth century, however, the term did not have any particularly clear implications in law. This is generally explained by the fact that, for the previous two hundred years and more, England was ruled by people of Scandinavian and French birth or descent. Since many of these had interests outside England, it was impossible to have a legal system
4 Immigrant punk: the struggle for post-modern authenticity Ivan Gololobov I know, I’m stranger in your land I know, ladies and gentlemen I know, I am coming here to stay And take your jobs away.1 Punk is often regarded as a subculture essentially based on the principles of authenticity.2 In most general terms, following Taylor, authenticity is understood as an ability to break external impositions and to express one’s own Self.3 The reverse of this term is coined by Adorno who regards inauthenticity as a situation where ‘something broken is implied’; he
4 Immigrant songs: racial politics Hunter and the hunted: The Beast Must Die A camera mounted on a helicopter flying over mountainous terrain picks out a lone figure running away into the distance. The soundtrack features funky music – all wah-wah guitar pedals, rapid-fire hi-hats, and stabbing brass. The film cuts to shots of the helicopter pilot wearing sunglasses, scanning the terrain below. We see more hunters in a white Land Rover, chasing the man on the ground. It becomes clear that this man is black, and that he is being chased by white men. He runs into
