The protest in Milan's Chinatown and the Chinese immigrants in Italy in the media (2007–2009)

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the representational strategies in key texts across the media that concern the protest in Milan's Chinatown in April 2007 and Chinese immigration to Italy during 2007–2009. My focus is to analyse the rhetorical presentation and ethnocultural approach in these media. The protest is the first major violent one by a single ethnic minority group against the police authorities in contemporary Italy. Following the protest, in April 2007 a sequential order that links violence, gender bias, racism, ethnicity, illegality and incommunicability was quickly constructed in mainstream and alternative Italian media. Chinese immigrant and pro-immigrant Italian media questioned its interpretive validity to varying degrees. Moreover, an ethnocultural approach was widely applied to represent the Chinese immigrant community in Italy, whether from the perspective of Italian outsiders or that of Chinese insiders. I focus on how the processes of ethnogenesis and ethnocentrism were employed to educate Italian viewers about the Chinese immigrant culture. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the media have functioned as means of politico-cultural persuasion, intercultural pedagogy, and actual and imagined socialization between Italians and Chinese immigrants during 2007–2009.