‘White slaves’: labor, whiteness, and settler colonialism in Italian East Africa (1935-1941)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the context of settler colonialism the immigration of white workers has generated a complex network of dynamics between race, labor, and whiteness. The intertwining of these three concepts can be better understood by analyzing them together, as interconnected tesserae of the same mosaic. Italian East Africa is the perfect case study. In a few years this settler colony was the site of a peculiar migratory wave by Italian workers: the phenomenon, rarely seen elsewhere in these proportions, was first encouraged by the authorities as an outlet for national unemployment, but it soon became clear that economic contraindications far outweighed the advantages. Furthermore, the presence of unskilled white workers constituted a threat to the settler social order, characterized by a strictly hierarchical racial distinction. While anxiety over their presence grew among the settler bourgeoisie, the authorities then moved from State-sponsored immigration to the compulsory repatriation of unskilled workers, to police raids for internment and expulsion of those who were unemployed. This case therefore demonstrates how unskilled white labor’s uncertain whiteness jeopardized the workers’ possibility of being part of a settler society in which race and class were closely connected.