CULTURE AND MIGRATION

Preface Migration, voluntary and non-voluntary, is always at least painful. People go away –for a while? for months? years? for good?– from their families, their friends, their own way of living, their traditions, their cultures – the latter, in the broad sense, as the anthropologists see it, that is: all the elements that constitute people’s every day life, as significant or insignificant they may seem. They enter a foreign to them country (or more countries), fearful for their lives and their families’ lives (if they are refugees) or, in any case, desperate and worried about what the future might bring to them. And they have to go on, living a new life, in a place they almost always know nothing about, a place where a smaller or bigger part of their future will take place. And they have to be adapted to this situation. Will they? Should they? Would that mean that they will have to give up their cultural identity, forget their own traditions, be oblivious of their past? Perhaps not. Probably not. It depends on people – them and the others. It depends on the structures of the host state. It depends on the will – or not – of the local people. It depends on the will – or not – of the refugees/migrants. Prejudices, hostility (because of the unknown), skepticism, and so on, and so forth, are often the reactions of both the local people and the refugees/ migrants. Respect of culture(s) might be an (even“the”) answer. The research works of this book try to prove – successfully, I believe – that culture can be a medium for social integration. Respect of the intangible cultural heritage of the refugees/migrants would mean respect of their own traditions, of their own way of living, absolutely necessary to them, since, as it is mentioned, “the intangible cultural heritage moves along with its displaced bearers, who often use it to address the complex social, economic and psychological shocks that they experience”. On the other hand (or, at the same time), organizing cultural activities in which refugees/migrants may participate, and presenting culture(s) in museums, in erudite and clever ways, may very well help both the local people to understand the fears and the worries of the refugees/migrants and the latter to adapt themselves to the new cultural space in which they are going to live for