Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame [Paperback]

During a period of heightened global concerns about the movement of immigrants and refugees across borders,Migrant Anxietiesexplores how filmmakers in Italy have probed the tensions accompanying the country's shift from an emigrant nation to a destination point for over five million immigrants over the course of three decades. ?ine O'Healy traces a phenomenology of anxiety that is not only present at the sociopolitical level but also interwoven into the narrative strategies of over 30 films produced since 1990, throwing into sharp relief the interface between the local and the global in this transnational era. Starting with the representation of post-communist migrations to Italy from Eastern Europe and subsequent arrivals from Africa through the controversial frontier of Lampedusa, O'Healy explores topics as diverse as the configuration of migrant labor, affective surrogacy, Italian whiteness, and the legacy of Italy's colonial history. Showing how contemporary filmmaking practices in Italy are linked to changes in the broader media landscape, O'Healy analyzes the ways in which both Italian and migrant filmmakers are reimagining Italian society and remapping the nation's borderscape.

?ine O'Healy is Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola Marymount University. She is editor (with Katarzyna Marciniak and Anik? Imre) ofTransnational Feminism in Film and Media.

This is a cutting-edge and ambitious project that fills a crucial lacuna in migration screen studies in the Italian context. O'Healy prompts readers to think in important ways about how race, nation, ethnicity, gender, borders, nativity, and citizenship are represented in cinema. This is a timely and important contribution.

Migrant Anxieties makes a truly outstanding contributionto contemporary Italian Film Studies and to understandings of the multiple effects of the global phenomenon of human displacement.

Professor O'Heals9