There are no homes for foreigners in Turin: the complaint and appeal of a clinician at the Fanon Center
I am writing to you as a citizen, a doctor, and a psychotherapist working at the Fanon Center. I am writing to you because I am fed up, outraged, and disgusted by trying to treat social ills that could be prevented. I am writing to you because, when faced with certain situations brought to me by my foreign patients, I am ashamed to be Italian and I am at a loss for words to comment on what is happening in the world we inhabit. Because I believe that, to protect my patients’ health, it is necessary to speak out publicly about what is brought to me in the private setting of each session. Because I think that, ultimately, what is happening is the responsibility of all of us and that, if we truly wanted to, things could be changed.
I am writing to you because I am desperately looking for a home (a two-room apartment) for two of my patients, but as is the case for many foreigners right now, finding a place to rent is practically impossible.
I met Céline and Amara a few years ago. Both are from West Sub-Saharan Africa and have brought with them terrifying stories, which in some ways unite them and which perhaps led them to meet and become friends. They were forced to flee to Europe to survive—literally—compelled to leave their little girls behind in Africa. When I first met them, they conveyed to me the extreme suffering and despair of having lost all contact with those who were caring for their daughters. After months and months, both managed, through indirect means, to reestablish telephone contact with the girls’ caregivers. Fortunately, the girls are safe. Both women are asylum seekers; they are unable to find work until they secure a job for a few dozen euros a day as fruit pickers in the fields of Saluzzo. Since they are required to stay in Turin—to remain in the reception program—for several months, they wake up at 5:00 a.m. and return home at 10:00 p.m. They persevere, even though life has tried to break them in every way. They manage to scrape together that precious money to send to the person caring for their daughters, who is in need. However, they are paid by check. They do not have a bank account and there is no way to cash it. They would be entitled to open an account to cash the check simply by presenting the receipt of their asylum application. They are assisted by skilled social workers, but every bank they approach tells them it cannot be done. Some ask for an ID card, which is in fact unnecessary, but they cannot obtain one because, due to the Salvini decree (later repealed by the Constitutional Court), they cannot obtain residency. And so it goes on for months… and you cannot imagine the helplessness one feels when trying to find words to make sense of something that seems to make no sense… and that in some ways is almost more inexplicable than the deep psychological and physical wounds suffered in their country of origin and during the journey. Try for a moment to put yourself in their shoes!
After months and months, we convince an employer to pay one girl in cash, and the other manages
to open an account at “Banca Etica” (an ethical bank sensible to migrants need).
A few years pass. Céline and Amara are granted political asylum. Both have been working for some time under good contracts and would also benefit from the municipality’s integration measures (payment of six months’ rent), as well as guarantees covering twelve months’ rent in the event of eviction1. They’ve been looking for a two-bedroom apartment together for months, waiting to be reunited with their daughters, because both of their temporary housing arrangements will end around mid-October, but it was impossible to find a house!
Every agency they contact says there is nothing available. But if an Italian person walks by a few minutes later, miraculously there are buildings available. The worst experience was recounted to me by another patient of mine, also of African origin. He too works, has a degree in philosophy, and speaks Italian well—so much so that on the phone they don’t realize he’s a foreigner and tell him they have housing available for him and his family. But when he mentions that he is from, the agency representative asks if the country is in Asia. He replies, “No, it’s in Africa.” The agency representative, confused, then asks, “Well, do you have white or black skin?”
Can people really be that brazen! He obviously replies that he is black. The call ends quickly. Fifteen minutes later, the woman calls back saying that unfortunately the housing is no longer available. A friend of my patient, however, stops by the next day and is told that that housing was available!
Another young man I’m helping, from Turkey, a university student seeking asylum due to his participation in the protests against the Erdogan regime in Gezi Park, tries to open a Postepay card (Visa prepaid card) or a bank account at the national post office (“Poste Italiane”) in order to receive a donation from Frantz Fanon Association (at that time I had not enough money for food), while a paid work internship will have started soon. He is turned away by no fewer than five post offices! In some, the clerk handing out the forms even tells him it’s not possible and sends him away at the entrance. The staff let him speak, but they too dismissed him quickly, despite the fact that he had a document prepared by his lawyer in hand, which cited both a circular from the ABI (Italian Banking Association) and a written response from “Poste Italiane” regarding a similar past request, stating that he is entitled to open at least a basic account. But to no way!
However, when he is accompanied by a volunteer from the Fanon Association, he is given an appointment with the manager, who tells him that in theory it is possible, but these accounts can only be opened at a branch located in Reggio Calabria—with which he is still in contact to finalize basic accounts from about six months ago!
It’s enough to drive anyone crazy… even those without mental health issues. Here, too, we’ll resolve the issue with “Banca Etica”.
These aren’t isolated cases. It’s an epidemic. While following my patients’ cases, I’ve had to deal with the City of Turin’s Foreigners’ Office, which reported to me that for several dozen people with permanent contracts paying around 1,000–1,200 euros a month, they haven’t been able to find any rental housing solutions.
All these things have two names: racism and structural violence. The first requires no explanation. The second is a concept developed by Paul Farmer, who explains that violence against certain minority groups—such as migrants in this case—does not necessarily require some active, visible form of action (like asking about skin color to get a home!!), but occurs in a gradual, indirect manner, through small acts of violence that are often not individually recognizable as such and are obscured by the ambiguity of certain procedures or laws. It is a form of violence rooted in the symbolic and social structures that enable the production and normalization of oppression, marginalization, need, and dependence. If one of those postal workers had stood up, slapped my patient, and kicked him out while saying “go back to your country,” it would have been a crime; people might have come to his defense; the whole thing could have been reported… whereas with so many small, invisible blows—where often, as in Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil,” people are “simply” following orders—there
seems to be no evil, even though the blows are probably even harder.
All of this is scandalous to me and often affects my patients’ suffering more than the many historical wounds they carry with them. I am writing this short piece to denounce all of this and try to do something.
To remain silent and still is to make oneself an accomplice to what is happening, to the violence taking place before our very eyes, as well as to that occurring in the “concentration camps” located in Libya and in our own country, which we call CPR (“Centri di Permanenza per il Rimpatrio” – immigration detection centers).
What can be done?
- If you know anyone willing to rent a home to people who are not white, wealthy, and Western,
please let me know (jean.aillon@gmail.com). - We should organize and mobilize as civil society to protest against all of this. The housing
issue right now could serve as a unifying force for joint protest and advocacy.
This is, of course, a complex issue, where what is critical—more than ethnicity or skin color—is the situation of poverty and social hardship faced by people who often find themselves unable to pay rent. In my view, there is an urgent need for public action that, on the one hand, provides landlords with guarantees against potential losses from tenants in default (both foreign and Italian, of course), provided certain income criteria are met. At the same time, incentives should be developed to facilitate renting to people in difficult circumstances. Concurrently, properties that remain vacant beyond a certain period of time should be subject to higher taxes. Finally, projects could be launched to enable organizations that assist migrants during the reception process to better support them during the post-reception phase as well.
Anyone interested in getting involved should fill out this form. If we get enough people, we could
organize a meeting to discuss it together. Who knows…
Jean-Louis Aillon
Medical Doctor, psychotherapist, and Adlerian psychoanalyst working at the Frantz Fanon Center
- For more information: http://www.comune.torino.it/locare/ ↩︎