Performing political dissent in a Roma camp: from infrapolitical ‘urban violence’ to activism

In this paper I draw on six years of ethnographic fieldwork among
Roma camp dwellers in Turin, Italy. I examine two different forms of resistance to housing segregation carried out by the inhabitants of the Roma camp of via Germagnano. By focusing on three symbols of territorial stigmatization whose obtrusive presence characterises the daily life of camp dwellers (the dump, the kennel for stray dogs and the police), I firstly expose everyday forms of resistance enacted by the camp dwellers, mostly reduced in media representations to simple ‘vandalism’. Secondly, I explore the occasional alliance between the inhabitants of via Germagnano and a group of anti-racist (white, middle-class) activists and performers. While in mainstream discourses only the voice of the latter is perceived as legitimate, this paper builds on Scott’s notion of infrapolitics to provide a reading of Roma expressions of anger as a radical questioning of an urban order based on unofficial apartheid.