Emergenza abitativa: una prospettiva di razza, genere e classe

The household is usually understood as the reflection of the surrounding world, the unit of measure for social changes and in which class, race, and gender differences are constructed and reinforced in conformity with the outside world. Homeplace has a precise political role as "a site of resistance", where to build self-identity and cultivate bonds and affection when the space to build resistance and community is missing outside its walls. When such a fundamental right as the right to housing and such a place that should represent security are denied, the inequalities and fragmentation of society come out, showing the failure that the current globalized capitalist system of exploitation is leaving behind. Furthermore, considering the recent proliferation of security and anti-poverty laws, the development of housing facilities, and the urban transformation of cities, it is undeniable that in the housing emergency there is a strong racial component that is systematically ignored, or at least not addressed. In the case of racialized women, even when the right to housing is guaranteed, the home and the domestic environment become the imaginary to which they are associated and in which they are confined: from access to a salary often limited exclusively to care and housekeeping work, to stereotypical and discriminatory representations and narratives related to gender and class, they undergo a process of confinement and oppression even more than white women. This thesis aims to analyze the housing emergency from a race, gender and class perspective, highlighting the manner in which representations and political actions fuel each other and how the intersection of these levels of oppression lead us to deal with both what remains of Italian colonial past today, and with what meanings the "postcolonial" assumes in Italy. Namely, the work starts investigating how the construction of race and national identity in the Italian context have historically been shaped to the political needs of the moment, underlining how race has always been a crucial aspect of Italian politics, society, identity and culture. Contextually, to support certain scientific and political theories on race, a very specific figure of womanhood had to be delineated and the eugenic definition of these roles as natural within the home and family environment had and still have the function of controlling the racial composition of society. The historical intersection of these oppressions and representations suggests that it would be unavailing to analyze gender violence without talking about racism. From these premises, the last part of the work will focus on the case study of the housing emergency in Turin, analyzing how race is still a pervasive component in the orientation of public policies, discourses and actions and how the repercussions of these systemic discriminations are especially evident for racialized women struggling with dwelling. Retracing different urban encounters of living the margins and experiencing the household, it emerges how dwelling sometimes becomes a way of responding to institutional violence and marginalization, challenging in this way broader structural levels of social injustice. The postcolonial as a method of analysis allows to trace a continuity between a wider historical, political, cultural framework and the current proliferation of borders and consolidated hierarchies, recognizing the systematicity of race, class and gender oppressions.