Meritocracy beyond the Anglosphere

‘I was really tired about so many things in Italy. … The things I was tired about were, fundamentally, the lack of possibilities to realize myself, to feel part of the community despite all the things I did for it [pause]. The issue of the lack of meritocracy in Italy, the fact that you are constantly considered a foreigner, no matter what. And so I saw a future without possibilities, right? Also, being young, the difficulties were higher. So … the only way I could possibly do something was leaving Italy.’

Eric moved to London when he was in his mid-20s, after finishing a bachelor’s degree (BA) in Italy. This is how he explained his motivations at the start of our interview. We had just started lunch in a Chinese restaurant in central London, and I was still adjusting the recorder on the table. He mentioned Italy’s “lack of meritocracy” as an obvious “issue”, one that did not require too much explanation to another Italian migrant. Like Eric, I moved to England after the 2008 economic crisis and, when I moved (in 2010), I similarly associated Britain with a more meritocratic culture and a more modern society, as opposed to Italy’s nepotistic culture, corruption and lack of opportunities for self-realization. However, despite our similar exposure in Italy to narratives of meritocratic Britain, our biographies differed significantly. Eric immediately stressed that he felt like a “foreigner” and not “part of the community” in Italy. Later in our conversation, everyday and institutional racism emerged as central to his experience of growing up in Italy as a Black Italian, who – having migrant parents – could not apply for Italian citizenship until he was 18. These experiences were not the sole motivation for his migration, but they were important enough to be flagged at the start of his conversation with a white co-national who was doing research on post-2008 Italian migrations.

This book investigates how meritocratic ideology travelled from core regions of global capitalism, such as Britain and the US, to its Eastern and Southern European peripheries. It explores how meritocracy, in the context of post-austerity Italy, reproduced long-standing narratives of Southern European backwardness and how these narratives were experienced in unequal migrations marked by racial, class and gender inequality.