‘The Family and the ‘Economic Miracle’: Social Transformation, Work, Leisure and Development...

Contemporary European Historyhttp://journals.cambridge.org/CEH

Additional services for Contemporary EuropeanHistory:

Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here

The Family and the ‘Economic Miracle’: SocialTransformation, Work, Leisure and Development atBovisa and Comasina (Milan), 1950–70

John Foot

Contemporary European History / Volume 4 / Issue 03 / November 1995, pp 315 - 338DOI: 10.1017/S0960777300003507, Published online: 12 September 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0960777300003507

How to cite this article:John Foot (1995). The Family and the ‘Economic Miracle’: Social Transformation, Work,Leisure and Development at Bovisa and Comasina (Milan), 1950–70. ContemporaryEuropean History, 4, pp 315-338 doi:10.1017/S0960777300003507

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CEH, IP address: 137.222.114.245 on 26 Sep 2013

The Family and the 'Economic

Miracle': Social Transformation,

Work, Leisure and

Development at Bo visa and

Comasina (Milan), 1950—70JOHN FOOT

The Family in the 'Capital of the Miracle'

To be able to set up a family, to consume. (F. Alberoni)1

Traditional histories of the Italian 'Economic Miracle' have concentrated on twophenomena: the factory and migration. The family has occupied a position ofsecondary importance, being treated as of lesser interest than 'other' arenas ofeveryday life, in particular the workplace. Those who have eulogised the miraclehave underlined the massive effort and sacrifice of millions of workers in the late1950s and early 1960s. Those who oppose the 'ideology' behind the boom havelooked to the latent conflicts (and problems) produced by unplanned economicdevelopment - frictions which were to explode in 1968. The reality was a compli-cated combination of both these interpretations. Some took the road of oppositionto the system, many millions lapped up the values of the boom, most were affectedin some way by both 'world-views'. The relationship between the family and theboom was a two-way one. The Italian family had as much effect on the 'miracle' as the'miracle' did on the family (in much the same way that mass internal migration wasboth a cause and a consequence of the boom). Each shaped and moulded the other invarious and crucial ways. The family was Janus-faced, 'both a custodian of traditionand an agent of change'.2

A study of the role of the family in this period allows us to escape from thesedebates. We can finally discover what the boom was really like for some of thosewho lived through it, for those who were the 'producers' of the miracle. Inaddition, a localised study of two different quarters of Milan — one an 'old',

1 'Mutamenti e istituzioni nell'Italia tra il i960 e il 1970', in L. Graziano and S. Tarrow, eds, La crisiItaliana (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), i. 252.

2 T.K. Hareven, 'Recent Research on the History of the Family' (thereafter Hareven, 'RecentResearch'), in M. Drake, ed., Time, Family and Community. Perspectives on Family and Community History(thereafter Drake, Time) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 30.

Contemporary European History, 4, 3 (1995), pp. 315—38 © 1995 Cambridge University Press

316 Contemporary European History

traditional quarter, the other a modern public project — both on the extremeperiphery of the city, can fill in many of the gaps in our knowledge about this keyperiod of modern Italian urban history. Research on the family is also a primaryindicator of the role and influence of the state during a period of rapid andunplanned development. The family provided both a buffer against and an alter-native to the state in a number of central areas — social services and welfare, 'freetime', economic rationalisation, solidarity. Our two neighbourhoods had differentrelationships with the state — one was an area without public housing, the other astate-backed estate - and the links and 'absences' coming from the public spherereflected upon the lives of residents in different ways. Some asked for 'more state'(in the form, say, of 'public order' or transport), some called for a different state(more and better services), others (the majority?) ignored the whole issue andconcentrated on the 'internal' well-being of their own immediate family.

For the moment some conclusions can be sketched out. First, the family played acentral and increasing role in a number of key areas of everyday life — especially theuse of free time. Secondly, at least two separate 'families' vied for prominenceamong certain groups of workers. 'The factory' and fellow workers constituted a'family' in a number of ways. The amount of time spent at work and on the waythere limited drastically the amount of free time at home. For many, the 'factory-family' was as 'central' as that found within the four walls of their apartment. Fornon-'workers' — housewives, the old, the young — the family was far more pivotal.In the new, peripheral and isolated housing estates built to house the human rawmaterial of the miracle, The Home was the centre of everyday life. Finally, I wouldlike to stress the complexity of the situation in Milan. Even within an estate likeComasina the differences between blocks of houses and even between children'splaygrounds were immense. The type and make-up of the family differed fromhouse to house and from street to street. The section on Comasina will draw outsome of these complexities.

Over the last thirty years, these neighbourhoods have been transformed. Bovisa(like the rest of Milan) is now almost completely an area dismessa (disused area)without factory workers. Comasina has been eaten up by the urban sprawl and is nolonger a peripheral area in the same sense. However, there are some similaritiesbetween 1964 and 1994. In 1964 nearly 90 per cent of Comasina families possessed atelevision. Over half the residents on the estate spent most of their free time insidethe home. Was (and this is a provocation) 'Berlusconi' (or his political and culturalproject) already hegemonic, in the form of Rischiatutto (an Italian television quizprogramme) and the RAI (the Italian State Television company), among largenumbers of Milanese families?

My first task is to describe the two neighbourhoods which form the basis of thisarticle. The section on urban life is based at Comasina, while that on work is centredin Bovisa. Both 'quarters' are to be found on the north-east periphery of Milan.Bovisa is what has been called an 'old' peripheral neighbourhood. A village until the1880s, Bovisa's growth was the fruit of Italy's first industrial revolution. A workers'quarter and a 'red' quarter, Bovisa has always been closely associated with manufac-

The Family and the 'Economic Miracle' 317

Table 1 Population and work at Bovisa-Dergano (Zone 7), igji

Residents Jobs in the zone Relationship

Totals

Type of Work

42,102

ManufacturingIndustry

Sector

29,759

Construction

70.6*

Commerce

Jobs 20,482 1,411 3,742(77.3% of total).

Source: Facolta di Archittetura del Politecnico di Milano, C.I.S.S., Centro InformazioniStudi e Servizi a sostegno delle lotte sul territorio, Milano: dati informativi per le zone didecentra-

mento (Milan: CLUP, 1976), 50-1.* This was the highest figure for the city apart from central Zone 1, which had and has

very few residents.

turing industry and with a certain kind of 'Milanese work-ethic'.3 During the

boom, Bovisa's industries experienced rapid growth — especially the chemical and

electro-mechanical sectors — and thousands either travelled to the zone daily to work

or moved there permanently. Bovisa has always had a high relationship between the

jobs within the quarter and the zone's population. Yet, despite periods of hectic

change and growth (the zone's population reached 44,391 in December 1967),4

Bovisa has retained its 'community', its 'isolation' - in a good sense - from the city

centre, its 'urban village' feel. Bovisa is also an area with a strong cultural tradition.5

Comasina presents us with a clear contrast to Bovisa. Begun in 1953, Comasina

became the biggest public housing estate in Italy at its completion in 1958-60.6 A

modernist, 'futuristic' estate on the very edge of the city boundaries (it was

3 'Operosita milanese'. 4 Ecco lagrande Milano (Milan: Nuova Mercurio, 1970).5 The film director Luchino Visconti spent part of his childhood near Bovisa and shot scenes from

Rocco e i suoifratelli (Rocco and his Brothers, i960) in the zone. His great uncle was Carlo Erba, whosechemical factory still stands there. Giovanni Testori wrote about the area in his most famous Milanesenovel, II ponte delta Chisolfa (Milan: Garzanti, 1958). The film director Ermanno Olmi was brought upin Bovisa and writes warmly about the neighbourhood, 'Milano, la solitaria. Olmi ricorda la citta chenon c'e piu', La Repubblica, 10 Sept.1993. In 1992, when Osvaldo Bagnoli was made manager of thefootball team Inter Milan, much was made of his return to his Milanese roots. Bagnoli was born inBovisa and his mother still lives there. La Cazzetta dello Sport, a paper renowned for its accuracy, sent areporter to the zone to investigate Bagnoli's humble origins. They found friends ready to pay homageto Bagnoli's 'simplicity'. One story was emblematic. On finding his mother asleep, Bagnoli, instead ofgoing to a five-star hotel in the city centre, spent the night in Bovisa's local hotel. 'We from Bovisa',said another friend, 'are like that'. S. Vernazza, 'Tra la gente dell'Osvaldo', La Cazzetta dello Sport, 22Sept.1992. Of course, much of this has the air of self-fulfilling myth about it. Bovisa was never as 'red'as it has been painted — over 25 per cent have always voted for the Christian Democrats - but theneighbourhood was seen in the city as the typical example of a 'red' zone caught up in the boom. For theconcentration of industrial work at Bovisa see Table 1.

6 M. Grandi and A. Pracchi, Milano: Guida all'architettura moderna (Bologna: Zaninchelli, 1980),260. The estate was made up of 83 buildings and 11,000 rooms.


Table 2 Birthplaces of Residents at Comasina, 19641

Birthplace%

MenWomen

Milan

28.927.7

Provinceof Milan

8.68.4

Lombardy,Piedmont,Liguria

11.818.3

CentralItaly,Veneto

22.421.6

South,Islands

2521.6

Abroad

3-32.4

I ILSES, Ricerca sull'integrazione sociale in cinque quartieri di Milano. 3. Appendice metodolo-gica e risultati generali (Milan: ILSES, 1964).

separated by a 'zone of countryside' from Affori and Bovisa),7 Comasina was thefirst 'self-sufficient' neighbourhood built in Italy.8 A massive project (it coveredover 320,000 square metres),9 it was based around subways, long concrete balconiesand a space-age church. Most of the first inhabitants of Comasina were Italianimmigrants from the early 1950s and this was one of the first quarters to be studiedby the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (ILSES) under the auspices oftheir impressive 'Social Integration at Milan' research project of the early 1960s.10

Comasina was a classic example of what the sociologist Cavalli called, in 1964, a'new' quarter (in fact he cast doubt on whether it could be called a 'quarter' at all) -one without its own community, and where that community was to be created, orso the town-planners believed, artificially, through the construction of churches,social centres (there were three at Comasina, none at Bovisa), shops and bars.11 TheIstituto Autonomo Case Popolari di Milano (IACPM, the public housing authority), inits 'brochure' for Comasina, claimed that the estate provided an 'environmentwhere [the worker's] personality can enrich itself through relations and contactswith other workers'.12

By January 1962 there were at least 10,650 people on the estate, grouped in 2,200families; 32.45 per cent of the heads of families were from the south of Italy, butnearly 80 per cent had been in the city for more than ten years. These were not

7 G. Pellicciari, Strutture di relazione e vita sociale net quartieri della periferia di Milan. Monografie diquartiere: Comasina-Baggio (thereafter Pellicciari, Strutture) (Milan: ILSES, 1964), 1.

8 See V. Castronovo, 'L'lACP di Milano dal 1908 al 1970 nel quadro della politica edilizianazionale', in Case popolari: urbanistka e legislazione, Milano, IQ00-1970 (Milan: Edilizia Popolare, 1974),78; G. Bai, ed., Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari Milano igoS-igSj: dal lavatoio al 'solare' (Milan: Rjzzoli,1984).

9 C. Villa, L'autosufficienza dei Quartieri Residenziali', Edilizia Populare, Vol. 21, no. 2 (1958), 18.10 It would have been very difficult for the most recent immigrants to obtain public housing. The

IACP usually required evidence of three years' residence before accepting any applications for housingand there was a long waiting list. T. Amadei, 'II sud a Milano', // Ponte, Vol. 19, no. 7 (1963), 921.

II La citta divisa: sociologia del consenso e del conflitto in ambiente urbano, 2nd ed. (Milan: Giuffre,1978), 94-107. Cavalli looked at the new quarters of Isolotto at Florence and Forlanini in Milan. A. Iosamade a similar distinction between the 'historic periphery' and the 'new periphery' in his / quartieri diMilano (Milan: Centro C. Perini, 1971), 23.

12 IACPM, Quartiere Autosufficiente Comasina, 2nd ed. (Milan: IACP, 1958), 10. The original plansfor Comasina catered for a cinema with 750 seats, a library and a hotel, which was built, but later burneddown.


p'aygrou

Nursery School

Piano Tupinl Houses

: INA-Casa Houses •_.

Fig. 1 The Comasina estate (detail)


recent immigrants, but those who had arrived at the start of the boom, in the late1940s and early 1950s (see Table 2). Within the estate there were clear socialdivisions. Different blocks were used to house various types of residents, andtensions built up between those from the more 'respectable' parts of the estate andthose who were from the lower end of the social scale.13 A 'community' spirit wasnever really constructed at Comasina, with serious consequences for some of thosewho came to live there from the late 1950s onwards.

The Family at Comasina in the Early 1960s

All the data tell us . . . very little about the lifestyles of the families, about the radical changeswhich those houses imposed on traditional models of behaviour, about the dramas whichpeople lived through in the new quarters. . . talk about the 'trauma' of the first months wascommonplace. (M. Casciato)14

Size

The average family size at Comasina in 1964 was 4.04, far higher than the averagefor Milan at the time, 2.9.15 How can we explain this difference? Firstly, we haveseen that many of the residents at Comasina were immigrants from the South —witha tendency towards bigger families. Secondly, large numbers of Comasina residentswere members of families who based their income around a working-class 'family-head' — with, at that time, a similar tendency towards larger families. Poorerfamilies were bigger families, for a whole series of sociological, cultural andhistorical reasons. A quarter of those in the INA-Casa block had come frombaracca-type (shed/pre-fabricated) accommodation and 44 per cent from attics orcellars. Only 15 per cent had previously lived in 'normal' accommodation.16

Thirdly, the average age at Comasina was relatively high. More families atComasina had reached and passed what was at that time the 'normal' age formarriage and child-bearing. Finally, the average figure for Comasina maskedimportant differences between various blocks of flats in the quarter — built underdistinct schemes and housing very diverse types of families. The Piano Romita blocks(for the most disadvantaged families, the ex-homeless, evicted and ex-baraccati), hadan average family size of five,17 those run by the IACPM reached four, those of theINA-Casa/CESCAL were just over four, and those of the Piano Tupini were far

13 For these four-way divisions, and the complaints about residents in the 'poorest' blocks, manyof whom had been re-housed from baracche or attics, see Pellicciari, Strutture, 5—8.

14 'L'abitazione e gli spazi domestici' (thereafter Casciato, 'L'abitazione'), in P. Melograni, ed., Lafamiglia italiana dall' Ottocento a oggi (thereafter Melograni, Lafamiglia) (Bari: Laterza, 1988), 567

15 ILSES, L'inlegrazione sociak in cinque quanieri di Milano, IV: // quartiere Comasina (thereafter //quartiere) (Milan: ILSES, 1964), 2. For the issues of integration and migration at Milan see my'Migrazione e il "miracolo" a Milano: Bovisa e Comasina negli Anni Cinquanta e Sessanta', StoriaUrbana, July-Sept. 1995 [forthcoming].

16 Ibid., $n. For a history of the INA-Casa schemes and the laws relating to housing at Comasinasee Casciato, 'L'abitazione', 565—6.

17 // quartiere, 2.

12

50

154218

84402 2

882

2 0

Totals: 600-100

2

8-325.636.3146.63.61-31-30-330-33


Table 3 Family Size at Comasina, 1962

Family size Nos. of families %

1

2

345678

910

11

(Average - 4.04)

Breakdown according to a survey of 600 people. From G. Pellicciari, Strutture, 2.

smaller — averaging 2.99, a figure close to that of Milan itself.18 This is one of thefirst pointers towards the profound internal divisions and tensions within thequarter, which will be clarified below. Each block charged a different rent andeach scheme was clearly aimed at a certain type of family.19 Even the physicalcharacteristics of the blocks were distinctive. The Piano Tupini flats were farsmarter and better maintained than those of the Piano Romita, described as 'belowstandard' by a council report.20 The estate was a 'mixed-development', an attemptby the public authorities to blend social classes and housing forms within anorganic project.21

Structure

The first and perhaps biggest difference with present day family structure at Milanwas the near absence of single 'families'. Out of 600 people interviewed, only twelve(or two per cent) lived alone.22 Today's figure for Milan is closer to 30 per cent.23

However, once again there are other explanations for this statistic. First, as we haveseen, these were not recent immigrants. Many had had time to 'call' their families toMilan (the migration 'chain' was a key form of family re-union). Secondly, it wasvery difficult (if not impossible) for single people to find space in a state housingscheme such as Comasina. Applications to the IACPM, for example, were made by

18 Ibid., i .19 T h e rents were : Piano Romita , 1.5,000; INA-Casa L io ,ooo; Piano Tupini ( IACP) , L40.000 (a year

per r o o m ) . Ibid., 6 - 9 .20 Ibid., 6n and 7.21 For similar policies in the U K see J . Burne t t , A Social History of Housing: 1815-1970 (thereafter

Burne t t , Social History) (Methuen : L o n d o n , 1978), 2 7 9 - 8 1 .22 // quartiere, 2n. ^ G. Lucchelli, 'Una citta al singolare', La Repubblica, 6 Aug. 1994.


Table 4 Family Size and Structure in the Milanese neighbourhoods ofComasina,Baggio Vecchio and Perrucchetti, 1962

ComasinaBaggio VecchioPerrucchetti

Family size

more than four (%)643338.6

One2

7.87.6

Family structure

Nuclear72.274.272.2

Extended26.81820.2

Elaborated from G. Pellicciari, Strutture, 22

'families'.24 Priority was also given to families with children; hence the highnumbers of large families (see Tables 3 and 4 for the full breakdown). Those with sixmembers or more accounted for over 13 per cent of the total number of families. Itmay be assumed with some confidence that most of the 'singles' were widows orwidowers. Nobody at Comasina had chosen to be single.

Comasina's demography was the opposite of that of contemporary Milan. Veryfew pensioners (only 2.3 per cent of those in the INA-Casa blocks were over sixty)and large numbers of children (60 per cent of the residents were under thirty and 43per cent were under twenty)25 lived on the estate. Although Comasina was to someextent an exception, as we have seen, the immense demographic changes in thethirty years that have passed since the 'miracle' at Milan are stunning. In classicalterms, the vast majority of these families were nuclear — 80 per cent being made upof either two parents and their children or two parents alone.26

The 'Playground War'. Order, Cleanliness and Inter-house Tensions atComasina

It is clear, then, that the internal differences between blocks of houses at Comasinawere extremely significant for the daily lives of the residents of the quarter. Giventhe high numbers of children on the estate, such tensions inevitably spread to their

24 Ist i tuto A u t o n o m o per le Case Popolari della Provinc ia di Mi lano , Direz ione Affari General i ,Ufficio Statistico, Caratteristiche e necessity delle famiglie in attesa di un altoggio da parte dell''istituto: rapportopreliminare (Milan, IACP, 1961).

25 // quartiere, 3n. These figures indicate that t he local role o f grandparents , wi th in the family and aschild-carers , was m i n i m a l , in cont ras t with that played in the classic working-class c o m m u n i t i e s (andespecially by grandmothers ) studied by, for example, Peter Wi l lmot t and Michael Y o u n g in the late

1950s and early 1960s, see their Family and Kinship in East London (thereafter Wi l lmo t t and Y o u n g ,

Family), 2nd ed. (London: Penguin , 1986).2 6 See Tab le 4. This tendency has been reinforced over the last thir ty years. See L. Balbo, Stato di

famiglia. Bisogni. Privato. Collettivo (thereafter Ba lbo , Stato) (Milan: Etas Libri, 1976), 97, for the 1970s,

and M. Barbagli, Provando e riprovando. Matrimonio, famiglia e divorzio in Italia e in altri paesi occidentali(thereafter Barbagli, Provando) (Bologna: II Mulino, 1990), for the 1980s. However, at the height of theboom and migration pressure towards Milan, many families, decided to rent out rooms or beds toimmigrants or family members. // quartiere, 13. Some organisations estimated that around 200 familieshad been 'called' by relatives and friends to sub-let flats or rooms in the blocks at Via Teano 36 at


normal, 'everyday' activities — such as the use of playgrounds. According to the1964 report, the green spaces around the Piano Tupini houses were 'very welllooked-after' and were 'ordered and clean'. Vandalism in the zone was blamed onthe children from the Piano Romita houses. These children were known as the'foreign legion' at Comasina. The 'white-collar classes' from the richer blocks, itwas noted, were different from the other families in that their children were alwaysaccompanied to the playgrounds by their parents. We can assume that this was notthe case for the families from the Piano Romita blocks. Photographs from theIACPM archive show children playing on the estate without parental presence. The'white-collar' parents appropriated specific space for their 'type' of child — notablythe playground at Via Teano 21 where they could mix with 'children coming fromthe same class of families'. The children from Via Teano 36 were also accused ofhaving different 'habits', of being used to 'living in an uncivilised way', 'aggressiveand badly educated' and not 'adapted to living together with the others'. Some-times these 'differences' led to physical confrontation. The 'white-collar' familiesused force, or the threat of force, to secure closed play areas for their 'type' of child.'Sometimes it seems that they [the Piano Romita children] have been chased awayfrom the playgrounds at Via Teano, n.o and Via Teano, n.21'. (see Fig. 1 for thelocations of the blocks and playgrounds).27 The way that children and parents playtogether in public is an important indication of social class, status and culturalnorms. When Martha Wolfenstein watched French children in a public park in1947 she noticed that the adults did 'not seem interested in friendly overturesbetween children of different families'. Toys were rigidly separated along propertylines and not shared. 'In such little daily experiences', concluded Wolfenstein, 'thechild learns from the attitude of the adult to carry over into the world outside thehome the feeling of separateness and the need to guard against possibly dangerousintruders'.28

What was the state doing at Comasina, and was it succeeding? The intention wasto construct a mixed-class community, based around different estates (Tupini,Romita etc.), which was to be a model of the social peace and 'well-being' broughtabout by economic growth. Harmony was the aim. The reality, as these small butnot insignificant incidents showed, was quite different. The state had failed in its'blueprints' for places like Comasina (not least in their supposed 'self-sufficiency'),and future projects were to be far more 'one-class' affairs — although with no moresuccess.

Comasina. Ibid. For the importance of boarders and lodgers and kinship networks during periods ofmigration see Hareven, 'Recent Research', 21—5.

27 All the q u o t e s in this sect ion a re f r o m // quartiere, 9—13.28 'French Children Take their Children to the Park', M. Mead and M. Wolfenstein, eds,

Childhood in Contemporary Cultures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 100.


A Week in the Life of a Family during the Miracle.29 Work, Leisure, FreeTime and Television

This section looks to reconstruct a typical week in the life of the 'average' Comasinafamily.30 Of course, given the internal stratifications within the estate, such a familydid not exist, so we will divide these families into two — one from the 'lower' end ofthe social scale - a Piano Romita family; and one from the 'upper' end, a Piano Tupinifamily. First, let us look at some figures common to both 'types' of families. Notsurprisingly, the majority of Comasina residents spent most of their waking hours atwork.31 But the percentage of the population classified as 'active' was only just over 50per cent. Of these, 83 per cent had a fixed post as dependent employees (48 per centwere blue-collar workers and 35 per cent white-collar).32 If we allow for the fiveper cent who worked at home, the small numbers of unemployed and those whowere self-employed, a minority of Comasina residents actually went to work everyweekday. Even at the height of the boom, the estate was at least half-full every day.The relationship of those who worked outside the quarter (12 per cent workedwithin Comasina)33 with their 'second family', the factory, will be discussed in moredetail below. Some complex and surprising conclusions have emerged from thesereconstructions of 'life' at Comasina.

Family A

'Family A', an immigrant family, lived in the Piano Romita block in via Teano.They had been rehoused from a local government-run baracca in via Jenner toComasina in 1959.34 Husband A had arrived from near Bari in Apulia in 1952, to bejoined by his wife and family in 1954. The family was large (with three childrenaged eight, six and four and the parents both aged thirty) but nuclear. Wife A spenther weekday mornings shopping within Comasina, being part of the 42 per cent ofresidents whose daily shopping needs were met within the neighbourhood. The restof a typical weekday was spent on child-care,35 cooking, cleaning and other

29 The methodology for this section is partly based upon some indications by Balbo, especially thecall to 'collect what is concrete, "daily", experienced by everyone' and to study 'the thousand tinyactivities, daily and often banal, which take place in family life, so unworthy of scientific analysis and oftheorisation that their crucial importance has actually been missed by many observers'. Stato, 3—5.

30 This r econs t ruc t ion is based u p o n three ILSES repor ts publ ished in the early 1960s: Pellicciari,Strutture; Pietro Gennaro e Associati, Risultati dell'indagine suite aspettative dei quartieri periferhi, III:Rapporto sul quartiere Comasina (Milan, ILSES, 1964); and // quartiere. These reports were based onextensive interviews, historical research and surveys at Comasina, and allow the reconstruction, incombination with other material, of these 'family-types'.

31 See Balbo, Stato, 109. 32 Pellicciari, Strutture, 19. 33 // quartierie, 49.34 For t he cond i t ions in these baracche at via Jenner in the early 1950s (which were fairly decent for

this type of accommodation, each 'house' having a toilet, running water and electricity), see Italy,C a m e r a de i D e p u t a t i , Atti della Commissione Parlamentare di Inchiesta sulla Miseria in Italia e sui mezzi percombatterla, VI : Indagini delle delegazioni parlamentari. La miseria nelle grandi citta ( R o m e , 1953), 174 a n dpassim.

35 There are very few indications about how child care was organised by families at Comasina, butwe do know that the number of nurseries was inadequate. The first communal nursery on the periphery


household tasks. However, wife A was not socially 'isolated'. She had access tokinship and friendship networks within the Piano Romita block.36 Exchanges of'practical' services were common. She was, however, spatially isolated. The familypossessed no telephone and was forced to rely on the solitary public telephone,meant to serve over 10,000 people on the estate. The state and local government hadbuilt the estate, and moved the people in, but had not provided services (nurseries,adequate schools, transport, roads) conducive to a normal, integrated life for itsresidents. Wife A only left Comasina for rare and non-essential shopping trips. Shehad not been to the centre of Milan in the previous month.

In the evening, after the arrival home of her husband, who had no car and usedpublic transport to get to and from work on a building site towards the south of thecity, further time was spent on the evening meal, in conversation, perhaps inarguments and watching television. At the weekends, the family would go for awalk in the quarter, or visit relatives or friends within or outside Comasina, butmost of the time would be spent at home. Husband A would go out to the local barto play cards about twice a week, and every Friday night. The rest of the week,during his rare waking hours at home, he would 'rest'.37 Family A had not been tothe cinema in the last month (in common with 83 per cent of Comasina residents)but watched television at least once a day for a number of hours. The three childrenplayed in the playgrounds and streets in the quarter after school, often withoutparental assistance. Occasionally, family A would visit one of the social centres onthe estate.38 Family A had a refrigerator, but no washing machine and no vacuumcleaner. They voted for the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and husband A was anon-active party member. The inside of their flat was clean and orderly. The familyate their evening meal in the kitchen, together, and in the dining room on Sundaysand special days (birthdays, Christmas, Easter). Family A represented one 'extreme'of the situation at Comasina in 1962, covering about half of the families in thequarter, and especially those at the lower end of the social scale in the Piano Romitaand INA-Casa blocks.

of the city was opened at Baggio in 1955, the second at Affori in 1959! G. Petrillo, La capitate del miracolo.Sviluppo lavoro potere a Mitano, 1953—1962 (thereafter Petrillo, La capitate) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1992),81. B y 1963 only 3,000 ou t o f a possible 60,000 chi ldren w e r e a t t end ing the th i r ty nurseries (forunder- threes) in Mi lan . Ibid., 429. W h e n Alfa R o m e o w o r k e r s w e r e asked in the early 1970s about thegreatest needs in their area, nurseries came top o f the list. V. T a v o l a t o and L. Zanuso , 'Le condizioni divita nella sorieta ' (thereafter T a v o l a t o and Zanuso , 'Le condiz ioni ' ) , Classe, n o . 8 (1974), 167. It can beassumed that chi ldren w e r e cared for b y a combina t ion o f the m o t h e r , relatives and friends. T h e lattertype o f exchange was m o r e c o m m o n in the Piano Romita blocks at Comas ina .

36 For these n e t w o r k s see // quartiere, 53.37 For the tiredness of commuting workers during the boom see the survey of Alfa Romeo

workers, Tavolato and Zanuso, 'Le condizioni', (33 per cent spent their free time at 'rest', 172). For adescription of the 'workers' trains during the boom see L. Bianciardi, La vita agra (Milan: Garzanti,1962), 59-60; G. Bocca, Miracolo all'Haliana, 3rd ed. (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980), 84-90; and Petrillo, Lacapitate, 5 8 - 9 .

38 The attendance at the three social centres on the estate reflected the social divisions at Comasina,ILSES (i.e. one centre was mainly for Piano Romita families, another for those from the Piano Tupiniblocks and a third for those in the INA-Casa flats). Pellicciari, Strutture, 36.


Family B

Our second family, family B, was made up of husband (thirty-three), wife (thirty-one) and two children (nine and seven). The family were Milanese and had movedto Comasina from a flat, which they had shared with the parents of husband B, nearthe Pirelli factory at Bicocca. Family B was far more spatially integrated into the lifeof the quarter and the city than family A. The 'family-head', a technician at Pirelliand an active member of the Christian Democratic Party (DC), was involved in anumber of associations at Comasina. All the family were dedicated church-goersand well known to the local priest.39 They possessed a wide range of consumerdurables: a television, which they watched for fewer hours than Family A,40 a car (aFiat 600), a telephone, a refrigerator, a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner. Amaid came in once a week to clean the house. The wife of family B41 was an activemember of the social centre at Comasina linked to the Church. Their two childrenattended the recreational section of the same centre. In addition, the whole familymade frequent trips outside Milan - to the lakes or the mountains — and into the citycentre. All the family shopping was done outside Comasina (in common with tenper cent of Comasina families). There were frequent trips to the cinema.

Yet, unlike wife A, wife B was socially isolated within Comasina and especiallywithin the Piano Tupini block. Unlike wife A, wife B had no networks of kinship orsolidarity to call among her neighbours. Wife B was one of the 25.3 per cent ofwomen on the estate who admitted to (and boasted of?) having no friends at all atComasina. Spatial isolation and status had been traded for social isolation andsolidarity.

What can we conclude from our constructed life-histories of Family A andFamily B? First, the issue of 'isolation' - usually applied en bloc to all Comasinaresidents42 — was extremely complicated. There were different types of isolation,and one type could preclude another. Family B had a positive relationship with thecity of Milan and was able to use its services to their advantage. Family A saw thecity as something it had little access to, and they rarely even visited the town centre(hence the phrase, often used on the Milanese urban periphery, expressing theintention to 'go to Milan'). Yet, Family A could count upon important supportnetworks among their neighbours and friends at Comasina itself. Family B, despiteits 'active' role in local associations, was not part of a local 'community'. Familymembers did not want to 'interact' with families like Family A and hankered afterfurther social and especially spatial separation from blocks like that of the Piano

39 For the genesis and the activities of C h u r c h organisations at Comas ina see // quartiere, 15—18, 27and 29.

40 O t h e r statistics for television watch ing can be found in ibid., 60. O n l y 3.4 per cent o f the 450men interviewed never watched television.

41 I have not included the figure of the 'working mother' here, but at Milan in 1959, 41 per cent ofwomen of working age had an extra-domestic job. Petrillo, La capitale, 50—1. Just over 30 per cent ofMilanese families had more than one member at work. Ibid. ,54.

42 See, for example, the blanket judgement of A. Iosa and A. Nascimbene, Dall'accentramento a\decentramento amministratiuo. L'esperienza di Milano (Milan: Centro Culturale Perini, 1976), 222.


Romita (as we saw with the 'Playground War').43 Family A (Romita), our 'workingclass family' was isolated spatially but integrated socially. Family B (Tupini) wasmore spatially integrated in the quarter and the city, but more socially isolated fromfellow residents, and more involved in the associational life of the quarter. Yet, bothfamilies still based most of their 'free time' around the home, and especially aroundtelevision.

Finally, the Piano Romita blocks, with their community-like social networks,represented an exception on the 'new' urban periphery of Milan in 1962, and onethat would be extremely difficult to find in today's city. The transferral en bloc ofbaracca families from the same areas of Milan had left their social solidarity to someextent intact. With time, the Family B model took control. Family B represented thefuture of Milan, Family A the past. In a survey of Alfa Romeo workers, carried outaround ten years after that at Comasina, a mere two per cent of intervieweesdeclared that they had 'stable relationships with friends or neighbours'. It wasextremely difficult for the state to cater for both these 'types' of family at the sametime. They could not 'siphon-off the more desirable parts (the associationism offamily B, the networks used by family A) of each 'family-type' to create an idealmodel, and conflict between the two models created difficulties for the wholeComasina 'project', distracting residents from the harmonious lives which had beenplanned for them.

This article will now examine in more detail two aspects of public and privatefamily life at Comasina in 1962: television, and the possibility of collective actionand the importance of the home.

The Home and Television

With television, slowly but surely the doors started to close: at a certain time the village isdeserted and the television aerials are like many signs of the divisions between differenthouses. (G. Manzini)44

With a television you save money. I don't go out any more in the evenings, I don't go to thebar, I stay at home. And it is good that the children can see so many things and come to knowthe world and learn. (Europeo, 1964. interview with 'an immigrant')45

Television was already central to the home life of Comasina residents in 1962.Nearly 90 per cent of families possessed a TV and there were over two thousand setson the estate.46 This was a time when the second state channel had only just started

43 On visiting the estate in 1994, I noticed that wire fences had been constructed around thegardens of the (ex-) Piano Tupini homes, a logical outcome of the tensions present thirty years earlier.

44 Una vita operaia (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 130. This is an oral history of a working-class familywho lived in the Falck Village close by the Falck metalwork factory at Sesto San Giovanni on theperiphery of Milan.

45 C i t e d in A . Grasso , Storia della televisione italiana (Mi lan , Ga rzan t i , 1992), 23 . T h e i m m i g r a n t ' spayments for his television amounted to more than his rent.

46 535 families ou t o f 600 had a television set. T h e figures for the o ther Milanese quar ters surveyedwere l o w e r - Perrucchet t i , 7 6 . 5 % ; Barona 7 2 . 5 % ; B a g g i o 6 6 . 8 % ; Forlanini 8 2 . 5 % - // quartiere, 8on., aswere those for Italy in general . In 1965 on ly 49 per cent o f Italian families had a television. P . Ginsborg ,


broadcasting, a mere eight years after the birth of Italian television. The early periodof collective television, in bars or clubs, was coming to an end at Comasina.47 In thesurvey of bar life in the quarter, researchers in the 1960s found a desolate situation.Of the seven bars surveyed at Comasina, all of which had a TV for their clients, inonly one bar was the set actually being watched by more than three people.48 Whenquestioned, 70 per cent of the interviewees claimed to have watched TV the previousday.49 Over half of the working men at Comasina had watched for more than fourhours in the previous week.50

Journalists such as Piero Ottone, keen to denounce the downside of the boom,and Paolo Pavolini, joked about the presence of a television in even the most squalidof immigrant accommodation. Telephones were far rarer.51 The emulatory aspectsof consumerism during the boom were not difficult to identify.52 L'Espresso wrote in1964 that 'those who lived in the "under-Italy", the socially segregated, achieved infront of the screen a sort of magic equality with the rest of Italy: and this was con-firmed . . . by the families who did not have even shoes or furniture [but] went intodebt to buy a television.53 Another useful testimony comes from a Milanese factoryworker, signora Benati, a widow, who confessed that her television was 'really myonly company, in the evenings, when I come back from the office and after a longhard day I can finally enjoy a bit of peace'.54 Outside the city's boundaries, in the flat,grey and barren hinterland occupied by thousands of immigrants, television was also'important, in terms of the organisation of free time'.55 Television was seen as aninter-class form of entertainment, adaptable 'to the tastes of all types of families'.56

There was a certain puritanical streak in criticisms of television in the early 1960s(criticisms which abound in today's Italy) and this is not the place to decide whetherTV was a good or a bad development for Milanese families. We can merely affirm itscentrality, in terms of'free time', for a range of different social groups.57 The very

Storia d'Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi. Societa e politico ig^-ig88 (thereafter Ginsborg, Storia) (Turin,Einaudi, 1989), 326; the comparable figure for the UK in 1963 (for private homes) was 82 per cent,B u r n e t t , Social History, 274.

47 // quartiere, 90.48 In this par t icular bar , seventeen people w e r e w a t c h i n g a film, // quartiere, 73 . In another bar , o f

the th ree 'wa tchers ' , one was the son o f the ba r -owne r and ano ther a solitary 20-year old. Ibid., 83, andsee also 86.

49 Pellicciari, Strutture, 32. *> Ibid.51 T h e Alfa survey found that 85 per cent o f workers had a television set and only 20 per cent a

te lephone. Tavola to and Zanuso, 'Le condizioni ' , 168.52 See P . Pavolini, 'I coreani di Milano' (thereafter Pavolini, 'I coreani'), // Mondo, 29 Jan. 1963

(and the accompanying pho to ) , F. Di Bella, 'II televisione in soffitta', in A. Perroni, ed., Cronache dellaimmigrazione siciliana a Milano (Milan: C O I , 1965), 48-9 , and 'Per comprarsi il televisore il p r i m o debi todegli immigra t i ' , Corriere della Sera, 18 April 1962, which described a family at Tur in wi th a televisionand Li37,000 of debts wi th local food shops.

53 C i t ed in Grasso, Storia, 23 .54 ' c ip ' , ' Q u i Par la te Voi ' . , (Sig. Benati), Collaborazione, Vol . 13, n o . 10 (1962), 3.55 G. Majorino, 'II tempo libero e gli immigrati. I rapporti tra i vari gruppi', in G. Pellicciari, ed.,

L'immigrazione nel triangolo industriale (Milan: F ranco Angel i , 1970), 314.56 Ibid.57 T h e r e seems little evidence for the ILSES claim that television's appeal was far s t ronger a m o n g

the w o r k i n g classes. // quartiere, 107.


nature of television altered the nature of the use of leisure time within the home.Unlike the radio, television demanded total attention, and represented the 'firstsuccessful attempt to bring a centre of news and entertainment into the houses of thepeople'. It could be watched on one's own, but in 1962 at Comasina it was above allthe family unit which 'used' television, a medium which invaded the 'daily space' oftheir homes.58 Television increased sociability within the family, as leisure activitieswere no longer so divided by gender or age — it brought the family together aroundthe ever more centralised set. But it also led to greater social isolation within theneighbourhood and the city, as the state beamed its images into millions of homesacross Italy.59

The Possibility of Collective Action. A 'new amoral familism'?

Why did so few of the residents of Comasina join associations (apart from politicalparties, where the membership was higher than average)60 on the estate? Why wascollective action so weak in a neighbourhood with so many problems linked topublic services? These were the questions that researchers tried to answer in the early1960s. They came up with two different sets of answers. The first dealt withstructural divisions on the estate, class friction between the different blocks andcultural contrasts between immigrants and non-immigrants. The second set ofanswers was far more subjective. According to a series of responses to questionsabout collective action, individuals placed family needs above those of otherorganisations. As ILSES put it (after examining over 600 interviews), manyComasina residents privileged

the family, and family life, against other groups and associations in general. A choice inwhich the contrast between security (the family) on the one hand and uncertain 'threat' onthe other, is implicit ('to live a quiet life', 'don't look for problems', 'in the family there iseverything; outside there is only nuisance and trouble'). Finally, the lack of concrete andimmediate advantages is noted as an obstacle to the membership of and participation inassociations.61

Was this a new, urban, developed form of the 'amoral familism' proposed by theAmerican anthropologist Edward Banfield as the explanation for the rural South'sproblems in the late 1950s?62 Before looking at this question, it is important to

58 O . Calabrese, 'I mass media tra sviluppo dell ' informazione e organizzazione del consenso' in N .Tranfaglia and M . Firpo, eds, L'eta contemporanea, 7, 2, La cultura (Turin: U T E T , 1988), 634—6. T h e ideathat the city of Milan was at the vanguard o f this transformation is reinforced by the sections o ntelevision in A. Pizzomo's Comunita e razionalizzazione. Riceria sociologia su un caso di sviluppo industriale(thereafter Pizzorno, Comunita ) (Tur in : Einaudi, i960). At R h o (just outside Milan) in the late 1950sonly very small numbers o f families possessed a television (42 and 193—4) and the t ime spent watchingthe television was far lower than that at Milan in 1962. Ibid., 279-80.

59 For the debates and the literature concerning sociability and isolation see D . McQua i l , MassCommunication Theory: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 1992), 228-9.

60 // quartiere, 51-2. 61 Ibid., 104.62 E. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: The Free Press, 1958). For the

extended discussion (and bibliography) around the issue of'amoral familism' see D. De Masi, ed., Le basimorali di una societa arretrata (Bologna: II Mulino, 1976).


define 'familism', using Paul Ginsborg's recent re-elaboration of the concept, whichis preferable to Banfield's historically specific and prescriptive concept (and dropsthe highly controversial 'amoral' aspect). For Ginsborg, familism exists whencertain 'forms of family privatism triumph' and the family members 'exclusivelypursue the interests of the family, ignoring the needs of groups outside of therestricted family circle and refusing to build a relationship with the state based uponreciprocal obligations.63

Here, no definitive conclusion can be reached about the residents of Comasina,but we can draw out some of the contradictions in the accusations of 'familism'.First, the 1960s research assumed that associationism was 'good' and family life'bad'. They asked the question 'why do you not join associations?' instead of themore interesting 'why should you join?'. Secondly, the most active association-goers at Comasina were from middle-class families, yet the classic 'middle-classmodel' presumed a primary focus on the home and privacy. Finally, a more positiveargument can be made in favour of the 'closure' within the family universallycondemned by these earlier researchers. In the face of an inefficient and faceless stateunable to meet the basic needs of its people, familism was one obvious and logicalresponse.

Most contemporary accounts of the modern family have concentrated on theidea of isolation (a term which almost always has negative connotations, just as'community' is nearly always used positively): isolation from other families, iso-lation from the urban environment and the city centre, isolation from a socialnetwork of kinship and support. As we have seen, these aspects of the urbanexperience during the boom were very important, for large numbers of families andespecially for many women, during the 'miracle' at Milan. However, it would be anerror to see this 'isolation' as a purely negative phenomenon. A trade-off was beingmade in every family in favour of the positive values gained through the closurewithin the home — privacy, security, comfort, extra space — values which should notbe underestimated for families coming from baracca within Milan or tight-knitcommunities in other parts of Italy, particularly the South.64 Furthermore, themove to an 'isolated' family home implied an obvious and transparent leap in status.In her study of Pakistani families in Manchester, Pnina Werbner found that families(and especially male 'heads of families') willingly traded the community life of theinner city for an isolated flat in the more well-to-do urban suburbs, where 'oftendays go by without a knock on the door'.65 A conscious decision was made in

6 3 'Famil ism' in P. Ginsborg , ed., Stato dell'Italia (Milan: II Saggiatore B r u n o Mondador i , 1994),

79; see also idem, 'La famiglia italiana oltre il privato per superare Pisolamento' , in ibid., 284—90.64 See the classic w o r k of W i l l m o t t and Y o u n g , Family, and the analysis in C Saraceno, 'La

famiglia: i paradossi della costruzione del privato' (thereafter Saraceno, 'Famiglia ') , in P. Aires and G.

D u b y , eds, La vita privata, V: // Novecento (Bari: Laterza, 1988), 185-227 (Eng. trans., 'The Italian

Family: Paradoxes o f Pr ivacy ' , in A. Prost and G. Vincent, eds, A History of Private Life, V: Riddles of

Identity in Modern Times (Harvard Universi ty Press: X X , 1991), 451—501 (thereafter Saraceno, 'Italian

Family ' ) .65 P. Werbner, 'Avoiding the Ghetto: Pakistani Migrants and Settlement Shifts in Manchester', in

Drake, Time, 255. See also Pizzorno, Comunita, 184, and Ginsborg, Storia, 330-331.


Table 5 Friendship and space at Comasina, Baggio Vecchio and Perrucchetti, 1962

'No friends' -MaleFemale

'Friends in the Quarter'MaleFemale

'Friends in Other Quarters'MaleFemale

Baggio Vecchio

I I

23

56.952.9

16.215.8

Comasina

15.825-3

34-531-1

39-536.5

Perrucchetti

16.225.1

24.525-7

39-435-3

'No friends''No visit in the lastmonth''No telephone call in thelast week'

19-564

60.2

21

49

35

Elaborated from G. Pellicciari, Structure, 37.

Table 6 Friendship and contacts at Comasina, Baggio Vecchio and Perrucchetti, ig62

Baggio Vecchio Comasina Perrucchetti

2043

30

Elaborated from G. Pellicciari, Strutture, 37.

favour of status and privacy.66 Richard Sennett argued provocatively against 'thetyrannies of intimacy' in the city. 'People can be sociable, he wrote, only when theyhave some protection from each other.'67 For Raymond Williams, this increasedemphasis on home-life was contradictory, both 'an effective achievement and adefensive response'.68 For Chiara Saraceno the typical ringhiere (long balconies witha number of flats close together) form of working-class housing in Milan led to'enforced intimacy' with neighbours who were 'constant witnesses and interlocu-tors of a family's individual most private and intimate behaviour'.69 New estatesconsciously rejected this architectural model.

66 W e should also be careful in using statistics and surveys to indicate ' isolation'. Even in situations

of extreme pover ty and anarchy, such as a Brazilian slum, researchers have discovered extensive

networks of kinship and solidarity. J . Jackson j n r and L. P. Moch , 'Migra t ion and the Social His tory of

M o d e m Europe ' , in Drake , Time, 183 (citing the w o r k o f j . E. Perlman, The Myth of Marginality: Urban

Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro (Berkeley: Universi ty o f California Press, 1976).6 7 The Fall of Public Man (Cambr idge : C a m b r i d g e Universi ty Press, 1977), 311.68 Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 2nd ed., E. Wi l l iams , ed. (London : R o u t l e d g e ,

1990), 27.6 9 Saraceno, 'Italian Family ' , 4 7 4 - 6 .


Of course, there was also isolation in a negative sense. To cite one startlingstatistic, in 1962 one quarter of all the women at Comasina admitted to having nofriends at all. Their lives were based entirely around the family, relatives and thehome. In addition, only 30 per cent had friends at Comasina. Seven out of tenwomen in the quarter had no friends in the immediate vicinity — and were forced totake a bus or the car to visit them. Given the physical isolation of Comasina suchvisits were generally rare. Forty per cent of those with friends had not seen them inthe last month. The only regular source of contact was via the telephone — if theyhad one. The element of'choice' in this form of isolation, which affected perhaps 25per cent of women and 20 per cent of men on the estate, was minimal (see Tables 5and 6).

It seems unsurprising that the estate appears to have played little part in theupheavals of 1968, unlike other neighbourhoods in the city.70 But the evidence istoo sketchy and too circumstantial to be able to draw the crude conclusion:economic miracle-isolationism-conservative politics. Familism was certainly a 'wayof life' for many on the estate. But this was a response which had deep historical,social and cultural roots. It would have required national reform of and by the state toalter the suspicions which led so many to reject collective action. These reformswere not forthcoming.

One, Two, Three Families . . . Work and The Family during the Miracle

We are all at the service of Italy and Europe . . . for us, for our families and for our country.(Montecatini [Chemical Company], Messaggio di Capodanno [New Year's Message]i960)71

The migrants who flooded into the northern cities during the 'boom' had chosen'work' as the prime mover of their lives. Many had separated themselves fromtheir families and homes to find jobs in the industrial triangle. Work and thefactory constituted a form of second family, a second 'centre of life' for manyworkers, migrants and Milanese alike.72 This 'family' resembled and even replacedthe natural family in a number of ways. Firstly, the majority of waking hours werespent at work. Social relationships were often as strong with fellow workers asthey were with the family at home. Secondly, the rituals of the factory reproduced,mimicked and sometimes replaced those of the family - such as collective eating

70 I can find no mention of Comasina in A. Daolio's study of housing struggles at Milan, 'Le lotteper la casa a Milano', in ibid., Le lotte per la casa in Italia. Milano, Torino, Roma, Napoli (Milan, Feltrinelli,

1974), 35-^5-71 Due piu Due. Periodico mensile di vita aziendale e di cultura, Vo l . 11, n o . 1 ( i960) .72 In this section I wil l b e concentra t ing on the F A C E - S t a n d a r d factory at B o visa. In 1962 the

factory employed 4,213 people (of whom 1,405 were administrative staff), more than 30 per cent ofthem women. See 'Tutti noi in cifre', Collaborazione, Vol. 13, no. 5, (1962), 4. We also have precisefigures for the number of children of these employees in 1961 — 707 under seven and 405 aged betweeneight and twelve, for a total of I , I 12. 'E.S.', 'La distribuzione dei premi ai figli dei dipendenti', ibid., Vol.12, no. 1 (1961), 11-12. I will not be looking at another crucial area of family-work contacts, the familybusiness, but for a survey see G. De Rita, 'L'impresa famiglia', in Melograni, Lajamiglia, 383—416.


(the mensa)73 and anniversaries (birthdays, length of time spent with the company,74

births, deaths were all noted and 'celebrated' by, for example, the management andemployees at FACE-Standard, the Bovisa-based telecommunications company).75

At Be/ana (Epiphany), presents were distributed to all the children of FACEemployees at a ceremony in Bovisa.76 The Sit-Siemens company gave its workers ababy's pram at the birth of a child and L 10,000 if the worker was the mother.77

Thirdly, FACE supplied a number of services which were traditionally providedfor by the family — most notably child care (FACE had its own internal nursery).Family assistance services organised by the Council were co-ordinated through thefactory.78 Moreover, the big firm organised colonie (holiday homes) for 'FACE'children (who therefore went on holiday with the children of other FACE workersand not with relatives or parents)79 and leisure activities and tourism for the workersthemselves. One employee had been on over 400 organised trips with other FACEworkers.80 Another worker spoke proudly of his 'Face Standard family'.81 A world,a 'family', challenged (or reinforced, see below) the one offered by the wife andchildren at home. 'At work', claimed one factory manager, 'I have had the mostfulfilment.'82 Certain Milanese plants took the family-work connection evenfurther, providing housing for large numbers of their employees. This was true ofFalck, Breda, ENI and Montecatini, to cite only a few examples in the city. Ofcourse, this paternalism worked both ways. Sacked workers automatically lost theirhomes. The fate of the family was organically linked to that of the company and itsindividual workers.83

Some examples of the presence of this alternative 'family' can be found inthe 'human relations' magazine Collaborazione, published by the FACE-Standard

73 'Mensa ' , Collaborazione, Vol . 12, n o . 1 (1961), 6. W i t h o u t d o u b t , the subject which took u p thegreatest t ime o f the Internal C o m m i t t e e at F A C E dur ing this per iod was that o f the mensa, Archiv ioFiom, passim. T h e r e were mense in mos t big Milanese factories. See Petr i l lo , La capitale, 146-50.

74 'I nostri Anzianissimi ' , Collaborazione, Vol . 12, n o . 12 (1961), 4. T h e club ' U n qua r to del secolo'awarded medals to those w h o had been wi th the c o m p a n y for twenty- f ive years.

75 For the anniversaries o f deaths see ibid.. Vol . 12, no . 2 (1961), 6. For b i r ths , marr iages , and deathsin worke r s ' families, ibid., Vol . 13, n o . 6 (1962), 16.

76 Here the t w o separate 'families ' — no t for the first t ime — came in to contact , 'E .S . ' , 'Ladistr ibuzione dei p r e m i ai figli dei d ipendent i ' , ibid., Vol . 12, no . 1 (1961), 11-12.

77 Petril lo, La capitale, 146.78 See 'Serv iz io sociale di fabbr ica ' , Collaborazione, V o l . 12, n o . 6 (1961), 2. M a n y factories also

organised pension schemes, discount shops for their workers, study grants, study courses and insuranceschemes against illness. Petrillo, La capitate, 146-50.

79 In 1961, for example, FACE organised two Colonie for children (aged six to twelve years) of itsemployees, one in the mountains and one at the seaside. Children with health problems were givenpriority for the holidays, which were at a very low cost (L3,ooo for a month). 'Colonie Marine eMontane', Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 2 (1961), 2. Colonie were also organised by companies such asErcole Marelli, Franco Tosi, Falck and Borletti. Petrillo, La capitale, 146-148.

80 ' r i p ' , Q u i Parlate Voi , (J. Ganassini), Collaborazione, Vol . 13, n o . 5 (1962), 2. Of ten the tripswere on Sundays. See 'Gi te domenica l i ' , ibid., Vol . 14, n o . 5 (1963).

81 'Ancora sulla " p o v e r a M i l a n o " ' , ibid., Vol . 14, n o . 2 (1963), 8 -9 .82 ' Q u i Par la te vo i ' , ibid.. V o l . 12, n o . 1 (1961), 3.83 Petr i l lo , La capitale, 148 -9 .


company.84 Of course, the idea of the factory - or the firm as a whole - as one big,happy family was crucial to the whole concept of 'human relations', where thefactory worker was an integrated and contented part of a well-oiled machine, theopposite of Marx's alienated employee. According to Collaborazione, all the workersin the factory were as one. All wanted to help the progress of the company andtherefore the nation. Inter-factory relations were just like those within the family,with the older (and wiser) members handing down experience and know-how tothe more inexperienced (and more numerous) younger workers.85 Family-vocabu-lary was common in the magazine. Hence, older workers helped new recruits:'teaching them the first ideas of metal-work, following them during their firststeps'.86 Another older employee (a widow) claimed that at work 'after many yearsI feel at home here'.87 Often the concept of the family, with the rapid increase in thesize of the FACE company, was reduced to that of the reparto (section). Thus atReparto 5861 there was a 'rectangle of space which welcomes us like a family unit',88

and at Reparto 5790 the fellow employees were described as 'co-habitants'.89 Anolder worker was seen as the 'father of the section'.90 In another section there was a'familiarity' which, it was claimed, was 'useful and necessary for the progress andthe development of our country'.91 Here we see a clear link between the values ofthe miracle and those of the family - the productive family being placed at the verycentre of the value-system of the boom.

For the FACE management, there was no conflict between the two 'families'.The tranquillity of the working life at FACE was mirrored, according to Collabora-zione, by a quiet and happy family life at home. For Giuseppe M.,

I have been married for many years, I am happy and tranquil, even if in the past with mywife we had frequent arguments because of our children. Today even these small dark cloudshave disappeared, as both my children, a son and a daughter, are married and I am already agrandfather of a beautiful baby.92

Family life could also be reproduced at work. Mothers visited their children inthe FACE nursery during working hours. It was common for two or even threemembers of the same family to be employed at FACE and meet there as often asoutside the workplace.93 Often, established workers would help relatives to get

84 A lmos t all t he b ig Milanese companies used similar magazines d u r i n g t he 1950s and 1960s.S o m e , like La Ferriera p r o d u c e d by Falck, we re sent to the w o r k e r s ' h o m e s and aimed m o r e at thefamily at h o m e than the Falck e m p l o y e e . Petrillo, La capitate, 148.

85 For an essentially negative study of 'human relations' propaganda in Italy see L. Guiotto,'Ideologia e impresa nei giornali aziendali dal dopoguerra agli anni Sessanta', Classe, no. 21 (1982),213—34, and for a more sophisticated approach, Petrillo, La capitate, 146—50.

86 ' Q u i Par la te v o i ' , Collaborazione, Vol. 12, n o . 1 (1961), 3. Giuseppe Mot tade l l i was the oldestworker interviewed; he had been at FACE for twenty-three years.

87 ' r ip ' , ' Q u i Par la te V o i ' . , (Sig. Benati), ibid., Vo l . 13, n o . 10 (1962), 3.88 'Scorci d i vi ta aziendale ' , ibid.. Vol . 13, n o . 5 (1962), 12-13 .89 Ibid., Vo l . 14, n o . 1 (1963), 8 -9 . *> Ibid., Vo l . 14, n o . 6 (1963).91 'Scorci d i vita aziendale. Filtri a Cristallo' , ibid., Vol . 14, n o . 5 (1963).92 ' Q u i Parlate vo i ' , ibid., V o l . 12, no . 1 (1961), 3. H o w e v e r , Basini d r e w a contrast be tween the

factory and the 'peace a n d quiet o f m y home ' . Ibid., Vo l . 13, no . 6 (1962), 2.93 Angelo Rossignoli's twenty-four-year-old son was also employed at FACE, ibid., Vol. 12, no. 5

(1961).


'taken on' in the same plant. FACE had this reputation in Bovisa. In Milan as awhole, it was estimated that 50 per cent of jobs were 'found' via family channels.94

The very entrance into the world of work was mediated by the family, and this'strategy' was perpetuated by the employers. Babies from the FACE asilo weredubbed 'these young and perhaps our future colleagues'.95 Falck workers weregiven 'the tacit promise that they would be taken on in place of their fathers whenthese had retired'.96 At Alfa-Romeo's two Milanese factories, a substantial minorityof workers indicated their most important friends as being fellow workers.97 Thevery fact that a worker had a post at FACE had consequences for family decision-making — about children, about marriage, about housing. A number of marriagestook place between FACE employees. For some older workers, FACE had becomea family indistinguishable from that at home. 'F.F.' wrote, in Collaborazione, thatover time: 'single events in the family link up with those of the great family ofFACE Standard: you have participated with the joy and the pain of your colleagues,you have seen them ill in their homes and in hospitals'.98

Retiring FACE employees spoke of their 'love' and 'pride' for 'my FACEStandard . . . the factory has its great soul which makes kinsmen of all those whosupport its work'. The older workers had passed this love on to the young 'whotoday are adults, and remember them as teachers and fathers'.99 Oresta Lazzaronihad no family of her own but found 'in the environment at work her family, somuch so that she feels a bit like the mother of all the girls on the section'.100 Anotherolder worker saluted all his colleagues as 'brother'.101

We should be careful in accepting these accounts as the whole story of what wenton at FACE during the 'miracle'; and it is significant that most of these anecdoteswere from older workers. During the boom, a new generation of younger workersbecame FACE employees, workers with a different and often more combativeattitude to factory life. Between 1957 and 1962 the FACE plant at Bovisa took on749 workers and 435 white-collar employees, which represented increases of 36 and45 per cent respectively. Archive information also reveals that 1,700 out of 4,300employees in i960 were young men and women.102 It could well be that the 'family'atmosphere at FACE was a description of the pre-boom company. As one olderworker put it 'we were like a family' [my emphasis].103

94 Petrillo, La capitale, 69.9 5 'La nostra copertina ' , Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no . 11 (1961), 2.9 6 Petrillo, La capitale, 148.9 7 23.9 per cent o f specialised workers and 31.5 per cent of manual workers indicated their main

friends as coming from the 'o ld ' Alfa work ing class. For the ' new ' work ing class the percentages were

10.8 and 16.3. 12.2 per cent confessed to having no friends at all. Tavola to and Zanuso , 'Le condizioni ' ,

173-5-98 'F .F . ' , ' U n saluto agli Anziani ' , Collaborazione, Vol . 12, n o . 2 (1961).99 Ibid. In fact, organisations for retired workers reinforced the family-work connection. Retired

Falck workers became falcketti, those from Alfa alfisti and so on. Petrillo, La capitale.100 'dp ' , 'Qui Parlate Voi', Collaborazione, Vol. 12, no. 7-8 (1961), 3.101 'Scorci di vita aziendale: Ancora il Reparto Complessi', ibid., 8—9.102 Archivio Fiom, FACE, F.2, B.29.103 'Qui Parlate Voi', (Giuseppe Pettinari), Collaborazione, Vol. 13, no. 1 (1962), 3.


Indeed, although there were undoubtedly 'two separate families' for some FACEworkers (and to some extent for all workers), these 'two families' overlapped in anumber of ways. First, decisions and events at work affected the whole family athome. When FACE opened a plant at Maddaloni in the South (near Caserta), manyFACE workers and managers were transferred there, either permanently or forshort periods of training. Vittorio Rossi, a leading manager at FACE, took his wifeand three children (aged eight, five and one) to the South with him and added that'talking of Anna [his youngest child]: she was born with the new factory atMaddaloni, they are twins'.104

In reality, the 'two families' were in constant conflict and made differentdemands on their 'members', most obviously over the use of time. Overtime,piecework, injuries and strikes all had serious repercussions for the lives of the 'real'family. During the boom, nearly 80 per cent of Milanese workers worked longerthan a forty-hour week.105 We can imagine the frustration of the young wife ofFACE worker Teodoro Filoseta, at home with two young children. Filosetacomplained that on returning home his wife, 'as soon as she sees me', would handover his youngest baby.106 At FIAT in Turin in the late 1950s, the rhythms andlength and intensity of the working day had serious consequences for family life.This extract from an interview with a Fiat worker is emblematic: 'I had enoughenergy for my eight hours, and that was all. I couldn't cope physically: when Iarrived home the first thing was bed. In that period I got married. . .1 no longer hadrelations with my wife, with women. I came home and went to sleep!'107

Barbagli has argued that there were more separations among working-classfamilies as compared to those of the middle classes 'because the greater difficultiesthat they met in their daily lives, at work and during their free time, finished byhaving negative repercussions on the relationships between couples'.108 PaoloPavolini wrote in 1963 that 'on Sunday mornings the sordid working class towerblocks resound with shouts, insults, swearing, furious outpourings of the tensionsrepressed for a whole week'.109

In fact, the 1950s and 1960s saw record numbers of separations among proletarianfamilies.110 In addition, the repressive and regulatory aspects of factory life in the1960s could have negative repercussions for the family at home. Women workersdenounced, in a Libro Bianco ('White Book') edited by the Fiom (the metalworkers'union), the extreme difficulty in obtaining permission to leave work even in cases of

104 ' t i p ' , ' Q u i Par la te V o i ' , ibid., Vol . 13, no . 4 (1962), 3. !05 Petr i l lo , La capitale, 54.106 ' c ip ' , ' Q u i Pa r l a t e V o i ' , Collaborazione, Vol . 12, n o . 9 (1961), 3. '1 haven ' t even go t t i m e to take

my jacket off,' added Filoseta.107 Interview with P.R. di Cuneo, 'born 1943, fifteen years at Fiat', conducted by E. Delpiano for

the Cooperativa Matraia di Torino for a project entitled 'Caraterristiche e comportamenti degli operaiFiat in lista di mobilita' (1981) and quoted in M. Revelli, Lavorare in Fiat, da Valletta ad Agnelli a Romiti.Operai Sindacati Robot (Milan: Garzanti, 1989), 34. For Balbo, writing in 1976, many workers'exhausted after the working day, let themselves be absorbed by television', Stato, 110.

108 B a r b a g l i , Provando, 6 1 , a n d see also 6 3 .109 Pavolini, 'I coreani'. In the poorest blocks at Comasina, ILSES reported that there were

'frequent arguments'. // quartiere, 13.110 Barbagli, Provando, 63.


acute family crisis.111 Some contracts for women contained clauses ruling outpregnancy or marriage, and if this was not explicit, the 'unwritten' pressure in thesame direction could be just as strong. Mario Monicelli's film 'Renzo e Luciana', setin Milan during the boom, deals with exactly this issue (episode in Boccaccio '70,1962).

The 'second family' at work, therefore, was difficult to pin down. For many,work was the centre of their lives, and the family came second, especially if thatfamily was thousands of miles away in the Mezzogiorno. For others, the need to putthe 'real' family first was hampered by the intensity and regimentation of factorylife during the boom. Most came to a compromise, and the 'familism' of HumanRelations propaganda, backed by real material benefits, certainly had an effect inmollifying the more extreme aspects of a worker's day.

Conclusion: The Family and 'Progress'. Milan Thirty Years On

Milan today is a vastly different city from the Milan of the boom. In 1951 everyfamily had at least one child, now only one family in three have any children at all.In 1964 there were 24,000 births in the city, in 1993 less than 10,000. The Milan of1962 was still a workers' city, especially on the periphery. Today nearly all the bigfactories have closed or are in the process of moving their operations elsewhere.Since 1973, Milan has been losing inhabitants at the rate of 20,000 a year. Above all,Milan is an ageing city. The make-up of Comasina in 1962, with its majority ofyoung people and almost complete lack of single 'families' is a distant memory, apart of history.112

Can any parallels then be drawn between the family 'models' of Comasina andBovisa in the early 1960s and the Milan of today? Were the roots of contemporarypolitical and social changes to be found in the bleak housing estates on the edge ofthe city? The only honest answer is yes, and no. Certain features of the Milan whichtoday votes for the Right and whose only factories are empty shells were present atComasina: the home-based use of time, the decline in collective organisation, thecentrality of television. But there were a series of crucial discontinuities: the stillhigh numbers of factory workers, the considerable impact of migration from theSouth, the novelty of consumerism and 'white goods'. We also need to know whatpart Comasina played in 1968 before drawing any direct lines between then andnow.

In 1962, over 75 per cent of Comasina's residents had visited or received a visitfrom relatives at least once a month. A similar percentage had either made orreceived a phone call over the same period. These figures underline the home-based

111 Lega 'Bovisa' di Milano, Libro sulk condizioni di vita e di lavoro alia FACE, n.d. [1955], printed inV. Rieser and L. Ganapini, eds, Libri bianchi sulla condizione operaia negli anni cinquanta. Una ricercapromossa dal Centro ricerche e studi sindacali delta Fiom-Cgil di Milano (Ban: De Donato, 1981), 88.

112 G. Lucchelli, 'Una citta al singolare', La Repubblica, 6 Aug. 1994. See also G. Altieri, 'Che tipi lefamiglie!', Politica ed economica, no. 5 (1991), 27-9, and A. Golini, 'Profilo demografico della famigliaitaliana', in Melograni, La famiglia, 327—83.


character of familial and kinship relations at Comasina. In older, more traditionalworkers' neighbourhoods such as Baggio and Bovisa, the rapport with relatives wasfar more everyday and street-based (as was free time in general). The half-hour'shopping trip' of a Bethnal Green woman in Willmott and Young's Family andKinship in East London, who met or saw fourteen people she knew, was animpossibility for many at Comasina. In this sense, Comasina (or at least a significantpart of its population) presented a new model of family life for the city — a quarter atthe cutting edge of the transition (now completed) from an industrial to a servicecity, from the 'community' to the 'home', from the bar and street to the sittingroom and the television, the video and the computer. This model of family life —'middle class' according to classic sociological categories — was the norm atComasina (with the important differences I have outlined above) as the workplacebecame very clearly separated from the home - a change not yet in place, at thattime, on the 'old' industrial periphery.

A plausible case can therefore be made for categorising Comasina, in 1962, as theforerunner of the 'middle-class model' of the family which has since become thenorm in northern and central Italy. The centrality of consumption — the all-encompassing 'consumer society' - to the life of nearly all Comasina families isstriking, and foreshadows the rush to spend of the 1980s and 1990s.113 Yet thisconsumption did not and does not imply a decline in the centrality of the family.On the contrary, consumption is and was based around the home and family life. AtComasina, families from all classes looked first and foremost inward towards thehome where they placed values such as solidarity, status, security, rest, and privacyabove all others. Many families gained from the 'escape' into the home. The oldcommunities were not reproduced by the architects at Comasina. This new 'fami-lism' was neither completely 'amoral' nor 'moral' but contained elements of bothends of the spectrum.114 Without understanding the immense gains for millions offamilies from the shift to these 'new' models of life, we will never understand thefailure of collective action at Milan since the boom of the early 1960s.

113 See F. Barbano, 'Evoluzione dei consumi e vita quotidiana nella sorieta industriale', in N.Tranfaglia and M. Firpo, eds, La Storia. L'Eta Conlemporanea (Turin: UTET, 1988 ), 464—5, and G.Sapelli, 'Le crisi italiane e i] capitalismo', unpubl. conference paper, 1994, 3.

114 For the negative stereotype of this tendency, which characterised the theoretical approach takenby ILSES, see // quartiere, 4.

‘The Family and the ‘Economic Miracle’: Social Transformation, Work, Leisure and Development...

Documents

Transcript of ‘The Family and the ‘Economic Miracle’: Social Transformation, Work, Leisure and Development...