Believing in migration. Religion, ethics and identity among Sinhalese in Southern Italy

Transnational mobility between Sri Lanka and Italy has become established already in the Seventies, after the first links between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean took hold within the religious mobility of Catholic priests leaving for Rome to training. Connections between the two countries consolidated over time and nowadays are based upon stable transnational networks. In this paper I will focus on an ongoing ethnographic research occurring in Southern Italy, and in particular in the Sicilian city of Messina, where the Sri Lankan community – the major extra-EU group – is mainly made of Sinhalese of the Catholic faith, coming mostly from the western coast of the island. The first arrivals of Sri Lankans in Messina happened in the Seventies. Today, migration itineraries are mostly structured around family reunifications, a trend which began in the Nineties. Migrants from Sri Lanka insert themselves in the economic tissue mainly as domestic workers and caregivers, though there is also not a lack of businessmen and small entrepreneurs, especially in the field of catering and commerce. The Italian Catholic Church has been mediating Sinhalese work insertion with Italian families in need of domestic or care workers, guaranteeing for a particular subjectivation of Sri Lankan presence and mitigating their otherness.