Stepping Out of the Brain Drain: Applying Catholic Social Teaching in a New Era of Migration by Michele R. Pistone and John J. Hoeffner (review)

412 participation of migrants was limited to the constitution of a consultive forum, without real power and consequences for local politics. Civil society didn’t offer more space and opportunity for the migrants , also because it was not really independent from party politics and local administration, but closely linked to them for fund-raising and the logic of action. Theethnographicanalysisrevealsthenegative side of local politics, which tend to strengthen the ethnicisation of migrants and their social exclusion. Vivid ethnographic evidence of the limits of the local Left is offered in chapter 8, in which Però describes how a participatory action-research aimed at eliciting the needs of the guests of the CPA was manipulated by the local administration for its own ends, and doomed to failure. This chapter shows another strength of the work, namely its being an attempt to unite participant observation and participatory research, using fieldwork to go behind the level of official discourses to criticise and ameliorate the politics toward migrants. The work by Però offers—above all through the historical comparison between PCI politics and more recent policies– a sound and critical description of Bolognese, and more generally Italian, left-wing politics. The withdrawal by the Left from the projects of radical transformation of society has meant in fact an acceptance of the status quo, also in the case of the migrants, left alone in front of discrimination, racism and poverty. Interest in the condition and the rights of strangers and for multiculturalism is little more than rhetoric, as actual policies are strongly marked by lack of interest, ethnicism, paternalism and exclusion. With this book Però demonstrates the usefulness of the ethnographic approach for political analysis. Ethnography offers the possibility to bypass official party rhetoric by looking at the actual policies and grassroots discourses. The book is a strong contribution both to the political anthropology of Italy and to migration studies. References Kertzer D., 1990, Comrades and Christians, (2nd ed.) Waveland Press, Prospect Heights (Ill.). Carlo Capello University of Torino Michele R. Pistone and John J. Hoeffner, Stepping Out of the Brain Drain: Applying Catholic Social Teaching in a New Era of Migration. Lexington Books: Lanham Maryland. pp. 235. ‘Stepping Out’ in the title refers to a term the authors would much prefer to see used than ‘brain drain’. STEP OUT stands for Scientific, Technical and Educated Professionals Out of Underdeveloped Territories, which they argue is a more neutral way of talking about the migration of skilled people from one place to another. In this very short book [about 40% of the book is notes], the authors make a good case that the so-called brain drain might not be such a drain after all. The book is likely to be of interest to quite a few readers for the chapters at the end of the book that summarize data showing the economic and social impact on sending states by the STEP OUT migrants. It is more than just send- 413 ing cash home to the family. Some of the migrants have established community funds and firms in their original homelands. Some have used the resources of their receiving states to develop new foods and drugs that will have a market in the homeland—or in immigrant communities —that help both sides of the equation. They note that the networks they participate in, as Ronald Burt shows in his diffusion of knowledge research, enhance the innovativeness of the North, without necessarily beggaring the South. As the subtitle suggests, however, the book is not all about the empirical study of what happens in the sending and receiving states when skilled individuals leave their homes in Africa or parts of Asia or Latin America and move to the US, Australia, or Europe. They also aim to encourage a change in Catholic teaching on immigration. The Catholic Church has a divided message to would-be immigrants. On the one hand, on the basis of human dignity, every person has the right to immigrate and states should welcome this. On the other, the Church says that those who could improve their countries by applying their high skills at home are being greedy by leaving. The authors suggest that perhaps the stand...