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This introductory essay aims at offering an overview of the historical, demographic and economic dimensions of migration in Italy -- as well as of Italian politics and migration-related legislation. Based on statistics, research reports, and existing Italian and international literature on immigration-related issues, the paper highlights the profile of Italy's migrant groups as well as the role they have been playing in the country's labour market over time. The paper analyses key migration-related legislation showing that Italian immigration policies have been basically focused on ex post regularizations, control of new legal entries and repression of irregular ones. The increasing criminalization and securitization of immigration supported by right-wing parties and the most relevant features of public debate on immigration in Italy are highlighted. Adapted from the source document.

In diesem Beitrag soll ein Überblick über traditionelle lineare vs. dialogisch-diskursive Modelle in der Medienkommunikationsforschung gegeben werden. Die Beschäftigung mit Prozessen von Medienkommunikation hat sich mit der Evolution neuer theoretischer Modelle in der Psychologie und den Sozialwissenschaften verändert. Die Hauptprobleme traditioneller Modelle, die zunächst in der Medienforschung entwickelt worden waren, resultierten einerseits aus der rigiden Gegenüberstellung von "Sender" und "Empfänger" und andererseits aus der fehlenden Integration sozialer Variablen für eine angemessene Konzeptualisierung des Kommunikationsprozesses. Es wird gezeigt, wie die wachsende Beachtung des interaktiven Charakters von Kommunikation zu einer Ablösung der traditionellen linearen Modelle durch komplexere Modelle führte, verbunden mit einer Re-Definition des Kommunikationskonzepts wie z.B. in dialogischen Modellen und im Rahmen diskursiver Ansätze. Aus dieser Perspektive kommt den Medien eine zentrale Rolle für Prozesse der Wirklichkeitskonstruktion und -rekonstruktion zu; die Entwicklung angemessener qualitativer Verfahren ist in diesem Zusammenhang unabdingbar.

In diesem Beitrag soll gezeigt werden, dass Erzählungen in unterschiedlichen Phasen des Forschungsprozesses reflexiv genutzt werden können, um zu verstehen, wie Handelnde ihre Sicht von Ereignissen konstruieren und ihrem eigenen Handeln Sinn verleihen. In der Handlungsforschung kommt der Intersubjektivität eine besondere Bedeutung zu, da in der Interaktion zwischen den Beteiligten (hierzu gehören auch die Forschenden) Versionen von Wissen produziert werden. In diesem Sinne kann Handlungsforschung als ein Prozess verstanden werden, in dessen Verlauf verschiedene Erzählungen generiert werden, die verschiedene Interpretationen eröffnen, die wiederum aktiv von den Beteiligten (re-) konstruiert werden (müssen). Anhand einer Fallgeschichte wird zusammenfassend gezeigt, wie zum einen Reflexivität genutzt wird, um (durch die Identifikation von Konzepten und Kategorien, die die Teilnehmenden zur Sinnzuschreibung heranziehen) die Konstruktion von Erzählungen zu erforschen, und um zum anderen nachvollziehbar zu machen, wie unterschiedliche Arten von Wissen durch die Teilnehmenden ko-konstruiert werden. Reflexivität wird hierbei in ihrem Bezug zu Handeln und zu Sinngebungsprozessen für Handeln verstanden, in die Forschungsteilnehmer(innen) und Forschende involviert sind. In diesem Zusammenhang wird auch thematisiert, welche Rolle Macht in der Beziehung zwischen Beforschten und Forschenden spielt.

In 1991, Philomena Essed highlighted the importance of studying contemporary racism, focusing on the interplay between the macro‐social dimension and its constant reactivation in everyday interactions. Later, psychologists redefined the pervasive experience of racism in everyday encounters in terms of racial microaggressions. Migrants and asylum seekers today constitute "ideal" candidates for this kind of experience. This is due to the persistent historical processes that harken back to Western colonialism and imperialism, as well as the growing hostility towards people migrating from the Global South. This hostility has been brewing for several decades in Western countries, and it manifests in both everyday informal interactions and institutional contexts, where migrants and asylum seekers constantly face racist attitudes.

Anti-immigrant political arguments have long been at the centre of the campaigning of theLega Nord(the Northern League), the Italian extreme-right secessionist party. The paper analyses posters from political campaigns between 2001 and 2008 in order to detect similarities and differences emerging over time, and to show how continuity and change intertwine in the Lega Nord's anti-immigrant discourse. The analysis is presented across two axes: first, the visual dimensions of the texts are examined, concentrating predominantly on the use of images; and second, we analyse the linguistic content of the leaflets, paying particular attention to referential strategies and argumentative structure. The sampled posters show that although the Lega Nord's immigration policies have long been driven by an enduring basic antipathy towards foreigners, in the 2008 campaign the strategy shifted to one stressing arguments reminiscent of theNouvelle Droite's ethnopluralism. Accordingly, in the interest of respecting cultural diversity, the Lega Nord argues that different national communities need to be kept separate, thereby inverting liberal values for the purpose of countering multiculturalism.

Anti-immigrant political arguments have long been at the centre of the campaigning of the Lega Nord (the Northern League), the Italian extreme-right secessionist party. The paper analyses posters from political campaigns between 2001 and 2008 in order to detect similarities and differences emerging over time, and to show how continuity and change intertwine in the Lega Nord's anti-immigrant discourse. The analysis is presented across two axes: first, the visual dimensions of the texts are examined, concentrating predominantly on the use of images; and second, we analyse the linguistic content of the leaflets, paying particular attention to referential strategies and argumentative structure. The sampled posters show that although the Lega Nord's immigration policies have long been driven by an enduring basic antipathy towards foreigners, in the 2008 campaign the strategy shifted to one stressing arguments reminiscent of the Nouvelle Droite's ethnopluralism. Accordingly, in the interest of respecting cultural diversity, the Lega Nord argues that different national communities need to be kept separate, thereby inverting liberal values for the purpose of countering multiculturalism. Adapted from the source document.

In our article, we aim to explore the experience of everyday racism of young people with migrant parents in Italy. Drawing on the analysis of 20 interviews, we seek to reconstruct the overall dynamics of racial microaggressions, highlighting how the context in which microaggressions occur and the interplay between ethnic background, gender, and somatic features influences the interpretations and reactions of the victims. We highlight the boundary work and identity negotiation process carried out in everyday encounters. We also show that participants' experience oscillates between the claim of not-taken‐for‐granted citizenship, the feeling of being confined within ethno‐cultural imaginaries, and the experience of overt manifestations of racism. Finally, we highlight both the process by which victims come to recognise racial microaggressions and the obstacles they face in coping with them.

In our paper, we aim at pointing out the way the most relevant institutional actors currently define the security agenda for the Milanese metropolitan area, which kind of goals they try to pursue, upon which instruments and resources they can rely, which division of labour and forms of cooperation they try to putting into practices. We draw from an analyses of both official documents by the main public institutions involved in the governance of security in Milan and semi-structured interviews to all the members of the Comitato provinciale per l'ordine pubblico e la sicurezza – a board that gather the president of the province, the mayor of the province capital (plus mayors of other cities and towns of the province who can be involved on an ad hoc basis), the representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Prefetto), the District Attorney and the chiefs of all the national police forces – as well as to politicians, civil servants and commissioners of the local police of the city of Milan. We illustrate how discourses and practices of in/security have contributed to the construction of the city as place exposed to a multiplicity of risks that local authorities and police forces are expected to manage. Furthermore, we highlight how the diffusion and legitimization of an 'ideology of safety' has turned the demand to live in safe communities into an attempt to legitimize exclusionary practices insofar as discourses on security were strictly interconnected with discourses on cultural identity and, focusing on both the (imagined) community repertoire and the us/them opposition, ended up legitimizing a racialized urban governance of inclusion and exclusion. Finally, we try to show that a recent attempt, by the new centre-left government, to modify such an approach is generating ambiguous and controversial results and is paradoxically promoting an even stronger securitization of urban policies, spaces and life through more democratically oriented governmental practices.

In our paper, we aim at pointing out the way the most relevant institutional actors currently define the security agenda for the Milanese metropolitan area, which kind of goals they try to pursue, upon which instruments and resources they can rely, which division of labour and forms of cooperation they try to putting into practices. We draw from an analyses of both official documents by the main public institutions involved in the governance of security in Milan and semi-structured interviews to all the members of the Comitato provinciale per l'ordine pubblico e la sicurezza – a board that gather the president of the province, the mayor of the province capital (plus mayors of other cities and towns of the province who can be involved on an ad hoc basis), the representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Prefetto), the District Attorney and the chiefs of all the national police forces – as well as to politicians, civil servants and commissioners of the local police of the city of Milan. We illustrate how discourses and practices of in/security have contributed to the construction of the city as place exposed to a multiplicity of risks that local authorities and police forces are expected to manage. Furthermore, we highlight how the diffusion and legitimization of an 'ideology of safety' has turned the demand to live in safe communities into an attempt to legitimize exclusionary practices insofar as discourses on security were strictly interconnected with discourses on cultural identity and, focusing on both the (imagined) community repertoire and the us/them opposition, ended up legitimizing a racialized urban governance of inclusion and exclusion. Finally, we try to show that a recent attempt, by the new centre-left government, to modify such an approach is generating ambiguous and controversial results and is paradoxically promoting an even stronger securitization of urban policies, spaces and life through more democratically oriented governmental practices.

In 2007, the two most important Italian left-wing parties merged into a single political entity. This study intends to analyze the merging process. Specifically, and in line with the ingroup projection hypothesis of Mummendey & Wenzel, we have explored whether the identification and the favoritism toward the upcoming common group was affected by the perceivers' projection of specific and common stereotypical traits from the subordinate groups to the superordinate one. Political militants' (N=132) levels of ingroup identification; their representations of the previous ingroup, outgroup, and of the new party; and their attitudes towards the common group were assessed. Results confirmed that the cognitive representation of the merged party was shaped much more on the basis of the typical traits of the ingroup than of the outgroup. Moreover, structural equation analyses showed that the identification with the superordinate category and the consequent favoritism toward the merger were related to the projection of ingroup attributes. The findings also suggested that the ingroup projection may be particularly crucial when the intergroup bias is high. Finally, political implications are discussed in terms of obstacles and resources inherent to the merging process. Adapted from the source document.