Suchergebnisse

The article explores discourses, which, strongly marked by the association between immigration and security/safety issues, shape conflicts between groups in the urban spaces. More specifically, the article analyses daily interactions in a neighbourhood located in a semi-central area of the city of Milan and the discursive strategies of established Italian residents in dealing with neighbours, shopkeepers and public space users of immigrant origin. It focuses on the specific case of a small park which, claimed by the Italian residents in the neighbourhood, is currently a space of different activities by different groups and constitutes a core of an intergroup conflict. Referring to the existent Italian literature on the social construction of immigration as a problem related to security and urban safety issues, the article focuses on how such a discourse is produced and reproduced at the local level in established residents' discourses and practices and their imagination/s of the community of 'us'. While the article analyses how established residents account for the changes that have occurred in their area, discursive strategies about the nature of the place and its 'legitimate' users as well as social practices of appropriation and control are examined in order to show the interrelation between the processes of othering and place-identity making. Adapted from the source document.

The article explores discourses, which, strongly marked by the association between immigration and security/safety issues, shape conflicts between groups in the urban spaces. More specifically, the article analyses daily interactions in a neighbourhood located in a semi-central area of the city of Milan and the discursive strategies of established Italian residents in dealing with neighbours, shopkeepers and public space users of immigrant origin. It focuses on the specific case of a small park which, claimed by the Italian residents in the neighbourhood, is currently a space of different activities by different groups and constitutes a core of an intergroup conflict. Referring to the existent Italian literature on the social construction of immigration as a problem related to security and urban safety issues, the article focuses on how such a discourse is produced and reproduced at the local level in established residents' discourses and practices and their imagination/s of the community of 'us'. While the article analyses how established residents account for the changes that have occurred in their area, discursive strategies about the nature of the place and its 'legitimate' users as well as social practices of appropriation and control are examined in order to show the interrelation between the processes of othering and place-identity making.

In the city of Milan, Italy, via Padova and Sarpi-Canonica are two neighbourhoods were cultural diversity became visible and caused concern in the local political and media debate. Via Padova, a working-class area with one of the highest share of immigrant residents, has been subject to a stigmatization process after clashes between groups put a strain on in it in 2009. Sarpi-Canonica – simplisticly defined as the Chinatown of Milan – is a middle-class neighbourhood which saw the growth of Chinese wholesale; after conflicts raised over the functions of the neighbourhood, a renovation project was started. Drawing from these two cases, in this paper we explore the discourse about diversity and mixed communities according to neighbourhood and city key informants: the representations provided by policy-makers and social partners are insightful on the Italian discourse about the "ideal" model of interaction and living together between diverse residents. A quite shared integrationist/intercultural approach shows that diversity is accepted but not encouraged, while pluralism should be tempered by an attention to social cohesion and minority specificity should blend into the majority. So, social faults are seen as due a) on the one hand, to an inadequate diversity management by public institutions; b) in a more blaming way, to the (self-)isolation of some minorities. Drawing from interviews, policy documents, and literature, we will show how the fear for ghettoisation is related to the ethnicisation of public space: a visible and "separated" diversity is somehow considered more dangerous than socio-economic inequality, and this grounds local policies and initiatives that may compress diversity.

AbstractRosarno and Sermide are two small towns in Southern and Northern Italy, which are both part of a manual‐labour circuit of agricultural work. The article presents an analysis of governance structures in these towns and, by bringing together the literature on migrants' agricultural labour and local policy‐making, explores how public actors address migrant seasonal agricultural workers' needs to investigate outcomes of inclusion and exclusion. The article builds on qualitative research, conducted between 2012 and 2015, to propose a North‐South intra‐country comparison of local policy‐making. The findings show the emergency nature of local administrations' approaches and the critical role of civil society. They highlight the extent to which responses diverge or converge in means and scale, while stressing their convergence in scope to limit migrants' visibility.

Throughout history, cities have been the theatre of social and spatial struggles. The issue of urban protests, however, has not yet been investigated in detail in the light of the growing concern of the need to rethink urban studies, from theoretical and epistemic assumptions, to methodological issues. It is argued that the mobilisation of urban dissent in the so-called Arab Spring offers a good opportunity to develop a critical approach based on the observation of the nexus between an event (a punctual expression of dissent) and a site (the urban environment in which the former takes place). The goal is to avoid theoretical rigidities inherent to the assumptions about the intrinsic qualities of cities or social movements. The paper also aims at connecting different academic and disciplinary traditions across linguistic divides—and especially the Anglophone urban studies with the Francophone stream of city-focused political science and political sociology.