Multicultural urban spaces and the right to the city: the Italian local policies on immigration

From Firenze University Press Journal: SocietàMutamentoPolitica

Carlo Colloca

The immigrant presence legitimizes the idea of consolidation of a “metropolis of fourth generation”, an analytical category proposed by Guido Martinotti (1993). This where foreigners live, work and consume, while in the previous three generations of the metropolis, the ideal-typical figures that reside in the city were the commuter, the city user and businessmen (and of course the inhabitant).

For the immigrants, reproduction; where they spend their daily lives; work; family bonds, through reunions and mixed marriages; educating their children; feed ratios and neighbourhood all promote cultures of origin. This in turn, provides legitimate claims for new citizenship rights. In the sprawling city, many of them are now “immigrants in settling”, or groups of foreign origin by a better socio-economic and family.

They would leave the degraded areas of the city, areas of first settlement, and find it more convenient to settle in or peri-urban localities in the bands (Mela 2009: 41; Urbanit 2016: 74–76). The response of Western cities, not only Italian, is to ask yourself frequently. As spaces that relegate postcolonial cultures, identities and rights of these populations in the otherness, fueling a state of suspension and insecurity (Sassen 2008: 112–122; Zanfrini 2019).Immigrants, perhaps more than any native, “make local mind” in the sense that one’s mind settles in the place of residence (La Cecla 1993: 50),try to focus on it and look around to understand it (Bergamaschi, Piro 2018).

Sociologists, lawyers, architects, politicians, and actors volunteering might argue in more detail the questions of the city that foreigners possess. They will highlight the specific nature of these questions, not neglecting to stratify this population and, therefore, to dwell on the rights that second-generation immi-grants and women of foreign origin claiming the city. A reflection put in these terms could contribute to a problematization of the «Mediterranean Model» of immigration (King, Lazaridis, Tsardanidis 2000; Fonseca et alii2002; Cebolla, Finotelli 2011; La Spina 2017). Not forget-ting to consider the profound differences between Italian cities, and their individual areas, in response to the presence of migrants, as evident in recent decades of scientific debates (Gentileschi 2004; Consoli 2015).

Foreign presence is a very important element of the urban dynamics. Foreigners are carriers of new ways of living in the streets, squares and meeting places. Multiculturalism has changed the urban landscape that takes on different connotations depending on the districts. Central to the concept of multiculturalism is the notion of difference. All models of multicultural cities require a categorization of difference at some level. The demographic meaning of multiculturalism posits difference along a problematic continuum spanning from heterogeneity towards homogeneity (Marotta 2007). Problems of degradation have been compared with the revitalization of public spaces in contrast to their respective historical centers.

Cities show their multiethnic profile and make those visible in places that constitute the result of the dialectic between social actors that give them a different meaning. As a result of different cultures communicating, negotiating, assigning projects, measuring their cosmopolitan spirit and occasionally conflict. We are able to witness the process of re-appropriation or re-signification of said places.It is important to analyze how migrants take areas themselves and how they can build a town on major and give life to “urban bricolage”. Researchers wish to find out if immigrants run the risk of being trapped in the areas more than natives.

The dialectic concerning this material forces giving room and creates individual research capable of transforming it. It is necessary to reflect ‘production of localities’. This is the making up of an individual self, which helps to determinate collective identities and memories shared by migrants and natives, belonging to different cultures situated in the same urban milieu are concerned. Ethnic characterization of urban areas is strictly in contact with a typology of cultural traits.

The suggestion of these traits is due to negotiation process determined by immigrates’ ability to give ‘colour’ to the street area where immigrates live, and the native’s capacity to perceive such traits. Natives interpret them according to their cultural codes, to their tradition and positions emerging from media debate.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13128/smp-11940

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