Migration represents one of the key issues in both Italian and European politics, and it has triggered EU-wide debates and negotiations, alongside alarmist and often sensationalist news reporting on the activities of government, party and social movement actors. The Politics of Migration in Italy explores what happens when previously undiscussed issues become central to political agendas and are publicly debated in the mass media. Examining how political actors engage with the issue of migration in electoral campaigning, this book highlights how complex policy issues are addressed selectively by political entrepreneurs and how the responses of political actors are influenced by strategic incentives and ongoing events. This book studies the dynamics of the politicization of the immigration issue across three local contexts in Italy – Prato, Milan and Rome – which differ systematically with respect to crucial economic, cultural and security dimensions of immigration. Offering an innovative exploration of party competition and migration in Italy, as well as providing the conceptual and analytical tools to understand how these dynamics play out beyond the Italian case, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and policymakers working in the areas of migration studies, agenda-setting and European politics more generally.

Migration represents one of the key issues in both Italian and European politics, and it has triggered EU-wide debates and negotiations, alongside alarmist and often sensationalist news reporting on the activities of government, party and social movement actors. The Politics of Migration in Italy explores what happens when previously undiscussed issues become central to political agendas and are publicly debated in the mass media. Examining how political actors engage with the issue of migration in electoral campaigning, this book highlights how complex policy issues are addressed selectively by political entrepreneurs and how the responses of political actors are influenced by strategic incentives and ongoing events. This book studies the dynamics of the politicization of the immigration issue across three local contexts in Italy – Prato, Milan and Rome – which differ systematically with respect to crucial economic, cultural and security dimensions of immigration. Offering an innovative exploration of party competition and migration in Italy, as well as providing the conceptual and analytical tools to understand how these dynamics play out beyond the Italian case, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and policymakers working in the areas of migration studies, agenda-setting and European politics more generally.

The book examines the experiences of Black women in Italy from the 1970s to the 1990s. Although Italy is still perceived as a recent immigration country, the book demonstrates how Black women were among the first groups of new migrants to the country. Black women migrating to Italy were employed almost exclusively as live-in domestic workers and detailed attention is paid to the history and political organization of this sector. Unlike much published work in Italian, this book adopts an integrated form of analysis where gender, ethnicity and class are seen to be interconnected constructs. The book also situates Black women within the framework of the national constituency of gender. This approach challenges the ideology surrounding the Italian family and demonstrates that while live-in domestic work created specific forms of social marginality for Black women, it paradoxically allowed Italian women to express their new social identities within and outside the family. The book concludes that Italian women have largely failed in their attempts to transform the division of labour within the home and that the decision to employ other (migrant) women to fulfill household tasks is a trend which sits uneasily within the framework of an inclusive feminist project for women.

This text fulfills a major gap by comprehensively reviewing one of the most salient policy issues in Europe today, migration and immigration. It is the first book to address the question of whether we can legitimately speak of a European politics of migration that links states in terms of their policy response to each other and to an evolving EU policy. The book carefully differentiates between different types of migration, introduces the main concepts and debates, and provides a broad comparative framework from which to assess the role and impact of individual states and the European Union (EU) and European integration to this key contemporary issue. Topical and up-to-date, the author fully reviews the politics and policies of immigration across the breadth and depth of Europe including the `older' immigration countries of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the `newer' southern European countries, and the enlargement states of East and Central Europe. The Politics of Immigration and Migration in Europe is essential reading for all undergraduate and post-graduate students of European politics, political science and the social sciences more generally. Andrew Geddes lectures at the School of Politics and Communications Studies, University of Liverpool. `This book will be essential reading for students of migration and European integration, but will also be important for decision-makers, and, indeed, anyone who wants to understand one of the burning issues of our times' - Stephen Castles, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies, Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

This book reflects on the myriad ways in which forms of exclusion and inclusion play out in narratives of migration, focusing on the case of Northern Italian narratives in today’s superdiverse Italy. Drawing on over a decade of the author’s fieldwork in the region, the volume examines the emergence of racialized language in conversations about migrants or migration issues in light of increasing recent migratory flows in the European Union, couched in the broader context of changing socio-political forces such as anti-immigration policies and nativist discourse in political communication in Italy. The book highlights case studies from everyday discourse in both villages and cities and at different levels of society to explore these "intimacies of exclusion," the varying degrees to which inclusion and exclusion manifest themselves in conversation on migration. The book also employs a narrative practice-based approach which considers storytelling as a more dynamic form of discourse, thus allowing for equally new ways of analyzing their content and impact. Offering a valuable contribution to the growing literature on narratives of migration, this volume is key reading for graduate students and scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, sociocultural anthropology, language and politics, and migration studies.

Italian immigration from 1945 to the present is an American phenomenon too little explored in our historical studies. Until now. In this new collection, Laura E. Ruberto and Joseph Sciorra edit essays by an elite roster of scholars in Italian American studies. These interdisciplinary works focus on leading edge topics that range from politics of the McCarren-Walter Act and its effects on women to the ways Italian Americans mobilized against immigration restrictions. Other essays unwrap the inner workings of multi-ethnic power brokers in a Queens community, portray the complex transformation of identity in Boston’s North End, and trace the development of Italian American youth culture and how new arrivals fit into it. Finally, Donna Gabaccia pens an afterword on the importance of this seventy-year period in U.S. migration history. Contributors: Ottorino Cappelli, Donna Gabaccia, Stefano Luconi, Maddalena Marinari, James S. Pasto, Rodrigo Praino, Laura E. Ruberto, Joseph Sciorra, Donald Tricarico, and Elizabeth Zanoni.

In terms of migration, Italy is often thought of as a source country - a place from which people came rather than one to which people go. However, in the past few decades, Italy has indeed become a destination for many people from poor or war-torn countries seeking a better life in a stable environment. Graziella Parati's Migration Italy examines immigration to Italy in the past twenty years, and explores the processes of cultural hybridization that have occurred. Working from a cultural studies viewpoint, Parati constructs a theoretical framework for discussing Italy as a country of immigration. She gives special attention to immigrant literature, positing that it functions as an act of resistance, a means to talk back to the laws that regulate the lives of migrants. Parati also examines Italian cinema, demonstrating how native and non-native filmmakers alike create parallels between old and new migrations, complicating the definitions of sameness and difference. These definitions and the complexities inherent in the different cultural, legal, and political positions of Italy's people are at the heart of Migration Italy, a unique work of immense importance for understanding society in both modern-day Italy and, indeed, the entire European continent.