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In Italy, over the last two decades, «illegal immigrants» have come to the fore as both a strategic resource and an unavoidable point of reference for public debate on foreign immigration. Since the end of the nineties, the category of «clandestine» have been deeply affecting both the immigration laws and the modus operandi of the main institutions aimed at controlling immigration (police and judicial system). Administrative detention centres have been one of the main devices police forces have been using in order to check and deport undocumented immigrants. Drawing from a qualitative research that has been done in Milan two years ago we will compare three interpretations of what administrative detention centres are and which functions they perform. We will show how they can be analysed as foucauldian «heterotopy», as «camps» linked to a sort of «permanent state of exception» and, finally, as a device for controlling human mobility and exploiting immigrant labour force.

Over the last twenty years, the management of a series of complex questions raised by the growing presence of foreign immigrants in Italy has been carried out via the "invention" of specific social problems and their accompanying discourse categories. From its first appearance the term "clandestino" (or irregular immigrant) has assumed a dual significance as a concept widely adopted in public discourse and as the pillar of an ideology that comprises a very specific set of political positions regarding the management of immigration. Moreover, to the extent that the clandestino was interpreted as a threat or problem to be eliminated or solved, it very rapidly became a discursive and practical focal point for the institutions that play a crucial role in immigration management and control. Drawing on my research from late 1990s on immigration policies and control in Italy, I show how and to what extent some institutional everyday activities of the police have been reshaped by discourses and practice that focus on dealing with irregular immigrants. This reorganization contributed to generating a complex web of knowledge, discourses and practices that produced the essential vocabulary and the hegemonic frameworks for public debates about immigration in Italy. It also makes the need and urgency to cope with irregular immigration both a political centre of gravity and a basic strategy to reproduce social order.

Starting from the literature on ethnic neighbourhoods as places of leisure and consumption in old immigration countries, the chapter analyzes the case of “Lazzaretto”, a multiethnic neighbourhood of Milan. Despite the presence of some pre-conditions highlighted by both theoretical and empirical studies, the transformation of Lazzaretto into an attractive ethnic neighbourhood is hindered by some political and cultural factors. Thanks to some in-depth interviews to local politicians and entrepreneurs we show the crucial role played by a general anti-immigrant climate, by local government’ lack of commitment towards multiculturalism and by some institutional constraints on the blossoming of immigrant businesses.

Identità e differenze culturali sono da tempo al centro del dibattito politico, scientifico e filosofico. Il sempre più frequente ricorso ai concetti di “società multiculturale”, “intercultura” e “transcultura” testimonia l’importanza che la diversità culturale riveste per le società contemporanee, dove differenze culturali di ogni genere si manifesterebbero nei più svariati ambiti della vita sociale, proponendo nuove sfide sul piano individuale, collettivo e istituzionale. Identità e differenze, tuttavia, possono rivelarsi e operare solo nella comunicazione. Nel presente volume, vengono analizzate la complessità culturale dell’esperienza quotidiana e la dimensione interculturale dei processi comunicativi. Dapprima vengono presentate criticamente le diverse prospettive teoriche e disciplinari sulla comunicazione interculturale, che sottolineano la capacità delle culture di plasmare l’agire degli individui e di rendere più o meno agevole la comunicazione interpersonale. Viene poi proposta una lettura alternativa del nesso tra culture e comunicazione, mostrando come identità e differenze siano continuamente ri-prodotte nei processi comunicativi ed entrino a far parte del “senso comune condiviso” grazie al quale attribuiamo un significato all’esperienza sociale. Non più habitus (sistemi simbolici incorporati) o modelli normativi interiorizzati che pilotano in modo inconsapevole l’agire ma riferimenti cognitivi e retoriche che rievocano il carattere imprevedibile, creativo e ludico del comunicare.

Our paper focuses on the socio-economic and the legal/institutional characteristics of international migrants’ incorporation into the Italian labour market. Our interpretation of the statistical evidence available with respect to immigrant’s labour insertion combines the role played by the local characteristics of labour force demand, the normative constraints generated by immigration policies —and more broadly by the institutional framework which organises economic relationships— and the role performed by migrants network. The second part of the paper will focus on Indian immigration in the province of Cremona with a twofold objective. On the one hand, it will show how the “productive vocation” of the Cremona Province, together with the role played by social and economic actors and the institutional/regulatory framework, has had a crucial influence on the methods through which Indian citizens residing in that area have entered the workforce and to generate the local socio-economic arrangements which accompany immigrants settlement. On the other hand, it will reveal how Sikhs represent a deviant case compared to the salient characteristics of migrants’ descriptive labour insertion models discussed in the first part.

The paper addresses the relationships between administrative and penal treatment of il/legal immigrants by police forces in Italy. It draws upon interviews with high-level police officers and attorneys-general from a research project carried out in 1999 in Emilia-Romagna. The main argument focuses on how police use the category of 'illegal/criminal immigrant' as a categorisation device both for administrative purposes, in order to check the formal requirements of immigrants asking for a residence permit-and for crime prevention and repression. The latter case is particularly crucial whenever police have to cope with deviant behaviours, like prostitution, which are not formally criminal, but which are socially perceived as such and which generate social alarm. The intentional use of a blurred distinction between an administrative sphere and a criminal one by police raises interesting questions concerning both new practices Of neighbourhood control and the social construction of a useful political scapegoat.

Il capitolo illustra gli elementi principali di un’interpretazione in chiave costruttivista della “criminalità degli immigrati”. Si focalizza sui principali attori istituzionali coinvolti nel processo di costruzione sociale di tale fenomeno, con particolare riferimento all’operato delle forze di polizia, al sistema giudiziario e a quello penale. Sulla base di varie ricerche condotte tra la metà degli anni novanta e la prima metà degli anni 2000 vengono evidenziati i fattori in grado di spiegare il crescente tasso di incarcerazione dei cittadini stranieri, che non trova un corrispettivo in nessun paese europeo di più antica immigrazione.

The paper analyses intercultural miscommunication from a micro-sociological perspective. Drawing on an empirical research that was done in some public services for foreign immigrants in Milan, it starts introducing the main perspectives from which the relations between miscommunication and cultural diversity are usually studied. Then it focuses on how the perception of heterogeneous language competences, background commonsense knowledge and cultural traits can stress the taken for granted assumptions which assure shared meanings and common understanding in ordinary everyday interactions. Putting into brackets the relevance per se of cultural differences as a good explanation for intercultural miscommunications, it investigates how people who experience it accounts for misunderstanding. Particular attention is devoted to incongruent definitions of situations and their management, as well as to difficulties to attach social attributes to people, when language competences are difficult to evaluate, shared communication schemata can not be assumed as resources at hand and cultural differences are supposed to shape social action

This paper focuses on the typical paths of migrants' insertion in the informal economy in Italy. It begins with a review of the international debate on the informal economy and ethnic business in order to evaluate the extent to which the current descriptive and explanatory models fit the specificity of the Italian case. When applied to the Italian context they overemphasize the relationship between the informal sector - characterized mainly by self-employment and ethnic business - and the transformation of the formal labour market due to economic changes - the crisis of the fordist way of production, global restructuring of the manufacturing sector and so on. On the contrary, the underground economy is a long-standing characteristic in Italy. It is an overall structural element of the Italian economy and a much more complex phenomenon than in other countries. For many reasons, migrants' insertion in the informal economy in Italy does not produce a new trend but represents an element of continuity in the economic organization and involves documented and undocumented migrants as well as many types of Italian workers. On the other hand, this paper highlights the central role of the institutional framework - immigration policies and their implementation -in the context of the formal and actual constraints which inform immigrants' strategies of incorporation into the formal/informal labour market. The implementation of the institutional framework, by different branches of the public administration and by the judicial system, interacts with immigrants' economic strategies Id generates mobile borders between different types of informal arrangements, as well as between the informal and illegal economy. Taking into account the structural and geographical characteristics of each economic sector, the economic institutional framework, the legal framework and the decision-making processes that produce them, it is possible to reconsider the concept of the informal economy and to

There is not one single academic world but many. Differences among disciplinary fields are usually underestimated and generalizations about academia are very often misleading. The article tries first to review the main theoretical approaches available in the international litterature: from the ones referring to differences in the epistemological structures of knowledge to the others stressing peculiarities in the social elements of disciplinary communities. The second part uses data from the survey on the Italian professoriate to verify the validity of grouping disciplines into four basic knowledge domains (hard-pure, soft-pure, hard-applied, soft-applied). Some evidences are drawn from the epistemological characteristics of disciplines (in terms of selection and career procedures, attitude toward teaching and research activities, scientific production), some others come from the disciplinary habitus ralated to professors' social background, style of life, and external commitments

Community has often been used impressionistically as a tool for concealing a lack of theorising in analytical concepts. As a result, its operationalization in empirical social research gave rise to reified descriptions as is quite often the case with studies on ethnicity and international migration. Drawing upon recent developments in systems theory, second order cybernetics, and oranizational theory an alternative conceptualization is suggested which brings together notions of place, time and the idea of memory as an including/excluding device. Understanding community in terms of communication enables not only to fully exploit both an ethnographic approach and network analysis, but also to work out more sensitive tools for policy-making. In this perspective, the concept has been used in an ethnography of migration in Milan (Italy), and its results evaluated.