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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 per-vasive 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.

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.

The subject of naturalisation among intra-EU migrants has only recently drawn the attention of social science scholars. Empirical evidence from quantitative studies shows an increase in citizenship applications among this new wave of mobile people, indicating a strategic use of naturalisation. However, there is not a great deal of micro-level research, especially as to the subjective meanings attached to citizenship take-up in a new EU member state. Drawing on 68 in-depth interviews conducted with Italians and Spaniards living in London and Berlin, we argue that an individual’s understanding of naturalisation within the EU context is based on two aspects: on one hand, a strictly pragmatic evaluation of the pros and cons of the new status; on the other, a new sense of belonging as well as new cultural and territorial identifications that intra-EU migrants are not often willing to experience. Therefore, this article suggests that EU migrants that strongly identify with their country of origin and the EU see national and EU identities as conflicting with naturalisation, thus setting aside instrumental considerations. This constitutes a critique to theoretical approaches claiming the diminishing importance of a nation’s cultural self-understanding. Our paper also sheds light on the possible effect of the UK’s departure from the EU on young Southern European migrants choosing to apply for British citizenship, highlighting that it is mostly the implementation of the formal exit process and the actual abrogation of EU citizenship rights that reconfigure patterns in naturalisation, rather than the uncertainty and fears about the future

“Media events” and, even more, “contested media events” offer a unique opportunity to analyse how specific interpretative frames come to dominate public debate within a hybrid media system through complex transmedia processes. In this article, we look into how mainstream media and, in particular, daily newspapers, reported on and re-contextualised the fierce debate concerning the “Macerata shooting” that had exploded on Twitter and contributed to obscure the interpretative frame initially proposed by the writer Roberto Saviano, qualifying it as an act of “terrorism”. An analysis conducted on a corpus of 143 articles shows that newspapers helped to both spread a mitigated and reassuring picture of the attack, and reaffirm the hegemonic vision of terrorism that sees terrorists, by definition, as alien to the community of victims.

Whilst most of the research on intra-EU mobility has mainly focused on the reasons behind young Southern Europeans leaving their home countries, and secondly on their experiences within the new context, little is known about their sense of belonging and identities. This article aims to fill this gap by exploring Italian and Spanish migrants’ social identity repositioning and the cultural change characterising their existential trajectories. Drawing on 69 semi-structured interviews with Italians and Spaniards living in London and Berlin, this article shows that the sense of belonging to one or more political communities and boundary work are related to individual experiences and can change due to structural eventualities such as the Brexit referendum. While identification with the host society is rare, attachment to the home country is quite common as a result of people’s everyday experiences. Cultural changes and European/cosmopolitan identification are linked to exposure to new environments and interaction with new cultures, mostly concerning those with previous mobility experience, as well as to a sentiment of non-acceptance in the UK. However, such categories are not rigid, but many times self-identification and attachments are rather blurred also due to the uncertainty around the duration of the mobility project. This makes individual factors (gender, age, family status, employment, education) that are often considered as determinants of identification patterns all but relevant

This editorial presents a general overview of the thematic issue “The Lived Experiences of Migration: Individual Strategies, Institutional Settings and Destination Effects in the European Mobility Process,” based on the rich qualitative data produced in the Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets (GEMM) project. The qualitative component of the project focused on the ‘lived’ experiences of migration. The main contribution of the articles in this issue is to demonstrate the multiplicity of actors and structures involved in the migration process, and to recognize the important role that space plays in the life-trajectories of people on the move. Perceiving the migration process as a learning experience allows for a deeper look into the complex renegotiation of cultural and political boundaries that migrants experience in the destination

The subject of naturalisation among intra-EU migrants has only recently drawn the attention of social science scholars. Empirical evidence from quantitative studies shows an increase in citizenship applications among this new wave of mobile people, indicating a strategic use of naturalisation. However, there is not a great deal of micro-level research, especially as to the subjective meanings attached to citizenship take-up in a new EU member state. Drawing on 68 in-depth interviews conducted with Italians and Spaniards living in London and Berlin, we argue that an individual’s understanding of naturalisation within the EU context is based on two aspects: on one hand, a strictly pragmatic evaluation of the pros and cons of the new status; on the other, a new sense of belonging as well as new cultural and territorial identifications that intra-EU migrants are not often willing to experience. Therefore, this article suggests that EU migrants that strongly identify with their country of origin and the EU see national and EU identities as conflicting with naturalisation, thus setting aside instrumental considerations. This constitutes a critique to theoretical approaches claiming the diminishing importance of a nation’s cultural self-understanding. Our paper also sheds light on the possible effect of the UK’s departure from the EU on young Southern European migrants choosing to apply for British citizenship, highlighting that it is mostly the implementation of the formal exit process and the actual abrogation of EU citizenship rights that reconfigure patterns in naturalisation, rather than the uncertainty and fears about the future

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.

This report is the second detailed account on Italians’ intra-EU migration within the framework of Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets (GEMM) project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Focusing on new Italian migrants’ arrival to the UK and Germany, their adaptation, work experiences, and issues of identity and citizenship, the present report aims to contribute to the emerging literature on Italians’ mobility and lived experiences to other EU destinations. The report contains four parts. The first part analyses empirical material concerning the coping practices of Italians with the institutional environment, and how those who arrived without pre-arranged job get their first employment. In particular, it explores how they cope with barriers when dealing with public administration, and how they overcome difficulties in finding a job due to the lack of language proficiency. The second part focuses on new Italian migrants’ work experiences. Starting from their first steps upon arrival and impressions about the new working environment, it casts light on migrants’ employment paths, that is occupational trajectories and opportunities to make a career; the representations of their position in the labour market; questions of discrimination; and, changes in the way they find job abroad. In the third part, attention moves to migrants’ family and social life in the new context. It highlights aspects related to housing, that is what resources are used to find shelter upon arrival, and how neighborhood is selected. Then, it focuses on issues regarding migrants’ friendships, leisure time, contact with family and friends in Italy, and interest in political affairs of Italy and the new context. Finally, the fourth part brings to the fore issues with respect to citizenship acquisition, identity and sense of belonging. On the one hand, it explores strategies that Italians adopt concerning the acquisition of citizenship in the destination

La crescente securitarizzazione della vita urbana ha comportato uno spostamento da una concezione del governo della città focalizzato sulla necessità di far fronte ad una serie di problemi sociali ad una incentrata sulla prevenzione situazionale e sulla criminalizzazione di problemi, conflitti e gruppi. Il discorso pubblico dominante sulla sicurezza, inoltre, ha fatto propria la distinzione tra rischi oggettivi e percezione soggettiva al fine sia di promuovere le istituzioni locali come il principale attore politico-istituzionale che deve farsi carico del senso di insicurezza della cittadinanza, sia di rafforzare i poteri delle forze di polizia (nazionali e locali) nei confronti delle minacce (oggettive e/o percepite) che mettono a repentaglio la sicurezza pubblica nei contesti urbani. Infine, la sicurezza urbana, re-incorniciata nei termini di bisogni legittimi e diritti della cittadinanza, è divenuta vieppiù una questione politicamente neutra (la sicurezza non è né di destra né di sinistra). Nel capitolo illustriamo come, oggi, i principali attori istituzionali definiscono l’agenda della sicurezza per l’area metropolitana Milanese, il tipo di obiettivi che cercano di perseguire, gli strumenti normativi e le risorse di cui possono disporre, assieme alla divisione del lavoro e alle forme di cooperazione che cercano di attuare. Ci proponiamo, inoltre, di mettere in luce come la stessa possibilità di immaginare una governance della città metropolitana milanese sia resa possibile anche da una definizione condivisa di ciò che la sicurezza è o dovrebbe essere.

«Media events» were originally described by Dayan and Katz as the live broadcasting of preplanned historic events. Recently, media scholars have adopted a broader concept, including also conflicts, disasters and terrorist attacks in the study of media events. The latter, we think, have a peculiar character whose features deserve to be studied on their own. In addition, the proliferation of social media during the past decade has created a new mediascape, possibly transforming the way both media events, in general, and terrorist events, in particular, are constructed. Our article examines the ritual nature of the mediatized response to terrorist events and the central role played by the «community of the victims», and then engages in a reflection on how the new communication environment shapes the meaning of these dramatic cases. Contrasting the reactions to the attack at the Atocha station in Madrid and those to the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, we show how the social media have been surprisingly effective in guiding the collective reaction, channeling it into an almost unitary response, which reminds us of the integrative rituals performed in the traditional celebratory media events.

The country reports highlight the presence of the issue of migration in the public debates in each of the six countries. In the countries which attracts migrants from Europe and beyond such as the UK and Germany the public discourse on immigration often shifts between two narratives: on the one hand, an emphasis of the economic benefits of immigration, on the other hand, an identification of immigration as a threat to the national identity and social security systems, the latter particularly in the UK. Based on assessment of national literature on migration, this overview gives a broad picture of mobility from and to the six countries participating in this part of the GEMM project. The quantitative data from previous surveys demonstrate the significance of the process of mobility within Europe.

This is the second overview of country-specific literature on the theme of migration in the EU covering the six countries taking part in GEMM Workpackage 4 ‘The lived experiences of migration’: UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Romania. The first literature review focused on the individual factors for migration such as gender, ethnicity and age, as well as the formal and informal channels for mobility from the countries of departure to the countries of destination. The second overview concentrates on the institutional and contextual factors facilitating or preventing mobility in the European labour market. The objective is to examine previous research findings about the structures of opportunities and constraints for the successful labour market integration of migrants, common in the research literature from the different countries, and to outline the discrepancies, uncertainties and gaps among different studies. It will serve as a background for writing the subsequent country reports which will be based on the analysis of the rich qualitative data collected in the fieldwork of the GEMM Workpackage 4 study.

In our chapter, we explore how the intersection of governmentality studies with critical discourse analysis (CDA) enables an empirical and analytical examination of the ways in which discursive and non-discursive practices contribute to the rationalities (episteme) and apparatus (techne) of governmentality. To this end, we examine urban security policies and discourses in >Milan over the past decade. Drawing on archival data, official statistics and research reports, we analyse the general policy framework that has emerged and consolidated in the period considered. Special attention is paid to a new frame for urban policies inaugurated in 2005 with the stipulation of “Local pacts for Urban Security”.

Security can be regarded as a set of governmental devices (dispositifs according to Foucault) which in modern states have ensured the management of the population and allowed the ordinary and regular functioning of liberal societies (Foucault, 2008). In this framework, ‘security devices’ are a set of governance techniques that emerged in the eighteenth century in order to act on the population, this being defined as a phenomenon which can be regulated according to a criterion of statistical normality and not according to a norm (Foucault, 2004b/2007). The series including ‘population’ - understood as the object of government in the place of the former unit constituted by the ‘territory’ - and ‘security devices’ - understood as a set of technologies with which to manage the population - is integrated with the notions of threat and risk, which become key elements of governance in liberal societies (Foucault, 2008).1.

This article presents the results of a research - carried out in 2013 in the cities of Milan and Pavia and based on an experimental design - that investigates the relationship between real estate agents and foreign citizens. The analysis of the data – obtained primarily trough a telephone audit - shows how this relationship is characterized by the presence of ethnic-racial prejudices by those who act as rental market gatekeepers and how, in some cases, these prejudices turn in some kind of discrimination, or at least of differential treatment, to the detriment of foreign customers.