The New Images of Disorder: Local Communities and Immigrant Group Conflicts in the Cities of Northern Italy.

The paper will explore the relationships and conflict among organised local communities and immigrant groups in some Northern Italian cities. Communitarian mobilization against crime and against immigrants in local neighbourhoods is a social phenomenon whose study could shed light on many aspects of contemporary social dynamics of post modern societies, especially those related to the search for new collective identities and for new form of participation and citizenship, and to the emergence of "localism" and racial conflicts as a response to the fragmentation of social identities. Starting from this general issue, the paper will discuss some studies carried out in Northern Italian cities, which experienced, during the past years, strong conflicts among the residents and the immigrant groups and will focus on the new images of disorder emerging from communities' reaction to the presence of immigrant groups, especially from Northern Africa. This analysis will allow to go deep into the issue of racial conflicts and into the ways by which local communities re-shape both their images of crime and disorder, and , at the same time, their identity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]