Shadow circuits: urban spaces and mobilities across the Mediterranean

Abstract

In Italy, as in other southern European countries, both the notions of diversity and multiculturalism have only recently come into use. In this article, we show how over the last 30 years two Italian cities, Turin and Naples have been transformed and reshaped by patterns of mobility and informal commerce that we have referred to as 'shadow circuits'. Shadow circuits work through the connection of distant places in Europe and the Mediterranean and contribute to the understanding of complex, stratified societies, mobile societies in particular. A mobile ethnography perspective has been carried during fieldwork and is discussed in length in this article. The examples of Turin and Naples are particularly useful because, unlike many other Italian cities, both have developed pro-multiculturalism and pro-diversity policies in the last two decades. This makes them particularly interesting case studies for addressing the gap between diversity as a policy and diversity as a social fact.

Chinese Migration to Europe

“…3 This phrase alludes to the notion of everyday lived multiculturalism (see Wise & Velayutham, 2009), although the absence of formal multicultural policies and practices in Prato warranted an alternative term in this context. See also Schmoll and Semi (2013). 4 Baldassar was the director of the Monash University Centre in Prato from 2009Prato from to 2011 The public expression of conflicts, through the exposure of emotions, facial expressions and inflamed discussions might appear troubling to some reader.…”

Envisioning place: urban sociabilities within time, space and multiscalar power

“…Within this understanding of urban restructuring, urbanists have examined the dynamics of inequalities, solidarities and contestations in specific various urban places (Susser 2014;Künkel and Mayer 2011;Bodnár 2001). With some exceptions (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2011b;Schmoll andSemi 2013, Cadge et al 2010), those engaged in either describing or critiquing urban regeneration processes and their outcomes around the globe have said little about migration and migrants, despite the fact that cities have always been constituted through translocal and transnational processes in which migration plays a pivotal role (Sassen 2008). At the same time, research on urban regeneration and transnational migration does not draw on the insights of borderland researchers who speak about the dynamics of unequal power and the multivalent identities that are emerging within border regions (Jensen and Löfving 2008).…”

Waste pickers in the informal economy of the Global South: included or excluded?

“…Both studies started from the assumption that in order to truly understand the social practices that characterise the informal economy and its interaction with the formal economy, it is important to 'follow the people' and, in many cases, to 'follow the things' (Schmoll and Semi, 2013). Therefore, they use qualitative research tools and specifically ethnographic observations of the work and working circumstances of waste pickers, non-structured interviews with waste pickers and semi-structured interviews with waste management associations, government representatives and NGO representatives.…”