This article provides an overview of the geography and economic sociology of recent immigration to Italy. Its main purpose is to offer a contextual framework for the mainly place- and nationality-specific studies which follow and make up the main contributions to this special issue of the journal. Throughout our account, stress is laid on the regional diversity of the immigrant experience within Italy, and on the diversity of migratory types and nationalities which have entered the country over the last twenty-thirty years. In the final part of the article we make a brief analysis of the Italian political response to the country's relatively new status as a receiver of large-scale immigration.

The city of Milan has been host to two separate mass migrations over the last fifty years. The first involved Italians in the 1950s and 1960s, the second, non-Italians from the 1980s onwards. Until now little comparison—historical, sociological or otherwise—has been made of these two processes. The first part of this article draws up a theoretical and definitional framework for this comparison, and sets out the possible bases for such a task. The second part looks in detail at three stories concerning non-Italians in Milan in the 1980s and 1990s: the vicissitudes of one important temporary centre for immigrants in Via Corelli in the city; the story of Driss Moussafir, a Moroccan victim of terrorism; and the violence which erupted in Via Meda in the summer of 1998. Through these micro-stories, the article examines a number of historical questions concerning migration and integration and looks to draw comparisons concerning the role of politics, the state and racialization between these two historical periods.

Based both on the author's personal testimony of living, working and studying in Italy for ten years, and on his more recent sociological fieldwork, this article explores various dimensions of racism in the north Italian city of Modena, paying special attention to the experiences of Tunisian immigrants. The methodology comprises interviews with Tunisian immigrants and their employers, observations in bars and other public places, analysis of racism in the workplace, monitoring of the local media and reference to the national political debate. The findings reveal that being on the receiving end of racism, hostility and violence are regular facets of the everyday lives of Tunisian immigrants in Modena, as well as being part of a wider local and national anti-immigrant discourse.

This article, based on ethnographic research, describes the precarious integration of Africans, Asians and others in the Sicilian city of Palermo. Most newcomers perform low-status jobs (particularly domestic work), have little access to state-sponsored services, lack political representation and suffer from derogatory stereotypes of non-whites and non-Westerners. In this context, immigrants express frustration at their marginality and they obtain jobs, housing, information and mutual aid from family and co-national networks that span the city, Italy itself and international borders.

This article examines the institutional discourses and practices that have characterized the process of incorporation of a group of Rom refugees from the former Yugoslavia in Bologna, the ‘showcase’ of the Italian Left. Following an anthropology of policy approach, the article provides insights into both the conditions of refugees in Italy and the relationships which exist between the political Left and the ‘new’ immigrations. This is done by showing how the discourses and the practices of the Left can be oppressive and how such oppression is not merely due to an inescapable macro-structural order of things but has local ‘origins’, too. Thus it is argued that if social justice is still a priority in the political agenda of the mainstream Left in Italy, as is claimed, then the Left has some rethinking to do in order to avoid its entanglement and responsibility in processes of oppression and domination in the context of migration.

The coast of Emilia-Romagna is a favourite destination for the seasonal movement of Senegalese street-sellers. It is no coincidence that Rimini hosted one of the first racist demonstrations of shopkeepers in 1989. The situation has worsened over time. In fact, the local public discourse on immigration never developed autonomously but has always been connected to the discourse expressing the main concern of the town: irregular trade. Yet discourses do not work alone and are linked also to social relations and to economic trends such as the restructuring of the local retailing economy and the tourist sector. This article therefore shows how racism in Rimini is the fluid product of, first, the overlapping of discourses about differing social phenomena which shape the dominant discourse on immigration; and, secondly, the identification with this dominant discourse that has emerged from everyday social relations and institutional practices. The latter part of the article presents elements of the counter-discourse, based on observations and conversations carried out with Senegalese immigrants in a summer camp outside Rimini. Finally, a proposal by the mayor of Rimini to exclude non-resident immigrants coming from outside the province is analysed as an example of the criminalization of immigrants through the application of a ‘sedentarist metaphysic’.

The central theme of this article is the notion that migrants ‘shop’ for opportunities of work, income and social advantages in different countries. Taking the case of Cape Verdean women migrants, the research is based on 25 in-depth interviews carried out with domestic workers in Rome and Rotterdam. I explore ways in which these women have negotiated mobility, employment and family and household responsibilities within the context of a largely independent female migration which is well established from Cape Verde. Italy has a nodal role in channelling mobility from Cape Verde to various destinations in the global Cape Verdean diaspora. But while opportunities for stable employment as domestic workers in Italy have been a constant factor encouraging Cape Verdean women to migrate to Italy, difficulties over pay, working conditions, welfare and family reunion have led to much onward movement to the Netherlands and elsewhere.