Abstract

This report aims at assessing the role of diversity in urban policy in Italy, with a focus on the case of Milan. Even though we will provide a general overview of diversity discourses mentioning a number of different groups and targets, our focus will be mostly on in-migrant diversity. This is due mainly to the fact that – as interviews and policy documents analysis will show – there is no wide-scope, cross-sectoral, general and strategic discourse on diversity and its promotion in the Italian policy and public agenda. Instead, there is a plurality of fragmented discourses concerning specific groups and categories (e.g. in-migrants, Roma and in the Italian case also the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, young people, women) that is reflected in an institutional fragmentation. The resulting fragmented policy practice is reinforced by a weak inter-institutional coordination at the horizontal level between departments and policy-specific organizations, usually reffered to as "departmentalism" or "silo-culture"

Abstract

In the city of Milan, Italy, via Padova and Sarpi-Canonica are two neighbourhoods were cultural diversity became visible and caused concern in the local political and media debate. Via Padova, a working-class area with one of the highest share of immigrant residents, has been subject to a stigmatization process after clashes between groups put a strain on in it in 2009. Sarpi-Canonica – simplisticly defined as the Chinatown of Milan – is a middle-class neighbourhood which saw the growth of Chinese wholesale; after conflicts raised over the functions of the neighbourhood, a renovation project was started. Drawing from these two cases, in this paper we explore the discourse about diversity and mixed communities according to neighbourhood and city key informants: the representations provided by policy-makers and social partners are insightful on the Italian discourse about the “ideal” model of interaction and living together between diverse residents. A quite shared integrationist/intercultural approach shows that diversity is accepted but not encouraged, while pluralism should be tempered by an attention to social cohesion and minority specificity should blend into the majority. So, social faults are seen as due a) on the one hand, to an inadequate diversity management by public institutions; b) in a more blaming way, to the (self-)isolation of some minorities. Drawing from interviews, policy documents, and literature, we will show how the fear for ghettoisation is related to the ethnicisation of public space: a visible and “separated” diversity is somehow considered more dangerous than socio-economic inequality, and this grounds local policies and initiatives that may compress diversity.