Incorporation policies in diversifying rural localities in Italy: challenges and opportunities

Journal title MONDI MIGRANTI
Author/s Federico Rossi
Publishing Year 2023 Issue 2023/2 Language English
Pages 22 P. 215-236 File size 235 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2023-002011
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Rural areas in Italy are not entirely new to international immigration, but they recently experienced a huge diversification of flows, including labour and amenity migrants and, due to relocation strategies, asylum-seekers and refugees. In places with limited resources and experience of diversity, such processes can originate new challenges, but also new opportunities. Therefore, this work investigates incorporation policies of Italian rural municipalities with quantitative and qualitative methods. First, k-medians clustering is used to classify rural municipalities according to immigration patterns and to better understand their immigrant policy activism. Second, semi-structured stakeholders’ interviews are performed to explore actual practices of active rural municipalities. Results show how rural policymakers can develop alternative and innovative strategies to deal with incorporation, but these have different outcomes according to local opportunity structures and contexts of immigration.

Keywords: local incorporation policies; new immigration destinations; rural areas; rural immigration; Italy.

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Federico Rossi, Incorporation policies in diversifying rural localities in Italy: challenges and opportunities in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 2/2023, pp 215-236, DOI: 10.3280/MM2023-002011