Diversity and interculturalism, a critique and a defence. Going through multiethnic neighbourhoods in Rome

The starting hypothesis of this paper postulates that the two different concepts of the diverse and the intercultural city can be alternatively applied to describe and govern multi-ethnic urban settings, the difference being more matter of scale rather than nature. Diversity and interculturalism share in fact the same duplicity, a normative content combined with an analytic orientation: the former however addresses mainly the ordinary configuration of places, while the latter allows the discussion of rights and political principles. The diverse and the intercultural city are then the same? The answer is affirmative, but the condition is to clear both concepts from ideological deposits. Interculturalism in particular describes the attitude of national governments towards integration, intended as the process of exchange and interaction between the hosting and the immigrant population; at the same, it suggests a normative model for balancing and accepting those exchanges. Interculturalism has gained greater importance recently, and has come to be seen as a response to the failure of other consolidated integration models, in particular the assimilation one epitomized by France and the multicultural applied in the Netherlands (in part in Germany) and the UK. Italy does not have an explicit model, nor a consistent body of regulation at the national level, and does not fit into such broad categories. However, an hybrid attitude has been identified in its legislation (Zincone in Lucciarini, 2007): the objective is not one of cultural assimilation, but it is that of granting security and avoiding conflicts in the process of interaction among communities. The Italian approach has been described as that of a ‘reasonable integration’ (ibidem), with civil and social (not political) rights granted to regular immigrants, while no rights at all are recognized to those deemed irregular citizens (a broad category sometimes stretched to accommodate Roma people). Recently, the attitude towards irregulars has become even more restricted, and they often are criminalized. However, generally speaking, this categorization of different integration regimes seems to be ‘narrow’, considering that policies for immigrants are played at the local level, and there they are influenced by processes, actors, interests and local pressures (Caponio, 2006). At the local level, diversity emerges as the narrative concerning cities and specific spaces, being less abstract, and more intertwined with local realities. If the intercultural city is something ‘prescriptive’, top down, it is a matter of policies and management of the complexity of cities; on the contrary, the diverse city is something more ‘phenomenological’, which attains not just at the domain of policies but which accounts as well practices. Social conflicts and political thought have concentrated upon these two dimensions, often bending the reality to serve party agendas or ideologies. Dealing with ordinary cities, diversity appears embedded in the social practices that enact the processes of change and immigration. Such practices not only acknowledge others’ diversity, but construct each and everybody identities. In this latter perspective, diversity is definitely a local feature of society in strong relation with both urban spaces and daily routines. This paper explores the potentiality of the concept of the diverse and intercultural city, sketching rapidly key multiethnic neighbourhoods of Rome as examples of social practices. This exploration is meant to assess how these concepts translate into practices and policies. The aim is a critique of a narrow but prevalent notion of diversity, which is widespread in the planners’ current uses, though misrepresenting intercultural issues; and, on the other side, a defence of diversity as a key tenet for policies dealing with urban spaces.