Towards an Emerging Ethnic Class in Italy?

Excerpts from the Italian country report: "(...) we find ourselves up against the emergence of a complex process of territorialization where, alongside accommodation in highly degraded residential property and at tolerable rents at the cost of a certain overcrowding, there is a strong development of commercial enterprises and public services managed by immigrants, forming a network of meeting places and a very intense activity of re-use of public areas, used not only by immigrants who have settled in the historical centres, but also by immigrant users/consumers who live elsewhere. Walking down the streets of an ethnically connoted neighbourhood, it is easy to see the presence of windows and signs of ethnic shops, Chinese, African or Indian restaurants which replace local cooking, artisans’ workshops, supermarkets stocking international food, bookshops and video shops in the most unusual languages. These are explicit symbols of the presence of economic activities linked to ethnic entrepreneurship which, forming a mosaic with the gradual addition of new pieces, connotes the external image of the streets, now usual and familiar to even the most distracted glance of those who walk down them daily. (...) In Italy, the existence of a highly differentiated foreign universe is confirmed, not only in relation to the importance of some nationalities compared to others, but also to the different expectations and migratory plans of individuals who are going through this experience. This leads to the increasingly clear need to consider immigration as a complex phenomenon, in order to valorize as far as possible the potential resources that this phenomenon has."