Contested Geographies of ‘Welcome’: An Ethnographic Analysis of Migrant Reception in Bologna and Torino

Abstract

After a decade characterized by the leitmotif of “migration crisis,” states in the European Union (EU) are increasingly contending with questions around the integration and long-term membership of migrants to national communities. To pursue the idealized goal of integration, states are increasingly experimenting with programs that bring citizens and migrants together. Examples range from the UNHCR’s Buddies with Refugees initiative to the many state-funded programs that cropped up in 2022, enlisting private citizens in effort to house displaced people from Ukraine. The incorporation of civil society in integration showcases that, states too, see belonging as forged through everyday interactions, mundane adherence to social norms, and the formation of new affective attachments. While civil society is crucial to the existence of integration and “good citizenship” as political projects, it is also an arena to problematize and transform these concepts from the ground up. This dissertation investigates the involvement of civil society in programs developed with the goal of migrant reception and inclusion in Bologna and Torino, Italy. I employed ethnographic methods to investigate how practitioners, city residents, and migrants make sense of the growing role of civil society in initiatives aimed at supporting the long-term integration of migrants. Fieldwork yielded 75 semi-structured interviews, 110 hours of participant observation and a digital archive of more than 500 documents relating to migrant reception in Italy and at the two field sites. Drawing from feminist political geography, urban studies, and critical migration studies, this project investigates the everyday (re)forging of social boundaries and urban ideals of community. This research analyzes how residents, practitioners and migrants come together to rehearse and contest ideas of “welcome” and good community membership. In doing so, this work exposes the continued importance of hospitality as a moral orientation to reception, while underlining hospitality’s many limits as an approach to encounter across difference.