Turin in transition: Shifting boundaries in two post-industrial neighbourhoods

This chapter attempts to reconcile two approaches still poorly harmoniously integrated in migration studies on Italy: the “migrant focused” and the “space focused”. The chapter seeks to understand how various factors, such as gender, class, generation and the urban structure, produce different effects on social relations in the post-industrial city of Turin. The two neighbourhoods under analysis share a working-class history and strong political mobilization that created social cohesion and a strong local identity as well as promoting the positive inclusion of internal immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s. The history of the post-industrial urban transformation which followed has been very different in San Paolo and Barriera di Milano. In the first neighbourhood the conversion process happened quickly; whereas in the second one it is just beginning and remains uncertain because of the current economic crisis. New immigrants arriving in these neighbourhoods today are confronted with very different urban and socio-economic contexts that are characterized by different views on immigration, inter-group relations, types of conflicts and resolution. The analysis of situated sites of interactions, such as the public gardens, the candy store and the public baths, shows how often conflicts can be explained not in terms of opposition between natives and immigrants but by other influencing factors, such as generation and length of stay in the neighbourhood.