Transnational Migration and Rescaling Processes. The Incorporation of Migrant Labor

Emilia Romagna represents a good case in point to study the effects of rescaling processes, that is the reorganization of the “processes of vertical reordering of socio-spatial units” (Glick Schiller and Caglar 2010) at the intersection with migration and migrants’ transnational forms of incorporation. This paper aims at exploring how migrants’ incorporation in the Emilia Romagna region is affected by the concomitant effect of rescaling and restructuring. We would like to illustrate how transnational migration was shaped by both the specific histories of various localities, and by the contemporary restructuring and rescaling affecting local receiving contexts, and the region as a whole. While these local contexts can hardly be considered “global cities”, they have witnessed significant processes of restructuring, which conduced to the privatization of welfare provisions and the reshaping of labor market conditions. These went in parallel with a contested dynamic of rescaling, in a context of a wider reorganization of the relationship between localities, regions, nation-states, and global institutions. As regions and towns strive to become global economic competitors, they also claim a new role in the governance of migration. However, the effects of these developments are complex: political decentralization and restructuring of social policies have produced varied outcomes in different local contexts in Italy, sometimes reinforcing already existing inequalities between regions. The paper is structured as follow: we start by introducing the main characteristics of Emilia Romagna region within contemporary globalized economy. We move onto considering a first example of renegotiation of hierarchical power between two institutions, the region and the state, by looking at the process of differentiation of immigration laws at the regional and national levels. Beside differences between regional and state regimes, there are also important variations within the region itself. We will assess this variability by comparing two neighboring provinces, their economic and political histories and their different relationships with migrants’ transnational projects. We then end by taking into account the dispersed presence of migrants’ settlement in Emilia Romagna, as a significant venue to understand differential positioning of cities determined by the re-articulation of institutions of political, cultural, and economic power within regions, states, and the global urban hierarchy.