The struggle for public space: The hypervisibility of migrants in the Italian urban landscape

The presence of immigration in the European urban landscape contributes to the re-questioning of taken-for-granted use and meanings of the urban texture. In Italian cities, we witness a contemporary struggle between different groups and individuals for the physical and symbolical production and appropriation of public space. This paper is based on qualitative research in the city of Padua (north-eastern Italy, Veneto region) on the territory around the railway station where migrants try to seek out symbolic and material resources while using specific spaces. However, in the process of manipulating urban spaces, migrants are accused of surpassing the ‘upper threshold of correct visibility’. In other words, the level of visibility of their different bodies as well as the nonconventional uses of urban space challenge a ‘spatial order’ which is essentially taken for granted as the ‘right way’. The paper highlights how local policies and the local mass media create an atmosphere of continuous ‘moral panic’ through the circulation of a stereotypical image of migrants. The paper concludes by calling for a radical shift in the policymaking process that has to be strongly informed by the physical, symbolical and emotional production of urban space. Difference today typifies the urban dimension of Italian cities and the development of contextual and coherent strategies to manage diverse urban societies is now of utmost importance.