32451 - Sociology of Migration and Migratory Policies

Course contents

Italy is a country historically crossed by a multiplicity of cultural fractures. Consider the language: the "dialects" and other spoken languages in our country have made for a long time the Italian a language spoken only by a minority of the population. The territorial divisions, often exaggerated, have undoubtedly product lifestyles, subcultures, forms of organization of social life that in the recent past were described even in explicitly racial terms. In recent decades, an equally important change has added to this differentiation: the transformation of our country mainly from an emigration to a mainly immigration country. This migratory transition has not transformed our peninsula, making it "multicultural", simply because it was already. But this change added some new differences, including religious ones, who have combined and interacted with the structural characteristics of Italian society. It is especially at this complex and entangled fractures and at the more recent changes triggered by mass migration, that the course will refer.

Italy is involved as the country of settlement in a web of migratory systems for over thirty years. Over time, these systems have developed considerably, the rate of growth of foreign population in Italy is among the highest in Europe. The foreign presence has also quickly become a feature of Italian society: the dynamics of the labor market, the changes in the organization of domestic life, the functioning of the welfare of the urban areas. An increasing number of dimensions of social and economic life can be understood only taking into account the existence of immigrants. However, we continue to speak and work about immigration work in emergency terms, as if it were a unexpected and extraordinary novelty. After more than thirty years, a large part of the debate, even in the learned public, yet it seems not feel the need for a comparison with the results of well documented researches, preferring to develop ideological opposition.

The course intends to present a complete picture of international migration, of the theories that try to explain this phenomenon and issues related to this. Two, then, are the main objectives of the course. The first is to explain in clear and accessible form the main theories, not limited to the classical demographic and economic ones, but extending the strands look at the latest frontier, in particular the development of the theory of the world-system and globalization, of transnationalism, of the social capital, of the networks, of the cumulative causation. The second is to provide an empirically based framework of the main topics of research, such as work and the migration of men, women and family, and deviance and crime, migration policies - such as those input control, integration, and amnesty; first, second and third generations and issues related to these, as the educational system, the assimilation, integration, transnationalism, racism and hate crimes, and public discourse and opinion. Finally, the course will provide the tools for the study of the phenomenon, both in terms of research literature and in terms of the knowledge of the main data sources for the study of international migration.

Readings/Bibliography

(1) (a) Hirschman, C., Kasinitz, P. e DeWind, J., Eds. (1999) The handbook of international migration: the American experience, Russell Sage Foundation or: (b) E. Morawska, A sociology of Immigration, Palgrave, 2009

(2) Colombo, A. e Sciortino, G. (2004) "Italian immigration: the origins, nature and evolution of Italy's migratory systems," Journal of Modern Italian Studies 9(1): 49-70 and Sciortino, G. e Colombo, A. (2004) "The flows and the flood: the public discourse on immigration in Italy, 1969-2001," Journal of Modern Italian Studies 9(1): 94-113 and Colombo, A. - Sciortino, G, The Bossi-Fini Law: Explicit Fanaticism, Implicit Moderation, and Poisoned Fruits, in Italian Politics, 2003

(3) K. Bade, Migration in European History, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003

(4) R. Salazar Parrenas, Servants of globalization: women, migration and domestic work, Stanford University Press, 2001 or B. Anderson, Doing the dirty work?: the global politics of domestic labour, Palgrave, 2000 or:

5) K. Koser, International migration: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, 2007

Assessment methods

The exam is in written form with open questions.

Teaching tools

The teacher will use a blog at he web page: Palimsesti dell'accademia.

Students are asked to check these reference sites:

Neodemos. Popolazione, società e politiche.

Pagina web:http://www.neodemos.it/

area tematica "migrazioni mobilità"

Ministero dell'interno - Dipartimento per l'immigrazione e le libertà civili, Primo rapporto sugli immigrati in Italia, a cura di M. Barbagli e A. Colombo, Roma, 2008 (scaricabile dal sito del ministero dell'interno alla pagina:http://www.interno.it/mininterno/export/sites/default/it/assets/files/15/0673_Rapporto_immigrazione_BARBAGLI.pdf

Links to further information

http://smipm.blogspot.com/

Office hours

See the website of Asher Daniel Colombo