Multicultural urban spaces and the right to the city: the Italian local policies on immigration

The paper proposes a reflection on the issue of the ‘production of localities’, activities regarding the making up of an individual self. This aspect helps to determi-nate collective identities and memories shared by migrants and natives, as far as hybrid dynamics belonging to different cultures situated in the same urban milieu, are con-cerned. Central to the concept of multiculturalism is the notion of difference. All mod-els of multicultural cities require categorization of difference at some level. In the Ital-ian society different experiences of local multicultural welfare highlight how local poli-cies on immigration can give effect to the recognition of cultural differences in a given territory, although they can not affect the legal issues as vital as access to citizenship or the right to vote. Local authorities play a significant role in promoting forms of social inclusion of migrants and generative welfare