Policy Networks and Immigrants’ Associations in Italy: The Cases of Milan, Bologna and Naples

This article analyses the role played by immigrants’ associations in local policy networks in Italy. The aim is to find out if differences in the political opportunity structure have an impact on the development of immigrant organisations and on their influence in the policy-making process. In the first part of the article I describe the evolution of immigrants’ associations in Italy by focusing on the institutional opportunity structure, defined here as the resources granted by national legislation to support immigrants’ associations. In the second part I focus on three cases that represent different areas of the country: Milan, Bologna and Naples. These cities have been governed by different political majorities since the mid-1980s, and are thus characterised by differences in the political opportunity structure. The question I ask is: do different configurations of power, right-wing or left-wing, provide different institutional opportunities for immigrants’ associations? And how do these different opportunities influence levels of immigrant organisation? My analysis shows that immigrants’ associations are poorly organised and play a marginal role in the local decision-making process in the three cities considered. Left-wing administrations have attempted to open some opportunities, but these were scarce and often of a contradictory nature. Local governments seem in general to prefer Italian pro-immigrant associations, especially as far as access to funding and running for public contracts is concerned. As a consequence, in all the three cities considered, national welfare associations appear to have crowded out immigrants’ own initiatives. Keywords: ItalyPro-Immigrant AssociationsPolicy-Making ProcessInstitutional Opportunity Structure The data presented above were collected in the context of a broader research project—supervised by Professor Giovanna Zincone—on local policy-networks in Italy carried out during my PhD in Political Science at the University of Florence, and with the contribution of the Young Researchers Programme of the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Turin. The main sources utilised were official documents (minutes of municipal councils and executives) and in-depth interviews with the main actors. Notes 1. Immigrants from Egypt were probably among the first to arrive in Milan in the early 1980s (Palidda 2002: 107). Initially employed in industry as factory workers, they were able to start a process of social mobility through the opening of small businesses such as carpet shops and restaurants. 2. ‘First-accommodation’ services translates, albeit not very satisfactorily, the Italian Servizi di prima accoglienza, including ‘emergency’ housing offered to new arrivals. 3. ‘Adjoined’ councillors were voted in the mid-1990s in Rome and Ancona. They are not allowed to vote in the Town Council, and have a mere consultative function. Other cities allowed for the direct election of consultative committees, the ‘consulte’. This was the case of Turin in 1995 (only until 1999), Modena (1999), Palermo (2001) and Bergamo (1999). 4. Five legalisations have been approved so far: in 1986, 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2002. Additional informationNotes on contributorsTiziana Caponio Tiziana Caponio is Research Assistant in the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Bologna