Biopolitics and the ‘Complementary Heterogeneity’ of Migratory Flows in Italy

Abstract

This article focuses on the links and interdependences between new trends in post-Fordist globalization and the current direction of migration flows and migrants’ projects in Italy. On the one hand, thousands of migrants are arriving as stowaways or asylum seekers due to political and economic tensions from the Syrian crisis and elsewhere in the Arab world. At the same time, an increasing number of highly-skilled youths are leaving Italy in order to seek insertion in more dynamic knowledge-based economies. Informed by Foucault’s approach to biopolitics, this work critically considers the ‘complementary heterogeneity’ of these migratory flows as a focal point and examines them in the structural context produced by the post-2007 crisis.

Work and Gender in the Context of Spatial Mobility and Migration: the Case of Highly Skilled Italians Abroad

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Italy’s Health Divide

“…In recent decades, Italy has experienced a steady growth of support for anti-immigration parties, which progressively created a hostile environment in which migrants and asylum seekers were stigmatised and marginalised (Ambrosini, 2020;Tomei, 2017). Far-right parties and populist movements produced a fictive narrative of migrants as dangerous criminals and 'invaders' whose goal was only to exploit the Italian welfare state.…”