Introduction

Abstract

This is a book about social change in European cities as brought about by international migration. Among the many aspects of such long and complex waves of transformations what interests us in particular is how relations are structured and how they evolve in different and increasingly diverse local societies. The main research questions addressed in this book are thus the following ones: why do origin-based categories emerge much more clearly and powerfully as practical and symbolical boundaries in certain local contexts rather than in others within the same national and regional space or even within the same city? How much do urban contexts count in shaping inter-group relations and specifi cally in making ethnic categories more or less salient?Given the fact that central aspects of our research questions, such as relations between the majority population, immigrants and their descendants and the salience of ethnic boundaries are generally considered to be key dimensions of integration processes though with a different emphasis in American and European literature (Gans 1992 ;Portes and Zhou 1993 ;Massey 1995 ;Esser 2001 ;Entzinger and Biezeveld 2003 ;Alba and Nee 2003 ;Zincone 2009 ), this is also meant to be a volume on immigrant integration in European cities.Since ethnic tensions and confl ict have been a major concern in the urban policies of several European cities over the last two decades, we pay special attention to these dynamics in our understanding of integration. Specifi cally, though we agree Ferruccio Pastore is the author of Sects. 1 and 4 , Irene Ponzo of Sects. 2 and 3 .F. Pastore (*) • I. Ponzo FIERI , Torino , Italy e-mail: ferruccio.pastore@fi eri.it; ponzo@fi eri.it 2 that positive relations and loss in salience of ethnic boundaries are crucial aspects of successful integration, we understand the latter not as a rigid state of peaceful coexistence conceptually opposed to confl ict but as a dynamic achievement, a process that implies ongoing negotiations on the idea of 'us', whereby re-negotiation is possible. Accordingly the research project upon which this book is based is titled 'Concordia Discors', 1 an expression originating in the epistles of the Latin poet Horace, now paradigmatic of a dynamic state of 'discordant harmony'. Actually, the idea that confl ict is part of the dynamic process of social change that integration entails has belonged to the sociology of migration since the very beginning. The school of urban ecology of the University of Chicago, which began to deal with immigration in the early 1920s as part of an analysis of urban transformations, maintained that confl ict does not necessarily have negative implications but, on the contrary, is an important step of the integration process through which groups become aware of their identity and their specifi c needs, and are able to make claims in terms of access to resources and rights (Park and Burgess 1921 ). However, in distinction to the Chicago school, here the function of confl ict in the process of integration is not t...