National governments and administrations are increasingly interested in involving migrants and their associations in processes of policy formulation and implementation of integration policies. The Dutch and the German governments established various bodies of consultation in immigrant integration policies: Both established a consultation structure on issues of immigrant integration in a more general sense. The Dutch government initiated the “National Advisory and Consultation Structure of Minorities Policy” (LAO) already in the 1980s. In 1997 the body received its legal foundation and was renamed into the “National Consultation Structure of Minorities” (LOM). In contrast, the German “Integration Summit” has not been organised before 2006. In addition to consultations on general integration issues, both governments organised dialogue platforms with representatives of Muslim organisations in particular. The Dutch state-Islam consultation was established in 2004 and the German Islam Conference in 2006. All the four consultation structures have been geared for the political integration of minority groups. Though, their specific shape and process characteristics show significant differences. The Dutch approach, for instance, relies much more on formal legal institutions than the German one. Differences between the two countries can be explained by characteristics of their political systems and by specific historically grown state-society relations. The paper will show that by involving migrant associations in policymaking processes governments recognise the special interests of immigrants and attribute status to their representatives. Nonetheless, governments set the guidelines and rules of the process. Usually they offer only limited participation to migrant associations.

In contemporary society policy makers and academics tend to see migrants as passive objects of policy rather than political actors. Public and policy discourse considers migrants in terms of control, management, economic contribution and cost. This paper will instead consider migrants as political subjects and explore their collective civic and political agency. Informed by anthropological and feminist notions of the political that allow for a wider and more complex ranges of political engagements this paper sets out to discuss the policy impact of migrants’ collective practices of citizenship. In articulating this discussion the paper is grounded in extensive ethnographic fieldwork on migrants’ collective action carried out in three urban localities – London, Barcelona and Bologna – around issues of regularisation, recognition and labour rights. The theoretical contribution of the paper consists of outlining an approach to the study of migrants’ engagements which is both ‘committed’ and recognisant of their agency as well as of the context in which it is performed. It also consists of indicating ways of rethinking ideas about ‘impact’ that seem to characterise current social movements theory.

L’abstract si propone di focalizzare, attraverso la presentazione dei primi risultati di un lavoro di ricerca sul campo, i processi di autorganizzazione e mobilitazione sociale che investono le comunità migranti coinvolte nel circuito transumante dello sfruttamento della manodopera clandestina nell'agricoltura del mezzogiorno. Dietro l'apparente fiammata incontrollata di rabbia che ha caratterizzato le rivolte di Castelvolturno del 18 settembre 2008 e di Rosarno del 12 dicembre 2008, allorquando centinaia di migranti scesero in piazza poco dopo le sparatorie che uccisero e ferirono alcuni di loro, la relazione si propone di mostrare come questi episodi non sono stati incontrollati eventi "tumultuosi", ma le punte più visibili di processi embrionali di mobilitazione sociale che coinvolgono in prima persona una parte rilevante di quelle migliaia di migranti impiegati nelle raccolte agricole di Cassibile, Rosarno, Castelvolturno, Cerignola, San Nicola Varco.Alla forzata condizione di illegalità che ostruisce l'accesso agli strumenti tradizionali della partecipazione e della tutela dei diritti, si è risposto attraverso lo sviluppo informale di un processo di networking per la condivisione di pratiche e saperi, in primo luogo per l'acquisizione del "diritto ad avere diritti": questo è il fulcro del "Movimento dei Migranti di Caserta". La presente relazione si propone di analizzare la natura e l'evoluzione di questo movimento che ha progressivamente perso la caratterizzazione territoriale, fino a configurarsi come strumento privilegiato di raccordo per quella moltitudine di soggetti migranti che lavorano a nero nell'agricoltura nel meridione: costituitosi come un network autocentrato nelle comunità d'origine, coadiuvate da alcune organizzazioni di volontariato presenti sul territorio casertano, si è sviluppato nel tempo come un sistema di rete particolarmente denso che, nella capacità di produzione di vertenze sociali per il riconoscimento dei diritti di cittadinanza - a partire da mobilitazioni specifiche per l'allargamento degli interstizi giuridici presenti nelle legislazioni in materia di immigrazione - ha interconnesso e coinvolto diverse migliaia di migranti (4.200 per il solo 2007) protagonisti della "transumanza agricola meridionale". Non è un caso che le rivolte di Castelvolturno e di Rosarno, le due più importanti rivolte spontanee contro le mafie negli ultimi anni, hanno avuto come protagonisti gli stessi soggetti sia a Castelvolturno che a Rosarno: una volta acquisita fiducia nella mobilitazione come grimaldello per il riconoscimento dei propri diritti, hanno utilizzato le medesime risorse mobilitative come strumenti di autodifesa contro le violenze della malavita. L'obiettivo di questo lavoro, che si muove lungo le coordinate delle teorie dei network migratori e il resource model approach dei movimenti sociali, è approfondire la tesi dell’autonomia delle migrazioni all'interno di un nesso costitutivo tra movimento sociale dei migranti e sfruttamento del lavoro vivo, ponendo in primo piano le lotte dei migranti come percorsi di resistenza e pratiche conflittuali innovative.

The paper will focus on the political dimension of integration and present a comparative analysis of immigrants’ integration in the UK and Italy. It will look at the relationship between socio-economic conditions and political participation of first-second generation of migrants in the UK and Italy and the meaning of engagement and disengagement of immigrants into/from the political system. It will investigate the extent to which the lack of political integration affects immigrants’ civic and social integration. It will question at what stage immigrants are regarded as fully-fledged members of the political community and the granting (or not) of political rights at the local administrative level and what are the opportunities for less formal political participation, such as through consultative structures for immigrants. As Italy and the UK differ remarkably in relation to granting political rights and consultative bodies, theoretical consideration will be drawn on this matter. Referring to other European countries which have adopted formal or informal channels of political participation it will be weighed the extent to which their policies have led to beneficial socio-economic and cultural results.

The idea that the political context sets the parameters within which political participation and mobilisation of groups and movements occur is quite common. This holds as well for the political participation of migrants’ organisations. However, previous work has stressed the impact of the institutionalised political system, largely overlooking more cultural and symbolic contextual aspects. In addition, previous work has looked at the role of political opportunities for explaining collective action, focusing much less on how they influence individual participation and behaviour of migrants. This paper focuses on the following European cities: Budapest, Geneva, London, Lyon, Madrid, Milan, Oslo and Zurich. We engage with the systematic analysis of a set of “opportunity structures” including the two strands of institutional opportunities and discursive opportunities, for the political participation of migrants at the individual level. To what extent does the political context influences individual participation and not only collective action? If there is an impact, how can we disentangle the institutional from the discursive aspects of that context? What are the implications in terms of policy making? Using data from the analysis of a large number of political indicators and from systematic coding of local newspapers, we examine the impact of the two strands of opportunities on the political participation of migrants in our selected cities. We start with the analysis of the impact of institutional opportunities, focusing in particular on main political arrangements in the field of migration and ethnic relations. Afterwards, we combine this first strand of more classic opportunities with the analysis of “discursive opportunities.” This second strand of opportunities provides migrants with public visibility and political legitimacy to act as political actors. That is, we explore the hypothesis that the political participation of migrants varies according to the prevailing discourse conveyed in the public domain and the opportunities stemming from them in terms of public visibility and political legitimacy of certain actors, identities, and issues. Overall, we aim to identify variations across cities and across ethnic groups in the institutional and discursive context so as to explain differences in the political participation of migrants. Large recourse is made to statistical treatment of data, including regression techniques and multivariate analysis.

Few studies consider the role of immigrants as political actors. Despite the blindness of researchers and politicians, Portugal and Italy have witnessed the presence of immigrants and immigrant organisations in their public sphere. In this research, we found out that the type of civil society in host countries has an influential role in the position of actors in social movements and political mobilisation tissues. With a cross-national comparison, we present the results of this line of reasoning.