Shadow circuits: urban spaces and mobilities across the Mediterranean

Abstract

In Italy, as in other southern European countries, both the notions of diversity and multiculturalism have only recently come into use. In this article, we show how over the last 30 years two Italian cities, Turin and Naples have been transformed and reshaped by patterns of mobility and informal commerce that we have referred to as ‘shadow circuits’. Shadow circuits work through the connection of distant places in Europe and the Mediterranean and contribute to the understanding of complex, stratified societies, mobile societies in particular. A mobile ethnography perspective has been carried during fieldwork and is discussed in length in this article. The examples of Turin and Naples are particularly useful because, unlike many other Italian cities, both have developed pro-multiculturalism and pro-diversity policies in the last two decades. This makes them particularly interesting case studies for addressing the gap between diversity as a policy and diversity as a social fact.

Keywords:

• shadow circuit
• mobilities
• cities
• migration
• mobile ethnography
• everyday multiculturalism

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the editors of this special issue for their support and suggestions as well as the anonymous reviewers. An earlier version of this article was presented at the ‘Ethnography, diversity and urban space’ Compas conference, 22–23 September 2011, Oxford University. We are very grateful to the organisers of the event for their insightful comments. We also are indebted to Roberto Galbiati for his suggestions on the concept of ‘shadow circuit’.

Notes

1. 1. Photographs illustrating this article are available as supplementary material and can be viewed here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/suppl/10.1080/1070289X.2013.822376.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Camille Schmoll

CAMILLE SCHMOLL is Assistant Professor at the Geography Department, University Paris 7 Diderot and at the CNRS Research Centre Géographie-cités.

Giovanni Semi

GIOVANNI SEMI is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society at Turin University.