Phone centres and the struggle for public space in Italy: between revanchist policies and practices of resistance

Abstract

This paper proposes to contribute to debates on revanchist urbanism. By drawing from empirical data collected in two northern Italian cities, Verona and Modena, it provides an exemplification of relevant policies: phone centres normative framework. After discussing to what extent the original thesis by Neil Smith can be transported to the cases under analysis, the paper points to a vacuum in the relevant literature: a lack of attention to dynamics of politics. Hence, it demonstrates that while scholars risk promoting a narrative of domination, the target of revanchist policies can resist the potential annihilation of public spaces operated by revanchist interventions.

Keywords:

• revanchism
• urban safety
• immigrants
• political engagement

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were read by Rowland Atkinson, Roberta Marzorati, Fabio Quassoli, and Tommaso Vitale. I wish to thank all of them for their useful comments. I also wish to thank Jennifer Rowland for her excellent proofreading.

Notes

1. This term refers to ownership of the shop’s licence rather than ownership of the actual shop.

2. These included: internet point owners; lawyers; representatives and founding members of the Coordinamento Migranti, an association that supported phone centre owners in Verona; the president and some founding members of IP Associati; the president of the consultative body of immigrants in Verona; the secretary of a workers’ union in Modena and a trade unionist in Verona; five shopkeepers; five representatives of neighbourhood committees in Modena; various members of the national and local police forces; policymakers involved in the definition of the normative framework of phone centres at the regional and local levels; and a variety of actors who were involved in two specific conflicts that took place in a neighbourhood in Verona and another in Modena and that were analysed to dig out specific political dynamics.

3. See Koopmans and Statham 2000, Fennema and Tillie 2001, Garbaye 2002.

4. These were phone centres that associated phone and Internet access with other ancillary services, such as food store, money transfer, video rental, etc.

5. The most recent data by the Municipalities of Verona and Modena date back to May 2009 for the former and January 2009 for the latter. The last interviews with phone centre owners, in May 2010, confirmed these data were still representative of the situation.

6. The reader might wonder why no pictures or graphics are included in this paper to provide a better idea of what phone centres are and look like. Unfortunately, phone centre owners and their businesses have been very much subjected to considerable media attention, through articles and photos published in local newspapers. For this very reason they would not like to have pictures published anywhere else, regardless of the motivation, nor would they be ready to provide the authorisation for anyone to take pictures and publish them.

7. Eventually, following an appeal by phone centre owners in Padova, a city in the Veneto region, this article was declared unconstitutional (Italian Constitutional Court sentence 25/2009).

8. Electoral data from the website of the Italian Ministry of Interior (2011).

9. It suffices to say that a local authority in its provincial area first experimented with the “Consiglieri Aggiunti”, that is to say the possibility of endowing representatives of immigrants’ communities with consultative powers during municipal meetings.