Percorsi di salute, maternità e agency fra rifugiate e richiedenti asilo somale a Napoli

Starting from a research carried out amongst the female Somali asylum seekers and refugees in Naples, this article intends to reflect on the repercussions of traumatic and violent events connected with the civil war and - more recently - to Islamic terrorist groups on the life, health and motherhood paths of female migrants. Both the interviews and the life stories we have gathered have shown how such paths may be strongly affected by Somalia’s social and civil instability. In the case of Italy, we will also focus on the cure and agency trajectories allowing women to rebuild their lives, especially concerning gender and migratory networks, as well as by the opportunities and projects offered by the areas such women arrive in. Our field research has started in 2016 and is still ongoing. It envisions both participant observation and interviews. Such activities have involved the female Somali refugees and asylum seekers, as well as privileged informants, such as the social workers participating in area-based projects and female intercultural mediators

Indigesto: Soggettività migranti nel sistema italiano di seconda accoglienza

The article proposes a reflection on the production mechanisms of migrant subjectivity within the Italian reception and integration system and network. It begins with the words of a Gambian asylum seeker, a beneficiary of the system, as a starting point for an ethnographic study. The aim is to connect the experience of the individual with a complex and shape-shifting socionormative framework. By interweaving a multitude of interpretative dimensions, including health, biopolitical, and the role of public narrative and stereotypical representations, this epistemological reflection enables us to consider the diverse pathways to integration. The combination of these hermeneutic lenses provides an ethnography that considers a testimony, a depository of truth guaranteed by the anthropological discipline itself, as it is a public and militant science profoundly engaged in social action. This approach underscores the importance of understanding the intersectional impacts of health, biopolitics, and media on the lived experiences of migrants within the Italian integration context

Diventare “mappe vive”: Patrimonio istituzionale e patrimonio condiviso in Val Cavallina (BG)

This paper discusses the creation of a parish map in Casazza, Italy, that was started to revitalize the struggling Historical-Environmental Museum, spurring debate about local identity. The paper emphasizes the value of participatory approaches in shaping “shared heritage” as opposed to “institutional heritage”, advocating for the local Museum to adopt such approaches. Finally, it explores the role of anthropologists in local contexts, stressing the impact of anthropological methods in community engagement, especially where anthropology is not well known

Pionieri in paradiso: Processi di ridefinizione dell’abitare tra neoruralismo e gentrificazione rurale in una comunità di paese della Toscana meridionale

The essay reflects on the processes of redefining the forms of living in a rural community, Trequanda (in the province of Siena), which has experienced a partial repopulation since the 1970s with the arrival of individuals (couples and families of various ages) from diverse socio-cultural and geographical backgrounds. They largely embody the values of the so-called «neo-ruralism» and share a desire to experience the area not as tourists but as genuine inhabitants: they engage with local social networks, participate in political and economic life in various ways, and move towards sharing and negotiating their presence and experiences with the locals. The stories of these «protogentrifiers » in many ways anticipate the arrival of an elite group (comprising prominent figures from politics, culture, entertainment, and finance) who, starting in the late 1990s, will invest significant funds to purchase and renovate farmhouses, transforming them into aesthetically valuable house that represent high social status, thus leading to a radical process of gentrification in the area

Rifugiati ucraini a Napoli: Strategie di accoglienza, mediazione culturale e assistenza medica

Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine triggered the largest exodus of refugees Europe has ever witnessed since the Second World War. The first part of this paper will examine the significant changes in the European refugee reception policies, with special emphasis on the implementation of Directive No. 55 of 2001 on temporary protection. The second part will instead revolve around the Ukrainian community resident in Naples and its contribution towards all the many compatriots who had escaped the conflict. The accounts of those who acted as cultural mediators during the contingency phase shall shed light on the challenges facing refugees’ wellbeing and their access to the national healthcare system

Oltre i margini: comunità, risorse, prospettive

Making use of the ethnographic observation that the UR of Turin is carrying out as part of thePrin 2020 project on four localities in the Piedmontese Alps, an attempt will be made to analysethe presence of community planning and awareness of the cultural and social meanings of theiractions with a view to producing meaning and culture. While these inland, marginal areas arestill characterised by forms of depopulation, this situation can generate new practices for a morebalanced and sustainable growth. This is a significant ‘growth potential’ still to be discoveredthrough related strategic elements such as the environment, culture, agriculture, renewable energy and tourism, in order to enable a suitable economic development of local communitiesthrough the preservation of agro-cultural landscapes and historical-artistic heritage

Viabilità relazionale: una prospettiva im/mobile delle relazioni nel Gambia transnazionale

While anthropologists have long studied how mobility and immobility shape social relationships, this article describes relatedness itself as a form of im/mobility. It draws on ethnographic research among Soninke speakers in the Gambia and in the diaspora who express their relationship to others through images of what could be characterized as “viability”. The conceptual metaphor of viability serves to analyse three aspects of relational im/mobility. Firstly, viability hints at the infrastructural aspects, such as when Soninke speakers imagine kinship as a road or a network of roads connecting and channelling kinsfolk. Secondly, such relational paths are more or less viable, socially, affectively and economically, depending on whether related people travel either collectively or in a scattered fashion, either closer to or away from each other. Thirdly, viability captures the existential aspect of relatedness, for Soninke speakers also perceive others as entering, inhabiting and exiting their own lives and living condition