Ethnoscape, Migratory Stratifications and Multicultural Neighbourhoods

Starting from the concept of ethnoscape coined by Arjun Appadurai (1990), the paper focuses the discussion on the ongoing transformations in multicultural neighborhoods, often marked by vulnerability and processes of stigmatization, and on how migrant presence is structured and stabilized within these places. Based on various ethnographic research conducted over the years by the authors in some urban contexts in northern Italy (Padua and Milan), the objective is to highlight the characteristics of the changes that have occurred within these spaces and to outline a synthetic framework of interethnic coexistence that has been built and layered in the analyzed contexts. In the analysis of the case studies, the concept of migratory stratification will be used consistently as defined in the introduction of this book: focusing on how various population movements have succeeded each other in a specific context (in this case specific urban areas), the aim is to practice a processual, relational, and anti-essentialist sociology that manages to grasp the connections between migratory stratification and structural processes of economic, political, and social nature; between stratification of migratory processes and stratification of narratives on migrations; between migratory stratification and social and urban change; between dynamics unfolding at micro, meso, and macro levels