Immigrants and (In)security: the Construction of Social Space Through an Ethnography of Veronetta Borough

Abstract

This article is based on research undertaken between 2015 and 2016 for a Master’s degree and studied immigrants of different nationalities who live in the borough of Veronetta in Verona (Italy). Ethnographic research spanning five months revealed that the representation of immigration as a problem of insecurity held by Italians can directly affect self-perceptions of the immigrants themselves as well as their social relations and how they construct the urban space in which they live. Veronetta is characterized as a dangerous neighborhood due to the presence of immigrants and this image is shown to have been internalized by many of the immigrants and is reproduced on a day-to-day basis, which, when viewed “from the inside”, brings us back to the fundamental social problems analyzed here, above of all that of security.