Italy between stable immigration and migratory emergencies

Italy, a country characterized by a long history of emigration, has been a destination for immigrants, with growing numbers of incoming flows, only since the late 1980s. Immigration became a consolidated field of research in the early 1990s; two of the most important publications on this subject, the yearly Reports published by the Caritas/Migrantes and the ISMu Foundation, reached in the year 2010 respectively the twentieth and the sixteenth issue. Within this interdisciplinary field of study, the geographical approach found a significant place, with at least a fifteen year-long tradition of field researches and theoretical investigations studying the slow transition from an initial emergency phase to a more consolidated process of formation of a multicultural society. The recent (from December 2010 till now) events in Northern Africa, though, are marking a resurgence of an emergencial dimension of migratory flows towards Italy. While the foreign born population reached in the country the number of four millions, numerous landings of boats full of immigrants on the shores of the Italian territory marked a new insurgence of social and political attention towards the phenomenon. The presentation will outline the recent evolution of the migratory phenomena in Italy, with particular attention to the territorial images presented by the mass media.