Migrant Descendants Protests in Italy: A Challenge to the Issue of “National Citizenship”

The paper aims to give a broad outline of migrant descendant associations in Italy, and the reasons for their protests; it also aims at understanding their status in society and the sources of the choice of their mobilisation as movements. This will be examined through direct and indirect narrations (narrative interviews and website forums), and analysed on a comparative basis. The methodological goal is to analyse the “who, when, how and why” of the claims concerning the issue of citizenship in order to examine the influences of these groups on social policies and to observe them as forms of “active citizenship from below.”

The above protests will be also analysed as a challenge to the issue of “national citizenship.” Where the citizenship does not represent only a juridical status, but it is deeply related to the construction of the modern welfare systems. Also, it is played through belongings, and concerns all the processes of socialization of new generations, providing the younger of a sense of membership linked to a multicultural and/or intercultural idea of citizenship.