Arrival Infrastructuring at a Southern European Gate: Public Action and Spaces in Palermo, Italy

Abstract

This article investigates how the interplay of different actors has shaped the arrival of newcomers in the city of Palermo in Southern Italy. The recent debate on arrival infrastructures is currently developing in Central Europe, where arrival has been experienced as part of a reception crisis starting in 2015. Within this framework, Southern European contexts represent interesting fields of observation, both for the way arrivals are deployed and for the type of public action that has been mobilized. Here, arrivals are often linked to further departures; infrastructuring processes involve a wide range of in/formal actors, which can be inscribed into a Southern (European) definition of public action. Stemming from two research projects in urban studies, the article unpacks how different actors channeled newcomers' arrivals between 2015 and 2020. Methodologically, the work builds on qualitative methods and fieldwork, as well as on documents and discourse analysis. It highlights the interplay of a robust pro-hospitality political discourse, a broad - and partly informal - public action around it, everyday infrastructuring practices, and how they spatialized into diverse arrival spaces. In Palermo, public action takes roots in a specific urban historical trajectory of the city, through actions and spaces that lie between formality and informality and that often also reveal resourceful aspects.