Controversial social representations about migrants from multi-voice and multi-agent (scientific, institutional and lay people) discourses and immigrant’s experiences

“About 60,000 years ago our sapiens ancestors left Africa (from there we all come, although with the passage of time we are getting a little discolored....), and one migration after another arrived first in the Middle East and, 20,000 years later in Europe: where 250,000 years before we find the traces of the oldest Neanderthals, arrived also from elsewhere. No European is a European native if we go back far enough in history!” (Allievi, 2018a, p. 3 – 4, my trasl.) It is enough to visit Museums of History of cities in old and new continents to be exposed to an impressive history of migrations along millennia: in some cases of “immigration”, in others of “emigration”, finally in others in alternate directions (immigration / migration) depending on the historical circumstances or even with concurrent directions of migratory fluxes of different target groups. “The history is a history of migrations. And it starts from afar: in prehistory” (Allievi, 2018b, p. 4) Today the technological innovation in the interconnected world at global scale has not eliminated the physical mobility at local, national and transnational level. On the contrary the global interconnection and the communication in real time has multiplied the need and desire for relocation of different length (temporary, long term or permanent / irreversible).