Past Migration and Current Challenges to Citizenship and Integration: The Chilean Migration in Italy

This chapter investigates the case of Chilean migrants, who are among the “firstcomers” in Italian immigration history, to stress some peculiarities and dynamics useful to deepen our understanding of migration and integration. In particular, the analysis of this group may help us to envisage strategies for downsizing processes of cultural distancing, by enlarging today migrants’ participation in the Italian civic and public sphere. Old Chilean migrants were empowered by the possibility to enact citizenship practices, even if they were not “citizens”. Nowadays there is an increasing number of “foreign” citizens, who formally hold the status, but are prevented from fully benefiting from citizenship rights due to discrimination and racialisation processes.