The global in the local. Unusual thoughts about immigration in Italy

The flow of immigrants from the South of the world is the sign of spatial and social imbalances of global dimensions, which involve the same most economically advanced regions. The Italian case offers the opportunity to understand the real extent of immigration phenomenon, as it has coincided with the spread of a meta-consumerist global culture, and because it retains the characteristics of a spontaneous phenomenon, still lacking, in many ways, of the filters of institutional regulation. After highlighting the connotations of the immigration phenomenon in Italy, this article offers a critical reading of glocal processes - to which immigration can be ascribed - in the wider debate about both the goals of environmental sustainability and the enhancement of cultural specificities, foreshadowing for Italy the opportunity to play a pioneering role in the redefinition of the global-local relationships.