Conference Agenda

The relationship between labour and citizenship has long been central to political belonging and social inclusion. Within the contemporary neoliberal framework, labour transformations – shaped by migration, economic precarity, and intersectional inequalities – challenge traditional notions of participation and rights. This paper explores how in the neoliberal era labour functions as both a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion, influencing access to social and political recognition. Drawing on bell hooks’ reflections on representation and resistance, the analysis highlights how labour, particularly within artistic and community-driven practices, becomes a space for negotiating identity, fostering collective agency, and challenging exclusionary structures. Integrating perspectives from political philosophy, decolonial theory, and labour studies, the paper examines how precarious labour conditions can intersect with citizenship policies, revealing the way in which marginalised communities, especially Afro-descendants, mobilise cultural practices as forms of social innovation and political belonging. By focusing on inclusive and participatory strategies, this contribution rethinks democratic participation beyond the nation-state, proposing labour as a transformative space for reimagining citizenship. Bionote: Nicolò Maria Ingarra is a Research Fellow and subject expert for the chair of Political Philosophy at the Department of Political Science, Communication and International Relations of the University of Macerata.

The concept of citizenship is constantly evolving, particularly for Afro-descendant communities, whose experiences challenge traditional legal and political frameworks. While nationality laws establish formal membership, everyday experiences show that citizenship is also shaped by mobility, multilingualism, and cultural participation, revealing a more dynamic and lived dimension. This contribution examines the relationship between legal frameworks and social innovation, focusing on how Afro-descendant individuals navigate citizenship beyond its juridical definition. Adopting a demigration perspective, it explores how mobility, identity, and civic engagement influence inclusion and participation, with a specific focus on the Italian context. Through a comparative legal and interdisciplinary approach, the analysis considers the tensions between restrictive nationality laws and the lived realities of second-generation migrants, questioning how effectively current policies reflect contemporary social dynamics. The recent debate on the Ius Scholae is particularly relevant in this context, as it highlights the gap between formal legal status and real social belonging. By adopting a decolonial and intersectional perspective, this work argues that Afro-descendant communities play a crucial role as agents of social change, actively redefining citizenship through cultural, linguistic, and political practices. Their engagement not only challenges legal constraints but also contributes to shaping more inclusive and participatory models of belonging in contemporary Italy. Bionote:Marta Massoni is a research fellow at the University of Macerata specializing in migration, citizenship, and legal frameworks. She holds a Master’s degree in Global Politics and International Relations from the University of Macerata.

Both U.S. and (more recently) Italian Critical Race Studies define “race” as a “symbolic category, based on phenotype or ancestry and constructed according to specific social and historical contexts, that is misrecognized as a natural category” with material and symbolic consequences (Desmond and Emirbayer 2009; for the Italian context: Curcio and Mellino 2010; Petrovich Njegosh and Scacchi 2012, Giuliani and Lombardi-Diop 2013). The role played by skin color as racial marker in anti-Black mediatic forms of Italian micro-racism will be interrogated with a comparative perspective between Italy and the US focusing on the practice of blackface in the public Italian television program Tale e quale show (RAI 1, 2012-). The unwritten “right to look” at (Mirzoeff 2011) and ‘wear’ the racialized ‘Black’ other/object on the part of ‘white’ Italian subjects (performers, viewers) reproduce the privileges and power of an invisibilized Italian whiteness rooted in the nation’s colonial past and present racism. Following the assassination of George Floyd (May 25, 2020), Transatlantic anti-racist protests on social media and local campaigns by Black activists asked the public broadcaster to stop fostering racism using blackface. The ensuing self-justifying, ambivalent responses claimed a ‘right’ to resentment and innocence that will be addressed as forms of “White” Italian “fragility” (DiAngelo 2018) and “White” Italian “ignorance”. Bionote:Tatiana Petrovich Njegosh teaches Anglo-American Literature and Culture at the University of Macerata.