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THE IMMIGRANT TIMES
Solidarity Towns and Cities
in Italy
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In this article on Solidarity Towns and Cities, The Immigrant Times features Italian communities in Calabria, Tuscany and Lombardy. (Photo: Brescia, Lombardy)
Introduction
September 2026: For African migrants, Italy has long been the primary gateway to the European Union (EU). While Rome's central government employs strident anti-immigrant rhetoric, communities across the Italian peninsula have long had to integrate newcomers, developing local mechanisms to absorb, employ, and live alongside diverse arrivals.
In its Solidarity Towns and Cities series, The Immigrant Times examines four distinct Italian communities. These range from depopulated southern villages in Calabria that harnessed refugee reception to stave off demographic extinction, to northern industrial hubs in Tuscany and Lombardy, where immigrant labour is deeply woven into factory and workshop operations and neighbourhood life.
While acknowledging the political friction, labour disputes, and institutional fragility that accompany these shifts, the profiles document the enduring civic solidarity, mutual trust, and local ingenuity that emerge when communities opt for practical coexistence over despair.
Riace, Calabria
Town data
Perched on the rugged hills of the Locride region in southern Calabria, Riace overlooks the Ionian Sea and is home to roughly 1,800 residents. The hilltop village of Riace Borgo, famous worldwide for the 1972 discovery of two ancient fifth-century BC bronze warriors on the seabed off Riace Marina, experienced severe economic decline in the late twentieth century.
Emigration stripped the community of its young, leaving shuttered stone dwellings, empty primary school classrooms, and an ageing population reliant on state pensions and subsistence-level olive farming.
Immigration
Riace’s transformation began unexpectedly on 1 July 1998, when a boat carrying more than two hundred Kurdish asylum seekers landed on the municipality's coastal strip at Riace Marina. Rather than calling for their removal, local residents, led by activist and future mayor Domenico "Mimmo" Lucano, welcomed them to live in the depopulated hilltop village (borgo).
Between 1998 and 2018, around 6,000 refugees passed through Riace, with several hundred settling permanently. At the project’s peak, foreign residents numbered more than 400 of the municipality’s 1,800 inhabitants, accounting for nearly half the population of the historic upper village.
This influx of young families from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Syria reversed demographic decline, filled previously empty primary classrooms, and transformed a forgotten southern hamlet into an internationally celebrated symbol of humanitarian reception. Although government funding freezes and judicial proceedings in 2018 forced most temporary residents to relocate, a resilient core of several dozen settled families remained to anchor the community.
Integration
Under Mayor Domenico Lucano’s guidance, the municipal administration rejected centralised institutional detention in favour of an albergo diffuso (scattered hotel) model. Public funds were used to restore abandoned houses belonging to emigrant families and to allocate them to newly arrived households. The village established bilingual kindergarten programmes, reopened its primary school, and integrated newcomer children directly into local classrooms. The local economy was revitalised through traditional craft workshops, including pottery, glassmaking, embroidery, and weaving, where older Italian artisans trained young migrants and revived dormant regional trades.
Solidarity in action
Grassroots solidarity in Riace evolved into a comprehensive social and economic system. The village created a complementary local currency, backed by delayed state subsidies, enabling newcomers to buy essentials from local grocers and bakers immediately on arrival. Social co-operatives managed refuse collection, using donkeys to traverse the medieval alleys and employing both local Calabrians and refugees.
Following the intense political and judicial persecution of Lucano from 2018 onwards, which temporarily dismantled the reception projects and led to severe economic reversals, civil society mobilised nationwide to support the town. With Lucano’s substantial legal exoneration and his re-election as mayor in 2024, local associations, church networks, and volunteer co-operatives have worked to reopen the workshops, renovate housing, and re-establish Riace as a self-sustaining model of rural coexistence.
Friction and strain
Riace’s model sparked fierce institutional and political hostility. National right-wing figures and central authorities viewed the local system with suspicion, prompting ministerial audits, frozen municipal funds, and criminal proceedings against Lucano, which fractured the town’s civic cohesion.
Although his most serious fraud convictions were overturned on appeal, administrative and fiscal management disputes have persisted, creating ongoing uncertainty for municipal governance. Locally, long-standing residents outside the immediate co-operative networks have periodically expressed frustration with the international media circus, arguing that public funds and political attention disproportionately bypassed poor, native-born Calabrian households struggling with inadequate regional services, including healthcare.
Camini, Calabria
Town data
Located just a few kilometres south of Riace in the Locride area, Camini is a quiet, panoramic village perched at 300 metres above sea level. With a population of fewer than 800, the village shared the acute structural vulnerabilities of Calabria's interior: chronic water shortages, poor transport links, youth emigration to northern industrial centres, and an agricultural economy vulnerable to the influence of the regional criminal cartels (’Ndrangheta).
Immigration
Like its neighbouring towns, Camini faced demographic extinction as its population plummeted from several thousand in the mid-20th century to barely a few hundred by the early 2000s. In 2011, the village made a deliberate strategic decision to join the national public reception network (now known as SAI).
Starting with small groups of North African and Middle Eastern asylum seekers, Camini gradually welcomed families from Syria, Nigeria, Mali, and Ukraine. Today, foreign-born residents make up roughly 20 per cent of the permanent population, bringing vital youth and families to the sleepy municipality.
Integration
Camini’s municipal authorities entrusted day-to-day integration to a local social enterprise, Eurocoop Servizi 'Jungi Mund' (which translates to 'Join the World' in the local dialect). The co-operative focused on structural regeneration rather than emergency relief. It systematically renovated empty houses scattered throughout the historic centre, creating modern family homes.
The municipality reopened the local nursery and primary school, which had been on the brink of permanent closure because of a lack of pupils. Agricultural fields left fallow for decades were converted into communal vegetable plots, and new commercial kitchens were set up to process local capers, liquorice, and sun-dried tomatoes.
Solidarity in action
What sets Camini apart from Riace is its quiet, durable civic collaboration, away from the ideological spotlight. The Jungi Mundu co-operative has become the municipality's primary employer, providing stable work for around thirty residents, with an equal split between native Calabrians and newly settled migrants.
Long-term villagers and newcomers jointly run carpentry and ceramic workshops, a community bakery, and eco-tourism guest houses. Everyday solidarity is evident at the communal Casa delle Conserve, where Syrian and local grandmothers exchange recipes, blending traditional Calabrian aubergine dishes with Middle Eastern cuisine.
When national funding delays periodically threaten project cash flow, local suppliers and shopkeepers routinely extend interest-free credit to the co-operative, ensuring that food and utility services remain uninterrupted for refugee households.
Friction and strain
Despite its relative harmony, Camini lies in one of the poorest and most institutionally fragile regions in Western Europe. An unreliable regional healthcare network constrains the town, forcing residents and newcomers to travel for hours along poorly maintained mountain roads to access basic medical specialists.
While direct xenophobic backlash has been minimal, local anxieties periodically flare over the project’s long-term sustainability, as young immigrant families often struggle to secure permanent private-sector employment beyond the publicly funded social co-operatives, prompting some to depart for northern Italy or northern Europe once their residency papers are secured.
Prato, Tuscany
City data
Lying twenty kilometres northwest of Florence, Prato is Tuscany's second-largest city, with an urban population of approximately 200,000. Historically renowned as one of Europe’s foremost textile capitals, the city specialised for centuries in carded wool and fabric recycling. In recent decades, it has become one of Europe's foremost hubs of pronto moda (fast fashion), housing thousands of small and medium-sized garment-manufacturing workshops, industrial fabric mills, and logistics warehouses across its sprawling Macrolotto industrial zone.
Immigration
Prato is home to Europe’s largest single concentration of residents of Chinese origin, alongside significant communities from Albania, Romania, Pakistan, and North Africa. Chinese migration began in the late 1980s, primarily from the Wenzhou region of Zhejiang province, bringing entrepreneurial energy and labour to the declining textile sector.
Today, foreign-born residents make up roughly 23 per cent of the official population, a proportion that rises significantly when unregistered workers are included.
Integration
Early integration in Prato was marked by profound separation, as immigrant businesses operated within parallel economic ecosystems with minimal ties to Italian civic institutions. The turning point came after an industrial fire in 2013 that killed seven Chinese garment workers, exposing severe safety violations in unregistered workshops.
In response, regional authorities, the municipal council, and local trade associations launched the Patto per Prato Sicura (Pact for a Secure Prato). This multi-agency initiative went beyond punitive policing, combining workplace health inspections with targeted regularisation schemes, legal compliance workshops in Mandarin, and municipal support to help immigrant enterprises transition to the formal economy.
Solidarity in action
Civic solidarity in Prato is grounded in pragmatic economic and educational collaboration. The city’s primary schools pioneered intensive linguistic and cultural mediation programmes, employing bilingual mediators to guide parents through the public administration and parent-teacher associations.
The textile trade unions (CGIL, CISL, and UIL) actively organised foreign apparel workers, collaborating with grassroots advocacy groups like Sudd Cobas to dismantle exploitative twelve-hour shift patterns (otto per otto campaigns) and secure legitimate employment contracts.
Intercultural associations, such as Associazione Culturale Cinese di Prato, and youth collectives, such as Polisportiva Prato Nord, run joint football leagues, cultural festivals, and community business roundtables where established Italian entrepreneurs and second-generation Chinese business owners exchange technical expertise and promote clean production methods.
Friction and strain
Prato’s rapid economic restructuring led to intense social friction. Conservative local politicians and anti-immigration movements frequently targeted the Chinese community, citing tax evasion, underground money transfers, and the displacement of traditional Italian artisans.
Heavy industrial inspections sometimes fuelled feelings of criminalisation among immigrant entrepreneurs, while labour crackdowns occasionally sparked tense street stand-offs between factory owners and union organisers. Tensions also surfaced in residential neighbourhoods, where language barriers and rapid turnover in apartment blocks challenged neighbourhood cohesion, leaving local authorities with the perpetual task of mediating between old industrial customs and global commercial realities.
Brescia, Lombardy
City data
Situated at the foot of the Alps in eastern Lombardy, Brescia is a prosperous city of roughly 200,000 residents and the heart of Italy's industrial and metalworking powerhouse. Its regional economy is driven by heavy precision engineering, metallurgical foundries, machinery manufacturing, firearms production, and intensive agro-food processing. Known as the Leonessa d’Italia (Lioness of Italy), Brescia balances deep-rooted Catholic social traditions with a proud working-class, trade-unionist identity.
Immigration
Brescia has one of the highest proportions of immigrant residents among major Italian cities, with foreign-born citizens accounting for roughly 18 per cent of the urban population and nearly 25 per cent in the surrounding industrial communes. The city’s industrial base has attracted foreign labour since the 1990s, drawing diverse cohorts from Romania, Albania, Morocco, India (particularly the Sikh community essential to the regional dairy industry), Senegal, and Pakistan to staff physically demanding shifts in foundries and manufacturing.
Integration
Integration in Brescia has been mediated through the workplace and neighbourhood institutions. Rather than relying on top-down state intervention, the city leaned on its robust civic ecosystem: the Catholic diocese’s Caritas networks, secular volunteer organisations, and powerful metalworkers’ unions (FIOM-CGIL and FIM-CISL). These bodies established legal clinics, housing advisory boards, and Italian language courses tailored to industrial safety requirements. The municipality reformed its neighbourhood district councils (consigli di quartiere) to grant foreign residents consultative voting rights, ensuring immigrant workers had a formal voice in local municipal planning and public service provision.
Solidarity in action
Solidarity in Brescia is strikingly evident across civic, industrial, and spatial domains. In the historic Carmine district, once a neglected inner-city quarter prone to urban decay, a deliberate coalition of university students, immigrant-run shops, artists, and neighbourhood associations reclaimed the public squares, transforming the area into a vibrant, multi-ethnic cultural hub.
Secular rights organisations such as Associazione Diritti per Tutti collaborated directly with immigrant workers to establish emergency housing collectives, thereby protecting vulnerable families facing eviction during economic downturns.
During the catastrophic initial wave of the Covid pandemic in early 2020, which hit Brescia harder than almost any other European city, immigrant community associations mobilised volunteers alongside Italian civil defence units to deliver food hampers, interpret medical advice, and staff overloaded healthcare facilities.
Friction and strain
Brescia's high concentration of immigrants has made it an enduring political battleground. The city and its surrounding province have long been a stronghold for the right-wing Lega (League), whose regional leaders have consistently campaigned against the visibility of mosques, tightened municipal welfare eligibility rules, and opposed immigrant street markets.
Severe industrial restructuring and automation in the metallurgical sector have occasionally pitted Italian and foreign-born workers against each other over job security. Housing shortages remain acute, with many immigrant families facing systemic discrimination in the private rental market, which has forced municipal housing agencies to manage long, contentious waiting lists for social housing.
Key Sources & Documentation
Official data: ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica), municipal demographic registries of Prato and Brescia, and regional public health records from the Azienda Sanitaria Locale (ASL) Toscana Centro and ASST Spedali Civili di Brescia.
Civic & NGO documentation: Case records and project evaluations from Eurocoop Servizi "Jungi Mundu" (Camini), the SPRAR/SAI reception archives of the Ministero dell'Interno, Caritas Diocesana di Brescia, Associazione Diritti per Tutti, and Associazione Culturale Cinese di Prato.
Judicial & regional reporting: Documentation of the Patto per Prato Sicura from the Prefettura di Prato; court filings from the Reggio Calabria Court of Appeal regarding the municipality of Riace; and investigative reporting from La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, Il Fatto Quotidiano, and Il Tirreno.
About this series
This is the first article in a series examining how immigration affects communities across Europe. We deliberately chose towns and cities that receive little publicity but have shown that, despite many challenges, immigration has benefited and enriched their communities. Solidarity between local residents and newcomers is key to success.
Readers are invited to suggest other European towns and cities that they feel The Immigrant Times should feature.
Already published reviews: Sweden || Italy || Eastern Germany || Coming soon: France || Spain || The UK ||
Further reading from The Immigrant Times: The Solidarity Prize || Solidarity Prize Criteria || Solidarity Prize for Europe || Riace || Oliveri || Santo Stefano del Sole || Italy needs immigrants || Teaching refugees in Italy || Pope Leo on migration || Guisi Nicolini ||
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