Rome as a Global City - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 35

tory on migration ( Osservatorio romano sulle migrazioni 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011).
i then chose to focus on the groups whose spatial practices seemed to reinter-
pret the radio-centric model discussed earlier.6 This choice enables us to con-
sider some of the ten largest migrant groups in the city and province of Rome.7
it should be noted that the scale of analysis necessary for considering the whole
of the urban area means that gender dynamics are not highlighted, producing a
certain “homogenization” of the immigrant groups which thus appear as mono-
lithic wholes, whereas in reality there are internal divisions and inequalities of
power within them (see, for example, Daniele 2011, concerning Roma). when
discussing the residential modalities of Roma groups,8 i focus on their uses of
space that seem to constitute a tactic in response to strategies of political control
(see chapter 7 for a discussion of the recent “security emergency” and living situ-
ations of Roma in Rome).
bangladeshi and Chinese groups are not the largest groups in the city, but
they are certainly the most concentrated and thus most visible.9 These groups live
mainly in two boroughs (the first and the sixth municipi ) in central areas that are
strategically important in terms of mobility and rising real-estate value. until
about fifteen years ago, these neighborhoods were considered unsafe and subject
to urban decay and were consequently not attractive to italian residents. today,
both are affected by gentrification in which their potential for development has
been widely recognized. This potential already existed at the turn of the millen-
nium but it has accelerated thanks to a process of rediscovery and repopulation
in which immigrants have participated actively (including through a large range
of entrepreneurial activities—see mudu 2006) and in which some groups of ital-
ians have also begun to be involved.
The issue of spatial concentration is particularly noticeable: in 2007, 39.72
percent of bangladeshis and 34.84 percent of the city's Chinese population were
resident in the two boroughs (out of Rome's nineteen municipi ). Their residential
patterns are very distinctive; their concentration is highly localized in certain
neighborhoods and translates into their almost complete absence in many other
boroughs.10 we thus have two immigrant collectivities who presumably had no
interactions before their migration to the city and who present the same levels of
concentration and settlement patterns. This concentration is most visible in the
torpignattara neighborhood in the sixth municipio where approximately 10 per-
cent of the bangladeshi and Chinese populations live (see also broccolini's eth-
nographic study of the bangladeshi community in that neighborhood in chapter
5). a similar phenomenon exists in the esquilino area (zone 1e of the first mu-
nicipio ) where more than 12 percent of the city's Chinese and approximately 7
percent of the bangladeshis reside. This is presumably a stable population since it
is made up of equal proportions of men and women.11 The data we have for 2008
seem to confirm these tendencies; although there was a slight fall (1.34 percent) in