Narrating Migration

Book excerpt: This book reflects on the myriad ways in which forms of exclusion and inclusion play out in narratives of migration, focusing on the case of Northern Italian narratives in today’s superdiverse Italy. Drawing on over a decade of the author’s fieldwork in the region, the volume examines the emergence of racialized language in conversations about migrants or migration issues in light of increasing recent migratory flows in the European Union, couched in the broader context of changing socio-political forces such as anti-immigration policies and nativist discourse in political communication in Italy. The book highlights case studies from everyday discourse in both villages and cities and at different levels of society to explore these "intimacies of exclusion," the varying degrees to which inclusion and exclusion manifest themselves in conversation on migration. The book also employs a narrative practice-based approach which considers storytelling as a more dynamic form of discourse, thus allowing for equally new ways of analyzing their content and impact. Offering a valuable contribution to the growing literature on narratives of migration, this volume is key reading for graduate students and scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, sociocultural anthropology, language and politics, and migration studies.