It seemed inevitable, in today’s extremely complex panorama of migratory flows and the responses arriving from Europe, not to address, within the Focus on Identity, the theme of national identity and borders, in a debate with two leading experts on the subject.

Maurizio Ambrosini, sociologist, has been analysing and studying the phenomenon of migratory flows in Europe for years through data and statistical research, revealing uncomfortable backgrounds on the management of immigration by many European countries.

Francesco Remotti, an anthropologist, is now famous for his numerous publications on the theme of cultural and national identity, and the ambiguous and contradictory aspects that these definitions bring with them. Together they will formulate alternative visions of possible coexistence between cultures and peoples in our fluid and globalised age.

Moderator of the evening Danilo De Biasio

Maurizio Ambrosini. Professor of Sociology of Economic Processes at the University of Milan, where he coordinates the degree course in “Social Sciences for Globalisation”. He also teaches at the University of Nice. He is the scientific director of the Centro Studi Medì in Genoa, where he edits the journal “Mondi migranti” and the Summer School of Sociology of Migration. He collaborates with the ISMU Foundation (Institute for the Study of Multethnicity).
His interests concern the themes of work and unemployment, solidarity and social policies, and in recent years especially migration and globalisation processes. His articles and essays have appeared in journals and books in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Chinese. She has recently published Irregular Migrations and Invisible Welfare. Il lavoro di cura attraverso le frontiere (Irregular migrations and invisible welfare. Care work across borders) and edited Governare città plurali (Governing plural cities) and Perdere e ritrovare il lavoro (Losing and finding work).

Francesco Remotti. Anthropologist. After graduating in Philosophy in 1970, he began his academic career at the University of Turin, becoming full professor of Cultural Anthropology a few years later. Former director of the Department of Anthropological and Archaeological Sciences (1988-91 and 1994-97), as well as coordinator of the doctorates in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology (1991-99) and Anthropological Sciences (2000-08), between 2001 and 2007 he chaired the three-year degree course in Intercultural Communication (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy) and then moved on to chair the Master’s degree course in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology (2007-10). Over the years R. has conducted field research among the Banande and directed the Italian Ethnological Mission in Zaire (1979-93) and in Equatorial Africa (1994-2004). An expert in political and juridical anthropology, structuralism and kinship systems, he is the author of numerous publications, including Centri di potere – Capitali e città nell’Africa precoloniale (2005), L’ossessione identitaria (2010) and Per un’antropologia inattuale (2014).

(Photocredit: Alexandra Beier, Getty Images)