Inspection Culture: a Subaltern Reading af an Urban Conflict

Abstract

With this article we set out to explore the impact of migratory phenomena in an industrial district and the greater metropolitan area between Florence and Prato. The presence of migrant workers and families of Chinese origin extends across boundaries of communes, former provinces, and the metropolitan cities. In this localized encounter zone, practices of work and living trigger conflicts and processes of negotiation that unfold in the absence of a regulatory framework able to manage conditions of subalternity and self-exploitation—particularly when these occur in neighborhoods and among groups of families and migrant workers. The analysis of the construction phases of a complex control apparatus highlights the relevance of the ethnographic encounters in physical spaces, cities and neighborhoods, where economic crisis has contributed to producing conflicts between the logics and aspirations of the migrants, residents and various levels of local administrative as well as regional and national government entities.