Beyond the Political Opportunity Structure Approach: Competing Discourses and Practices of Inclusiveness By First- and Second-Generation Migrants Participating in the Italian Left

The literature concerned with migrants’ political participation mainly focuses on the role of the receiving society in offering institutional and political opportunities for inclusion by using the “political opportunity structure approach.”  This paper argues that, by putting too much emphasis on structures, this approach greatly overlooks people of migrant background’s agency and their role on the processes of integration.

The paper asks: under what conditions people of migrant background are able to shape their own political environment and become subjects of their integration?

In order to answer this question, the study explores two main dimensions: 1) the opportunities offered to people of migrant background at local level by their main “allies,” the left-wing organizations (political parties, trade unions, and grassroots organizations) and 2) how people of migrant background perceive and interact with these local actors.

With the help of extensive fieldwork in four Italian cities in Northern Italy between 2013 and 2014, the empirical research identifies diverging and converging trajectories of individual and collective participation in both conventional and non-conventional political channels.

The preliminary findings show that the role of left-wing actors can be crucial to explain different forms of political participation at the local level. Additionally, people of migrant background can have an important role in shaping their trajectories of integration through their political engagement and by challenging the main left-wing political actors. Overall, the study shows that in order to understand how political integration takes place, we need to rethink the interaction between structure and agency.