Informal migrant settlements between irregular condition and right to the city. New challenges for planning in cross-border Euro-Mediterranean contexts

Abstract

Analysing the spatial dimension of the phenomenon, which highlights the inadequacy and insufficiency of reception places, the increase in phenomena of eviction of irregular occupations, as well as the post-COVID exclusion and marginalization effects whose territorial scope we can currently only speculate, with the significant increase in the phenomenon of informal settlements in suburban urban settings. In this sense, the recent results of surveys conducted in Italy in the field of planning on the territorial distribution of the foreign population in suburban contexts show how the traditional focus on urban contexts has left uncovered a relevant field of investigation. Therefore, the research intends to show how the presence of migrants is not exclusively an urban fact, but increasingly assumes an extra-urban territorial dimension, generally less known and, therefore, scarsely investigated. Taking Sicily as a case study, the research uses an exploratory approach in trying to understand the localization choices of informal migrant settlements, using data and available literature.