ABSTRACT
The last chapter explained the political construction of a united North and the ways in which 'culture' entered into the categorical remaking of Northerners as 'Padanians'. ill this chapter, in contrast, the focus is on the political construction of otherness. ill studying anti-migrant mobilisation during the 1990s, two peculiarities of the Italian political scenario must be highlighted. First, and in contrast to other European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium, the wave of migration towards Italy in the 1990s had no precedent in the post-war period. When the first migrants appeared in the late 1980s, it was a new social phenomenon. illstead of debates about citizenship of social and political integration of second-generation gastarbaiders-typical of other European countries during the same periodthe politicisation of the question of migration in Italy is mainly shaped around the control of migration flows and new arrivals, and only secondarily about migrants' integration in Italian society. Moreover, in other European countries such as France, Germany or the Netherlands, migration is characterised by the presence of migrants from a few countries-such as Morocco and Turkeybut in Italy migration waves involved migrants from a variety of countries and continents: Africa, Eastern Europe and the refugees from the wars that destroyed the ex-Yugoeslavian federation. Second, in the post-war period migration flows were directed from South to North within Italy. The politicisation of the North-South question is also a crucial question in the creation and reproduction of otherness by Lega Nord. Thus, the question to investigate is if, and how, Lega Nord packaged both categories of migrants under the same cultural construction.
