ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes electoral campaigning on the immigration issue in six local elections in Italy. The study of electoral campaigns by political scientists has focused on two aspects: the effects on voters and the strategies of political actors. The first stream of literature focuses on campaigns as a source for information processing by the citizens, suggesting that these provide voters with necessary information for making a choice in line with their pre-existing preferences. The chapter focuses on the second aspect, and address the role of political actors that is the actors who initiate campaign events and provide the main input into electoral debates. Socioeconomic aspects are often at the core of technocratic and expert debates on migration. Finally the chapter addresses the dynamics of electoral campaigning within an actor-centred political process model, in which all actors are part of a contest for the control of the public agenda and its interpretation of specific political issues.
