Paesaggio e popolazione immigrata: il progetto LINK (Landscape and Immigrants: Networks, Knowledge)

This collection of short working papers illustrates the perspective of the research project. The research starts from the idea that landscape can be considered as an “instrument of cultural intermediation”, which can potentially contribute to encourage intercultural dialogue and immigrants’ integration in multicultural territorial contexts. Every landscape can be considered as the product of the interrelations between a population and its place of life: in this sense, it has an intrinsic cultural value and can constitute a reference point for the identity of people living in a certain place. From this point of view is, therefore, interesting to understand which role landscape plays in immigrants’ experience. Some general aims of the research are: to explore how immigrants perceive the landscapes they meet, in the host country/ies as well as in the home one, and to understand how new feelings of place belonging are developed; to compare foreigners and Italians’ landscape perceptions, in order to highlight potential differences and potential different roles of landscapes in the identity construction; to understand if it is possible to build a way of perceiving landscape which is shared by Italians and foreigners and if this common perception can contribute to a greater social cohesion between them. In order to investigates these issues, field research activities have been carried out in two localities of the Italian Veneto Region – the village of Borgoricco and a quarter in the city of Padova – involving Italian and foreigner teenagers. The research adopts a qualitative approach, using different methods (autophotography, semi-structured interviews, focus group).