Migrants, refugees, invaders: responses to the Riace Model’s inclusive citizenship project

ABSTRACT In imagining a post-nationalistic and post-racialized future, the refugee hospitality and integration project implemented in Italy, known as the Modello Riace (Riace Model), sought to use state-funded, sustainable activities to encourage asylum seekers to mix with locals and settle in the economically depressed and depopulated areas of southern Italy. The project navigated legal frameworks and defied rampant ethno-nationalism to integrate refugees during the Mediterranean migrant crisis and to mitigate the associated climate of hostility towards them. The experiment prompted a political backlash and stirred paranoia about an imagined ethnic replacement of Italians. This paper introduces the Riace Model’s humanitarian vision and its interaction with the social solidarity economic sector in Italy after the 2008 financial crisis. It analyses interviews with the then-mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, and their reception on social media, to examine notions of humanitarianism and citizenship in Italy. Highlighting the contrast between Riace’s imagined future and hostile views of refugees as invaders and criminals, the study demonstrates the conflict that arose at a time of economic austerity. The study also illustrates how public figures became proxies for opposing factions, discusses the Model’s legacy, and highlights the challenges facing future integration schemes.

Implemented in the small Calabrian town of Riace, 1 the Riace Model (Sasso 2012;Rinaldis 2016;Barillà 2017;Zavaglia 2018) attempted to assuage local residents' fears of asylum seekers by promoting cooperation between them. Supporters of the scheme saw the refugees' arrival as an opportunity to counter depopulation in economically depressed Calabria (Aiello, Romano, and Zitelli 2018) and although the Model ultimately failed, it helped thousands to avoid deportation and to settle in Italy and other nations between 2004 and 2019.
This radical humanitarian project gained global acclaim, but also drew xenophobic hostility from some quarters. The perceived threat of mass arrivals led to the Salvini Decree that abolished humanitarian protection permits (Giuffrida 2018a;Arnone and Sicomo 2018) and used a 'language of fear' (Terracciano 2019; also see Giuffrida 2018b;Finlayson 2020) to call for borders to be closed and patrolled. In post-2008 crisis, an Italian-centric nationalist narrative surrounding migrant appropriation of financial resources gained traction, accompanied by a myth that characterized refugees, especially those from Africa, as part of a plan to 'ethnically substitute' autochthonous Italians. Such paranoia stifled the view of Riace as a step towards a postethno-nationalistic, de-essentialized, and de-territorialized notion of Italian citizenship.
In a climate of racialized hostility towards alien 'invaders', fears grew that the Riace Model sought to develop a 'business of hospitality' (Pannofino and Pellegrino 2021) as part of a globalist conspiracy. Additionally, the indictment of the former mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, in 2018 on charges including facilitating illegal immigration, bid-rigging, and arranging 'marriages of convenience' between migrants and residents (an accusation also levelled at his Ethiopian partner Tesfahun Lemlem) (Giuffrida 2018c) was widely believed to be politically motivated (Kington 2018). In September 2021, Lucano was sentenced to thirteen years and two months in prison, and is currently awaiting a second judgement on his case (Tondo 2021). Meanwhile, his supporters view his methods as a tactical form of resistance to bureaucracy in defence of the fundamental right to seek asylum. Since the termination of the Riace project and the subsequent political disputes over administrative and symbolic control of Riace, the Model has represented a key political case for the future direction of migration and citizenship in Italy.

Roads to integration: the rise and fall of the Riace Model
Like other spots on the Mediterranean coast, Riace has become a site for mass landings of asylum seekers. Lucano witnessed the first landing of Kurdish refugees in 1998 and was inspired to take an increasingly active role within solidarity networks both as mayor and through the local organization Città Futura (Future City). Between 2004 and 2019, thousands of migrants from Syria, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, and many other countries benefited from such hospitality and settlement schemes.
As the number of asylum seekers increased, local authorities began to settle them in areas of Southern Italy that were blighted by economic depression and depopulation (Gramsci 1978;Moe 2002;Barbagallo 2013), involving them in state-supported employment programmes (Aiello, Romano, and Zitelli 2018). The innovative scheme set out to foster intercultural exchanges, to revive traditional modes of production from oil-making to forging, and to develop cultural activities such as theatre and music. Asylum seekers, most often from the Middle East and North Africa, resided in houses abandoned by the Riacesi, who had left job-starved Calabria. In seeking to reverse such depopulation, Riace also offered Italy an alternative view of asylum seekers that contrasted with the prevalent framing of them as a threat (Kleist and Jansen 2016: 379). The scheme won international praise and turned Lucano into a globally recognized icon; he was featured in Fortune magazine's 50 Greatest Leaders list in 2016, and was awarded the Dresden Peace Prize in 2017.
The Model sought funding through the government's Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (S.P.R.A.R.), which had helped regions explore 'virtuous paths of local integration' (Loprieno 2019(Loprieno , 1555. The European Union provided state-level hospitality funds that were distributed to local authorities and third-sector players (associations, charities, and nonprofit non-governmental organizations [N.G.O.s]). However, the ability of the Model to enact enduring economic and social transformations was limited by its reliance on subsidies and by migrants' conceptions of Riace as merely a stopover. Nevertheless, Riace served a vital role in sheltering refugees at risk of repatriation (often to war zones), in fostering pathways to citizenship, and in protecting them from exploitation by the local mafia.
The experiment also attracted resistance from a crisis-stricken and disgruntled local population. Vulnerable Italians feared that migrants would take their jobs and make their towns unsafe. Nationwide, elements of the political Right -particularly the Lega Party, once a regional separatist formation, now a national party targeting foreign migrants (Albertazzi et al. 2018) -fuelled a climate of 'Italians first' (Coman 2018). Against this background, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini exacerbated existing hard-line anti-immigrant policies by issuing decrees to return the country 'to its gatekeeper role [. . .] to enforce increasingly strict controls' (Campesi 2020, 49). This weakened S.P.R.A.R.'s ability to develop occupational and sociocultural integration (Giuffrida 2018a;Arnone and Sicomo 2018), while the repealing of humanitarian visas bolstered views of refugees as 'clandestines' (illegal immigrants). When Lucano was indicted in 2018, all integration projects were suspended. His opponents, mostly from the political Right, saw this as justice for his defiance of the law. His mostly progressive Catholic and Left-wing supporters felt that the sentence was politically motivated and immoral, and that Lucano had been unjustly condemned for correctly interpreting the Italian Constitution's principles in matters of fundamental human rights.

Populists and humanitarians
The Riace experiment took place within a specific context of socio-political processes and the circulation of their social imaginary. The first of these was the rise of populism as a modality of affect and a driver of tensions between institutions and the public (Mazzarella 2019) in the context of enhanced European border enforcement (Engelbert et al. 2019). Populism has been regarded as a 'slippery' concept for research (Mazzarella 2019, 47;also, Rovira Kaltwasser and Taggart 2017), prone to weaponization as reciprocal defamation (Comaroff 2009). 2 I focus on its ability to exacerbate divisions between 'a valorized majority us -the people -and a demonized minority them', on its 'organicist emphasis on community and place' and 'suspicion [of] cosmopolitan rootlessness'. This brand of populism draws on hostility towards the Model by agents that thrived 'on bigotry if not outright fascism' and the charisma of leaders in whom people found 'a palpable image of their own substance' (Mazzarella 2019: 50). This dynamic involved channelling voters' disgruntlement over economic and social hardships towards a constructed external enemy through 'strong powers' of language (Giovinazzo 2020).
Second, the Riace Model was implemented during a 'crisis' of diverse humanitarian formulations -a notion that resides at the heart of the Model's re-imagining of post-displaced trajectories and of the mediated social contention that this paper seeks to capture. Fassin (2012) defines humanitarianism as a reformulation and continuation of what is at stake in politics and as a repertoire for public action. For Redfield (2012, 453), humanitarianism is a tool for achieving an 'architecture of sentiment and judgment' and 'direct human affairs'. In the European Union rescue paradigm, humanitarian aid is often flaunted, but it represents a tiny proportion of the policies that otherwise enforce closed borders, controlled migration, detention centres, and repatriations, while perpetuating the geopolitical asymmetries that generate displacement.
Perhaps more paradoxically, xenophobic parties perpetuated the idea that asylum seekers needed help to fight for their rights 'in their own homes', portraying them not merely as invaders but also as victims of a globalized agenda by N.G.O.s to profit from a 'business of hospitality' (ADN Kronos 2018). 3 Slogans such as Aiutiamoli a casa loro (Help them in their own homes) and Se non partono non muoiono (If they don't travel, they won't die) stirred distrust in N.G.O.s. Migrants were simultaneously met with open hostility and accused of depriving Italians of resources amid a rising fear of ethnic replacement. Thus, by challenging essentialized, Western, whitewashed ideas of national identity, the Riace experiment agitated a simmering ethno-nationalism in which underprivileged citizens were incited against migrants, destroying any possibility of uniting against the geopolitical and economic causes of their condition.
The Model aimed to function as a moral force to dismantle borders. Riace's humanitarianism proclaimed concern for human life beyond a ringfenced notion of citizenship and imagined alternative futures 'through self-determination' (Malkki 2015). Such visions reappraised Italy's multi-ethnic and diasporic histories, defied imagined borders (Sousa Santos 2007), and dissolved naturalized views of ius sanguinis (rights by blood or native soil). For the European Left, the Model became a template offering a post-racial and deterritorialized view of citizenship that sought to convert fear of migrants into optimism, and even to entrust migrants with an active role in preventing depopulation (Sasso 2012;Rinaldis 2016).
The 'critical fabulation' (Hartman 2008: 11) of the Riace Model acknowledged the diverse 'temporalities, spaces, and regimes of values' (Pine 2014: 595) of migrations, envisioning achievable futures (Stengers 2003) with the Mediterranean as a connective rather than divisive element. The Model resonated with secularist notions of solidarity elaborated within socialist humanist thought such as the theology of liberation and the pedagogy of the oppressed, as formulated under Christian doctrine, 4 hence Lucano's support from the Radical Left and progressive Catholicism (Tarquinio 2021).
Although this brand of humanitarianism was central to the Model's aims to counteract characterizations of migrations as threats, the social realities of Riace demonstrate that the Model was initially welcomed, at least in part, owing to its promises to bolster the local economy. Nevertheless, the appeal of the Riace Model rested on an ethos that resonated with other contemporary struggles for equality, including campaigns for political representation for mixed-heritage Italians (Pesarini and Tintori 2020), for Ius Soli legislation, which championed citizenship for second-generation migrants, and for Italy's exploited migrant workforce, the so-called 'invisibles' (Ortensi 2015;Soumahoro 2019;Pârvan and Møystad 2020).
This ethos is central to understanding the political and judiciary debate surrounding Lucano's indictment that revolved around the conflict between compliance with the law and the enactment of Lucano's moral principle defined by Graeber (2004) as an ethics of revolutionary practice. Echoing the ancient Greek notion of hospitality, the name 'Operation Xenia' was chosen for the investigation that led to Lucano's indictment, which is indicative of Riace's dialectic between inclusivity and adherence to the rule of law (Zavaglia 2018). This tension was encapsulated in the contestation of the judge for preliminary investigations, who claimed that violating procedures, even for humanitarian reasons, was unlawful because the end would not justify the means (Trinchella 2018). By contrast, Lucano's supporters saw his actions, such as fast-tracking identity cards, or prioritizing medical care for children, as a moral mandate to resist bureaucratic 'trivialities'.
The Model thus adopted a central concept of solidarity that reflects what Redfield defines as the ambivalent humanitarian aim of 'situating moral action amid secular politics', or to 'claim the human' (2012, 451). Lucano's underscoring of universal human rights in opposition to political dehumanization, even at the risk of prosecution, illustrates this concept. This tangle of tensions remained crucial after Lucano's initial sentencing, the unexpected harshness of which drew much public attention. The ongoing trial has deepened a political rift. For his detractors, Lucano profited politically and personally from dubious business and incompetently handled procedures. For his supporters, his indictment and sentencing were Kafkaesque (Euronews 2021) in their lack of evidence and in their recognition that Lucano often spent his own money. In their view, Lucano's transgressions saved lives, because the lack of an identity card placed a refugee in danger of detention, deportation, and even death. The story of Beckie Moses, a Nigerian woman who died in October 2018, in a fire that broke out in a dilapidated camp in San Ferdinando, where she was forced to stay after her asylum status was rejected, is one of such cases (Scolastica Mosciatti 2018; But now is perfect, 2018).

The view from Riace: governance and the third sector
The ethical and legislative controversies of the Riace Model and their reception should be framed within their socio-economic context and their intersection with national and European hospitality and integration schemes. The S.P.R.A.R. system relied on funds destined for the third sector (Salamon et al. 2000). The European Union devolves funds to the Italian government, which in turn allocates them to the local Comuni (administrations) to deliver nonprofit public services such as hospitality and first aid for refugees. Through such provisions, Riace functioned for many years not only as a support centre for mass landings, but also as a hub where associations such as Città Futura worked to integrate asylum seekers into Italian society.
However, the methods by which funds were allocated generated competition for resources that challenged the notion of non-profit. Formally complementing the government in fostering democratic participation, inclusion and citizen advocacy (Salamon et al. 2000), third-sector organizations' increasing alignment with neoliberal concepts (Carter 2016) led them to see 'profits and market competition as a condition of their existence and development' (Crawford et al. 2018). 5 Under such conditions, projects often involve the provision of a lump sum per capita to final beneficiaries such as refugees. An association that spends less money than has been awarded could receive a smaller allocation in future, thus encouraging it to spend its entire budget, creating a competitive climate. Although officially operating as non-profit, organizations saw opportunities for employment, particularly in a region where third-sector funds often constitute the largest element of public expenditure. Indeed, one of my sources joked that in Calabria there were 'more cooperatives than people'. Solidarity with migrants must therefore be understood within relationships of power and politics in the distribution of public resources. Consequently, it is possible to see why there is some cynicism regarding the Riace Model as a so-called business of hospitality, where sceptics may complain of fare carne di porco (making profit beyond what is proper). While criticism is valid in both directions, I argue that the distribution of public funds should not be politically based. As some sources reported, bid-winners have sometimes used actors expressing migrantadverse political sympathies, including stakeholders normally involved with the management of kennels. It seems impossible to separate views of human rights from the idea that they also represent an economic resource.
Reforms to the third sector to accommodate a business-like view of solidarity are crucial for future developments. For critics on the Radical Left, the blurring of lines between altruism and profit represents a distortion of the principles of welfare. In this view, outsourcing services encourages public bodies to discharge their responsibilities. The so-called privato sociale ('private-social'), dominated by managers specializing in cultivating interests with public administrations (Macioce 2019), would then amount to a business that leverages a moral high ground to legitimate profit-driven initiatives masquerading as non-profit. From this perspective, the third sector has become a tool for dismantling long-term and stable employment in favour of a precarious gig economy, generating conflicts of interest between governance and business, and allowing powerful interest groups to prevail over grass-roots solidarity (Cararo 2021).
Criticism was also levelled at the allegedly performative dimension of inclusivity thriving around the Riace Model, which linked to what was seen as an incompetent Lucano administration. His critics claimed that anti-racist marches and intercultural bazaars catering to tourists did not address systemic issues and could not be understood by citizens alienated by the lack of basic infrastructures and services. They further argued that Riace became a site for solidarity branding of goods such as 'Riace oranges', sold nationwide but produced outside Riace at a loss of public funds. Some alleged that resources were incompetently administered, with expensive facilities and donated goods left to waste (e.g. a professional kitchen that never functioned because the utility bills were never paid). Others claim that Lucano was left to run almost everything with little assistance. He was characterized in some narratives as a pure-hearted, stubborn, and yet modest personality, animated by resilience but unable to administer Riace: a simple-minded agitator, illadvised on his involvement in politics by small-time cronies and exploited as a poster figure by a disorganized Radical Left.
By contrast, defenders of the Model argued that Lucano should be praised for his public services, given the unfavourable climate of chronic inefficiency. They also pointed to the unfairness of condemning the Model for engaging with a funding system that represented the only context in which any solidarity project could be realized. They believed that critics should have focused on exposing the dehumanizing hospitality centres that maximized their refugee intake to attract large sums of money and operated through clientelism. In this view, while it would be impossible to turn a blind eye to the weakening of public welfare -particularly to how this system disadvantages small actors and assists lobbyists -Riace represented the most strategic and altruistic use of those public funds.
Supporters also stressed that the Model followed a tradition of civic solidarity that transcends the current neoliberal orientation of the privato sociale. They highlighted Riace's consistency with the long-held territorial rootedness of associations such as ARCI (Associazione Ricreativa e Culturale Italiana) or Azione Cattolica, regarded as forming the backbone of social cohesion in Italian society (Morciano 2018), and held that the semantics of 'business' did not adequately reflect the philanthropic principles that animate grass-root movements. Criticism of the Model would then amount to a judgement on intentions. Riace's supporters stressed the innovative attempts of the Model to reconstruct an impoverished social fabric despite the region's clearly limited ability to create or retain employment, and felt that critics' arguments perpetuated a false dichotomy of conflicting interests between migrants and Italians.
Lucano's supporters also criticized the 'right-thinkers' for downplaying the impact of the Model's integration of thousands of refugees. They attributed such results to Lucano and supposedly other volunteers, noting that projects such as the 'Riace oranges' were never connected to or approved by the mayor. Finally, supporters dismissed views of Lucano as a quixotic figure exploited by a circle of petty opportunists, supporting his right to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and rejecting suggestions that he acted for his own or others' advantage. They do concede that Lucano engaged only with a specific ensemble of social agents and their interests, but assert that to define this intertwining of public and private as clientelism is hypocritical because these are the customary dynamics of networking that characterize any interest group.
The Riace project translated an ideal of solidarity into a pragmatic navigation of procedures and funding within the context of a neoliberal-inclined reform to the third sector. Whether Lucano's commitment to the 'Utopia of Riace' should be depicted as a form of non-conformist political agency (Kleist and Jansen 2016, 374) remains an open question. Nevertheless, Riace serves as a critique of a welfare (perhaps pseudo-welfare) model that conceives of refugees and migrants as a form of human currency through short-term programmes of provisional hospitality.

Allies and adversaries: responses to the Riace Model
The Riace Model prompted media debates and brought Lucano to public attention. The political significance of the coverage can be fully grasped only by considering its 'regimes of circulation' (Cody 2009) in the media spotlight, the significant ties between media and politics (Finlayson 2020), and the role played by mediatized environments in the production and dissemination of public sentiments. Here, I examine three interviews with Lucano broadcast on national primetime television shows (05/10/2018, 19/05/2019, and 03/06/ 2019: La7 Attualità 2018Attualità , 2019Attualità , 2019b, and approximately 300 comments posted after the interviews appeared on YouTube. Although this sample neither reflects general public opinion nor offers a broad overview of media populism, it does provide a glimpse of broader ideological conflicts and polarized social imaginaries around migration. My analysis illustrates how reactions to the Riace Model range from staunch support to (more commonly) hostile opposition, and reveals how personalities such as Lucano serve as proxies for partisan positions. Although it is difficult to separate Lucano from the Model, conflating the project and the person risks associating a single individual with the merits and responsibilities of a collective initiative. Nevertheless, the case prompts debates largely through a personalization of politics. It is thus necessary to consider Lucano's role when recognizing how audiences are 'invited to identify with [. . .] a politics through identifying with the individual who embodies it' (Finlayson 2020: 69).
In the October 2018 interview, Lucano refers to Article 10 of the Italian Constitution on humanitarian rights and the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon, characterizing disobedience as imperative whenever laws stand in the way of saving lives (also see Il Manifesto 2019Manifesto , 2021. He reaffirms this in the May 2019 interview, where far-right groups denounce him as an enemy of Italy, defending his actions as having 'not really disobeyed' but rather worked 'around the boundaries' of laws that were not consistent with human rights. The broadcast features coverage of a Mare Jonio N.G.O. rescue boat that brought migrants to Italy in contravention of orders to leave them to drown at sea or to repatriate them to Libya, where they risk persecution (Il manifesto 2019(Il manifesto , 2021. Lucano also describes the Mediterranean's colonial and geopolitical histories as the driving forces of displacement, rejecting the claim that 'we can't receive them all here', and tackling arguments over ethnic substitution, stating that he sees no differences between individuals of different ethnicities. Describing people as branches in a world scattered naturally by the wind, he insists on the decoupling of migration from racialized ideas of corruption in a metaphor that recalls Jain and Taylor's (2020) characterization of the mutual 'wonderings and wanderings' of 'personal, familial, communal, national and planetary' destinies. Support for the Model among progressive constituencies rests on simple yet powerful ideas of post-nationalistic citizenship that enable 'different histories, memories and experiences to enter into present conversations' (Zournazi 2002, 18) and allows for spaces 'of home and elsewhere' (Pine 2014, S99) to be contemplated through inclusion. Lucano presents Riace as a 'space of hope' (Pine 2014, S103) that contradicts increasingly restrictive regimes of mobility (Kleist and Jansen 2016, 383), border control, and deportation, while rejecting the rhetoric of politicians who regard refugees as 'temporary guests who leave as soon as circumstances permit' (Kleist and Jansen 2016, 384).
Lucano's popularity may also lie in his powerfully simple and gently disruptive use of inclusive language to articulate the rights of refugees that excludes all signifiers of Otherness. He describes asylum seekers variously as rifugiati (refugees), cittadini immigrati (migrant citizens), nuovi proletari (the new proletariat), esseri umani (human beings), persone invisibili (invisible people), and persone disperate (desperate people). The apparent oxymoron 'migrant citizens' places them within a broader rubric and counters those regarding them as non-Italians to foreclose their own status by disregarding citizenship as a precondition for human rights.
In this interview, Lucano describes the representation of migrants diverting resources from impoverished Italians as false and divisive. However, this dichotomy may undermine his legitimacy in the eyes of the public: he attributes the hostility towards him to his becoming 'too dangerous' a figure.
His prominence is such that Italian broadcaster RAI filmed a fiction series based on Riace (Tutto il mondo è paese) that Lucano said would have made him 'a hero', but the series was put on hold following his indictment (Candito 2020, Open Online 2021. The YouTube comments present similarly polarized sentiments. To some, Riace is globally enviable for showing that 'with true hospitality, people need not be at war'; to others, Lucano is dishonest, had solved 'not one problem of the Italian people' and had 'absolutely no merit in welcoming and foraging foreigners'. For most, migrants were unwelcome (of 227 adversarial comments, fifty-nine were supportive, and approximately twenty neutral) and adversarial comments generated twice the number of likes and fewer disagreements. Supporters of Riace receive waves of criticism, including one reaction to a comment describing Lucano as 'a great man and example' that alleges his 'disinterest in his fellow citizens'.
Furthermore, while Lucano's supporters see a refusal to rescue migrants at sea as a crime against humanity, opponents cynically respond that Italy is full, that Italians 'are poorer than ever', and that Italians should come first. When supporters highlight refugees' contributions to local development and Lucano's efforts to create jobs, opponents characterize asylum seekers as deadbeats and scroungers, attack Lucano as anti-Italian, and reiterate the populist mantra La pacchia è finita (The gravy train is no more). Referring to what they see as profiteering by Lucano and the N.G.O.s, critics state that 'those who help smugglers pay 3,000 euros per clandestine are themselves criminals'; 'crony journalists' (often equated with criminals) are then -in the words of one of the online users -the promoters of the 'Leftists' project to wipe out the Italian people'.
Comments also reflect highly contrasting views of humanitarianism and citizenship. For some, 'the world would be a better place if everyone shared [Lucano's] humanity', while for the majority, the Model profited from 'immigrant scroungers [with] taxes paid with the sacrifice of Italian citizens'. Despite Lucano rarely referring to national identity, his opponents fiercely defend Italian-ness. For one, Italian magistrates are guilty of not repelling migrants; another orders Lucano to 'go to Africa to help these people: Italy is for Italians'. They employ dismissive expressions such as questi qua (these ones), negative definitions (not Italians), or debasing terms including invasori armati (armed invaders) and criminali (criminals), together with slurs and paranoid scenarios of 'crazed herds of refugees who rape and assassinate Italian women'. The widespread use of such 'racialising assemblages' (Weheliye 2014) in online hate speech (Murthy and Sharma 2019) functions as the openly verbalized counterpart to a broader continuum of violence. This manifestation of a broader, systemic racism (Bartoli 2012) extends to outlandish conspiracies such as the ethnic replacement of Italians favoured by the 'Illuminati rule', and the 'Kalergi Plan' fears that 'immigrants take the homes of dead Italians'. While unrepresentative of the majority, and 'intensified by anonymity and the affective dynamic of computer-screen and keyboard' (Finlayson 2020), such comments demonstrate an alarming nexus between racism, fake news, politics, and social media.
Such displays of patriarchal racism (revealing a white fragility) parallel equally nationalistic, revisionist, and fascist slurs aimed at Lucano. He becomes a 'traitor of the homeland'; he is seen as guilty of 'high treason' and called an ascaro (intended derogatively as a mercenary, referencing the Royal Corps of Eritrean Colonial Troops). He is labelled and libelled as corrupt, a convict, or an illiterate charlatan who should 'move to Ghana' to gain the favours of foreign women (revealing sexism and a phobia of racial intermixing). Contrastingly, populist leaders are praised as saviours of the homeland and as 'true Italians', and supporters repeatedly quote their slogans from È finita la pacchia (The fun is over) to Prima gli italiani (Italians first).
One exchange referenced the Lega Party's recent victory at the municipal elections in Riace (The Local 2019), after which opponents of the Lega decried the self-alienation of the South's electorate in view of the party's traditional anti-Southern agenda. Lucano's supporters remind Lega voters that 'five years ago they called you Southerners dirty, sudici [filthy, also a pun on Sud, South], vagrants, the cancer of Italy; now for you it's all the migrants' fault'. They accuse the Lega of sabotaging magistrates and colluding with criminals and anti-mafia militants. One response declares that the 'Ndrangheta (Calabria's mafia) was 'far better with its crimes than Lucano, who wished to replace Calabrians with Africans'.
The comments demonstrate a politicized arena in which opposing sides engage in mutual attacks. These examples illustrate how, in social-media politics (Finlayson 2020), audiences ally themselves with public figures in parasocial relationships (Rubin and McHugh 1987) that offer a focus for identification and organization (Corner and Pels 2003, 8;Kurtin et al. 2018) through a 'charismatic relational bond' (Forbess and Michelutti 2013). In their most toxic forms, these comments highlight media platforms' ability to shape public opinions, undermine constructive politics, and interfere with both solidarity and democracy (Gerbaudo 2018).

Re-imagining mobility: the legacy of Riace
Riace reconfigured the idea of immigration as a danger to tradition and challenged the European Union and Italian government's interpretations of humanitarianism to distract attention from a migration-hostile environment. At the time of writing, Riace's political future is still uncertain, highlighting the need for further debate on the relations between politics and the judiciary, lawfulness and ethics. Further long-term study of Riace's socio-political circumstances is thus required.
Riace's relevance for Italian history and the future of post-displacement rests partially on its symbols and language. The racialized, xenophobic sentiments of opponents to asylum seekers expressed through confrontational language and false dilemmas reflect a persecutory climate that defines the linguistic, representational, social, and ontological Othering of asylum seekers (Loprieno 2019). In Italy, refugees have come to symbolize projected insecurities regarding a perceived loss of borders, fuelled by populist narratives and racialized views of nationhood (More in common 2018). Such categories precede, accompany, and stifle imagined futures in Fortress Europe. The lasting effects of colonial narratives on the psychic imaginary of the excluded and the Othered have been known since Fanon (1952). Newly imagined Italian identities face language-politics relations that threaten to foreclose and preclude different ideas of citizenship (Meer 2019).
The examples addressed here illustrate how hostility towards Riace confirm its ability to challenge the construction of refugee crises imaginatively and pragmatically. By aligning with Appadurai's (2004) 'aspiration' as a method of shaping our temporal reasoning through defiance of ideological indifference and cynicism, Riace disputed regimes that are 'conditioned by past events' and 'interfere with the actual future' (Zeitlyn 2015, 399). As such, Riace is a key terrain for imagining both post-displacement futures and the challenges that may lie ahead.
It is also important to reflect on the personalization of politics. Lucano's opposition to a migrant-hostile environment made him a catalyst for solidarity networks and illustrated how a media star can become a focus for action (Corner and Pels 2003, 8), but also highlights the danger of over-individuating collective struggles. Lucano's sentencing points to the urgent need to redistribute responsibility for the successes and failures of Città Futura. Lucano's staunch support of solidarity principles and his ability to represent their supporters have cast him into a complicated political arena in which Italy's Left faces a severe crisis. Furthermore, concomitant fights over equality, including the Ius Soli debate (Bulli 2018;Tintori 2018) should also be considered.
Riace certainly offered an alternative to the xenophobic fears of populist politics, as well as reappraising and reviving elements of cultural and political legacy from socialist Utopianism to the principles of the Lisbon Treaty (Mosciatti 2018). Whether long-term transformation can be achieved depends ultimately on the ability of solidarity networks to develop a legislative framework and inclusive vocabulary within an intersectional political plan that dismantles modes of oppression for both citizens and asylum seekers. The future 'is not given, it is always in the making' and can thus shape political engagement and strategy (Kleist and Jansen 2016, 380;Bryant and Knight 2019).
Riace will hopefully form part of a broader process of imagining new, collective, post-racialized, intersectional alliances and forms of inclusion for Othered identities in Italy and elsewhere. At the time of writing, Lucano continues to represent a reference figure for a Left in crisis as the country turns to a right-wing government. Meanwhile, the Lega Party have been in power in Riace since 2019. The sign at the entrance to Riace once presented it as the Town of Welcoming; today it displays an image of Saints Cosima and Damiano, suggesting the role of Riace as a site of political and ideological making and unmaking, a crucial symbolic terrain for re-imagining citizenship and post-displacement in Italy, the Mediterranean, and Europe.

Notes
1. The town is demographically distinct and seven kilometres from its seaside counterpart of Riace Marina, although both inhabited centres are administratively part of the same constituency.