Marino, Anna and Sara de Athouguia Filipe

‘A tale of two cities’: Migration and resentment through the eyes of shopkeepers in lombardy
2025

This article examines the interplays between outward and inward migration and the emergence of resentment in two cities in the Italian region of Lombardy. Drawing on the concept of ‘resentful affectivities’, we conducted 43 ethnographically-informed interviews with shopkeepers in Pavia and Mantova. Through the emotional lenses of discontent, distrust, and nostalgia, we trace how resentful affectivities shape, interconnect, and potentially mobilize discourses around emigration and immigration. In particular, these three emotions link migration issues to normative expectations of democracy, often translating complex social-political dynamics into resentful affectivities through emigration and immigration narratives that give coherence to empty-crowded paradoxes. Emigration and immigration are articulated into resentful affectivities as the two sides of the same coin – the ‘best Italians’ are leaving while less-deserving/-desirable foreigners are arriving – with shopkeepers attributing varying degrees of agency to this dual movement, which integrates or illustrates broader criticisms to political elites. We argue that these notions connect emigration and immigration, not as counterbalancing each other, but rather through an overarching idea that broader phenomena with specific culprits are weakening and may potentially destroy a community that is nostalgically fantasized in opposition to every present facet inspiring discontent and distrust. Our contribution unveils the impact of unfulfilled expectations of political representation on resentful narratives of emigration and immigration.