Living Rome: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Belonging

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Living Rome: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Belonging

edited by Isabella Clough Marinaro and Will Haynes

Lever Press, 2026

ISBNs

Paper: 978-1-64315-093-2

eISBN: 978-1-64315-094-9

About the Book

Living Rome: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Belonging looks beyond the romanticized image of Rome, towards a kaleidoscopic view of the city shaped by inequalities, socio-political challenges, and acts of resistance and solidarity. In the wake of urban developments related to migration, housing shortages, COVID-19, crime, and other social changes, this volume offers a grounded approach, mapping the contemporary realities of Italy’s capital from a variety of methodological standpoints. Contributors argue that the unseen fringes, both geographically peripheral and those embedded within the very heart of Rome, are crucial for understanding its social dynamics. These ‘hidden’ geographies foster vibrant communities, challenge ideas of home and belonging, and act as key sites of creativity, resistance and everyday life.

Bringing together urban sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, demographers, criminologists, decolonizing and feminist scholars, this study contributes to a growing body of research on the city and its social movements, aiming to inform policy and contribute to a more just and sustainable Rome. Using a variety of methods, from quantitative cartography and policy analysis to (auto)ethnography and creative methodologies, this volume speaks well beyond Rome, to conversations about cities worldwide.

About the Author

Isabella Clough Marinaro is Professor of Sociology and Italian Studies at John Cabot University, Rome.
Will Haynes is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Lancaster University, UK.

Reviews

"The book is original in shining a light on a specific city and coming at that city from a range of different methodological and disciplinary perspectives. This makes for a fruitful engagement with key concepts in international debates and a thorough excavation of those concepts in relation to the Eternal city providing a valuable synoptic understanding of its dynamism. While the book is very much a tale of Rome, the valuable analysis and insights extend much further afield."— Ryan S. Powell, University of Sheffield

“You won’t find one ‘Rome’ in here, but multiple, of extensions and affections, dispossessions and struggles, calculated rhythms and pauses. For such is a city: a ground of contested evolving multiplicities. Living Rome embraces such complexity in sharp and insightful ways. A prime guide to (re)approach urbanity, within and beyond Rome.”

— Michele Lancione, Politecnico di Torino