From Tensions to Design: Building Inclusion with Roma Communities in Milan

In the Milanese territory, Roma camps differ in permanence and legal recognition, in their inhabitants’ origins and unwritten rules. Nevertheless, there are some recurrent features, such as informality and socio-spatial isolation. Indeed, the most inaccessible urban and peri-urban areas usually host the camps, making them invisible to the rest of the city. This invisibility is two-folded. On the one hand, it provides a protective context to develop mutual aid processes, activating slow paths to better living conditions. On the other hand, it worsens isolation, leaving room for the law of the strongest and thus inhibiting the possibilities of improve- ment and social integration. This chapter draws on these arguments to recount the experience of ERSILIA lab, the ASF Italia’s urban laboratory, which, between 2015 and 2019, worked with two Roma communities living in the Molise-Calvairate-Ponti neighbourhood in Milan and with the schools and associations of the same neighbour- hood. Without denying the difficulties, ERSILIA lab promoted mutual understanding between Roma communities and the rest of the neighbourhood, beyond the stigma, through a participatory design process that led to the building of the ERSILIA lab’s carriage. The carriage hosted an exhibition on Romani culture illustrated by the project participants around the city’s public spaces.