Finding Their Voice? Romanian Immigrant Politics Underground in Rome

Over recent years, a significant body of theoretical and empirical analysis has explored the way that cross-border laws and flows of capital, ideas, people, goods and services in the current phase of globalization have contributed to a blurring of the boundaries between local, national and international levels of politics, economics and social relations (see, for example, Beck 2005; Castells 2000; Sassen 1996; 2008; Soysal 1994;Talani 2004;2009;Walker 1993;2010). In this context, cities have occupied a central role as nodes where such transnational flows are embedded (Castells 2000; 2009) and as hubs of power where financial and social networks are densely concentrated, from global information technology and the finance sector to local physical interaction and transaction between highly diverse peoples (Sassen 1991; 1994). Transformations such as these have posed a challenge to traditional conceptions of the state as holder of sovereign power over a fixed and bounded territorial space, but have also provided new opportunities for local and transnational political participation (Della Porta et al. 2006; Sassen 1994).