Project and the Politics of Overcoming: Building Emergency in Borgo Mezzanone

In recent years, new inhabitation spaces have emerged in Southern Italy’s rural areas, places defined as “informal ghettos”, deeply connected to the agri-food sector. Defined as a state of exception and ambiguity, informality is rather reconsidered as a practice of impossibility tapping into the context of the “informal ghetto of Borgo Mezzanone”. Located in the province of Foggia, the settlement is currently affected by “overcoming” projects supported by the PNRR’s substantial investments. Examining Borgo Mezzanone enables us to construct narratives and memories of refusal and resistance that escape the formal/informal dualism informing the PNRR project. Instead, it offers a glimpse of the possibility of another way of living. Through field research conducted from mid-2023 to the present, the action research investigates on the economic and social role of the ghetto, in sharp contrast to the emergency and objectifying perspectives on which the proposed institutional alternatives revolve.