Naming Rome's Edge: Cultural and Political Representations of the Borgata

This chapter analyses the cultural and political representations of the borgate in Rome. It is divided in four parts. The first part traces the origins of the term borgata and analyses the evolution of its meaning during the Fascist period (1922–43), when the word became a synonym of urban renewal. The second part examines the overturning of the borgate’s representations as icons of urban degeneration after the collapse of Fascism and the impact of the new migration wave in the 1950s. The third part focuses on the uses of the word by scholars and politicians who tried to interpret the activism of the borgate residents in the 1960s and the 1970s. The last part reflects on the different meanings of borgata as an object of memory and history.