People’s Republic of Bolzano

People’s Republic of Bolzano is a project that opens a public debate among the local community of Bolzano (a bilingual Italian city, half German, half Italian) on its Chinese community. Combining a statistics-based investigation, relying on official data from the local government, and a qualitative research, the project aimed at inviting citizens to discover who the members of the Chinese community living and working in the city are, and what they think of Italy and of local culture and society. Contrary to the common belief – also spread by media – that Chinese people are “invading” the city, the project helped reveal that, while we are witnessing a small-scale migration of Chinese people to Bolzano, they are not at all creating a ghetto in the city, rather, they are integrating within it. This project, resulting in a web based long-form journalistic enquiry, featuring animated and interactive infographics, maps, and a series of qualitative interviews, was first presented at the last “Research Night” (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, September 26th, 2014), and has since attracted great interest from both the local community and internationally – the latest publication is on the German magazine Der Spiegel, issue 51/2014.