Beyond emergency: Caivano and the geometries of power amid a crisis-ridden welfare state and the rise of penal governance

Starting from a theoretical framework that brings together the contributions of Wacquant, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Castel, this article examines how urban space is shaped by logics of exclusion, control, and disaffiliation. From this vantage point, the city emerges as a laboratory of emergency governance, where welfare provision recedes and the penal state advances, turning peripheral areas into repositories for the management of social distress. The case study of Caivano – and of the Parco Verde district in particular – constitutes a paradigmatic node of these dynamics. Marked by a long history of state-appointed Commissioners, recurrent media-covered incidents, and structural fragility, Parco Verde becomes a critical lens through which to interrogate the geometries of power that traverse urban margins. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that marginality is a traversable space in which forms of proximity, alliance, and collective project-making emerge, capable of challenging stigmatising imaginaries. The first section of the paper reconstructs the theoretical framework of urban marginality; the second examines the socio-institutional history of Caivano; the third brings local voices to the fore, highlighting everyday practices of resistance. In conclusion, the article advances a critical reflection on the need to rethink the social contract from the margins.