Francesca Guarino is a PhD student of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield. She has completed both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Architecture at the Politecnico di Torino. Her Master’s dissertation focused on the relationship between migrants and urban space in the context of Palermo, Sicily, and it has provided the starting point for her current PhD project. Her research in Palermo is informed by a critical reading of border politics and racial capitalism and by a postcolonial approach to European history. It investigates – through participant observation, walking interviews and graphics – how migrant newcomers inhabit the neighbourhood of Ballarò – a historically deprived area and place of arrival – questioning the role of its places in resisting and/or contesting superimposed bordering practices; how migrants’ practices of place-making intersect with those of long-standing inhabitants, activists and the public administration pursuing an urban regeneration built on Ballarò’s multicultural identity; what role do Sicily’s own history of emigration and identity as a South within the South have in the everyday, relational understanding of the ‘other’.