Neighborhood solidarity as a local response to the emergency of the pandemic: an explorative study of informal support in Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new priorities for citizens and placed new issues at the center of public discourse. It has also reconfirmed the relevance of the local, in fact, the territories have been configured as laboratories of social change where it has been possible to observe the development of the crisis in its effects of disintegration and social regeneration (Morin 1976). Globally, there has been, in fact, the spread of initiatives of solidarity, spontaneity, and mutualism, territorially rooted in proximity networks and aimed at supporting those categories of subjects that have been hit hardest by the pandemic. Although it is a recent phenomenon and still needs to be systematically explored by sociological research, the available investigations seem to suggest, despite the significant heterogeneity of experiences that are inseparably rooted in the socio-territorial contexts of reference, the presence of certain recurrent characteristics. Included among these, the relative autonomy of solidarity initiatives from the institutions and mission of these solidarity action that would tend to transcend the assistentialism (food, economic, relational, information support) trough advocacy actions which claim the rights of vulnerable subjects and marginalized minorities (Pleyers 2020). In some experiences, the renewed centrality of proximity relationships between neighbors has also allowed us to glimpse a generative potential for inclusion and redefinition of the social bond at the territorial level such as to facilitate the rethinking of the meanings themselves attributed to urban spaces (Carbone 2020, Giaccardi, Magatti 2020, Mela 2020).