Romanian Roma migration to Italy: improving the capacity to aspire

The chapter aims at contributing to anthropological researches on cultural change in migration and, in particular, on ‘cultural mobilities’ in transnational migration. More specifically, the chapter will refer to the theoretical reflections of Appadurai on the ‘future as a cultural fact’, and investigate a particular aspect of transnational cultural mobility, that is, the impact of migrations on the 'capacity to aspire': the capacity to imagine changes in one's own life conditions and to act in order to make these changes happen. In the first section the chapter will briefly summarize some significant aspects of the theoretical reflections on the capacity to aspire proposed by Appadurai. Then it will show how the Roma migrants' capacity to aspire can be both limited and encouraged by the different local policies within the Italian context, and finally how the Roma themselves strive to improve their own capacity to aspire through migration.