Blog post by Giuliana Sanò, University of Messina, Messina, Italy

My Identities article, ‘Producing labour stratification: how migration policies affect the working, living and housing conditions of migrant farmworkers’, examines the  relationship between migration and labour stratification in the city of Vittoria, located in south-eastern Sicily. This agricultural district provides a valuable case study of the evolving patterns of (e)migration in Italy.

Historically marked by emigration, Vittoria underwent a significant transformation in the 1960s, rapidly becoming a destination for workers from Tunisia. At that time, Italy had not yet developed a comprehensive immigration policy, as its primary focus was to curb domestic emigration, particularly from the south. Consequently, Tunisian male workers who arrived in the late 1960s provided predominantly family-run local businesses with a crucial labour force, replacing local workers.

The exponential growth in profits within the local agricultural sector, described as the ‘miracle of the green gold’ by local economic figures, was largely attributed to the expansion of greenhouse farming. Unlike other agricultural districts in Italy, Vittoria's cultivation of vegetables under plastic and polyethylene covers enabled year-round production, mitigating seasonal risks. However, the crucial role of migrant labour in this sector's success is often overlooked in economic narratives.

Blog post by Aaron Winter, Lancaster University, UK and Co-Editor, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power

Hitler has been making headlines a lot in recent years – often because of others’ politics, words or high-profile hand gestures. The most recent headline, though, was about Hitler himself on 13 November, only two days following Remembrance Day, when the media reported that new research and analysis of Hilter's DNA taken from blood on the sofa where he killed himself in 1945 at the end of the war showed that Hitler had Kallmann Syndrome. This is a genetic disorder that impacts the progression of puberty and, it is claimed, may have impacted the development of his sexual organs and ability to form sexual relationships. The news arrived in advance of the Channel 4 documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator, which according to reports also contains claims that he had a high genetic propensity to autism, ADHD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. 

Blog post by Maddy Clark and Aleksandra Lewicki, University of Sussex, UK
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In September 2025, one of the largest far-right marches in the history of the UK took place in London at which the American tech billionaire Elon Musk addressed a crowd of over 100,000 protesters wrapped in Union Jack and St. George’s flags, openly inciting violent action. In the following week, the UK’s Labour Government rolled out the red carpet for US President Donald Trump’s state visit to facilitate a £150 billion investment of American tech firms. Both events are indicators of the mainstreaming, transnationalization, mimicking and courting of the far-right movement – trends that have a longer trajectory in the UK.

Mainstreaming has been defined as involving conservative, liberal and social democratic political forces, on the one hand, embracing and implementing far-right talking points, demands and political agendas. On the other hand, far-right actors successfully expand their protest repertoires and appeal to new target audiences within the population.

In our Identities article, we examine key facets of this mainstreaming and emboldening of the far-right. Specifically, we analyzed statements by individuals who have gained a public profile by advancing far-right agendas (even though some do not necessarily self-represent as far-right agitators themselves). This analysis drew on an archive of social media posts and 21 interviews with individuals self-identifying as men and 18 self-identifying as women (no one identified outside of this binary) which were generated within two separate research projects over the past five years.