The Right to Participation, as articulated in the Charter of Palermo, affirms that democratic life must be grounded in the active inclusion of all residents, regardless of citizenship or legal status. The Charter emphasizes that those who live, work, and contribute to a city should have a voice in shaping its institutions, policies, and collective future. 

For over a decade, Palermo was a global model of political participation for migrants, but this has recently declined. Two years before issuing the Charter, the administration of Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando created the Consulta delle Culture, a sort of migrants’ city council. All migrants with residence permits in the city could vote in the election for the Consulta, whose members were proportionally representative of the city’s migrant population, including many members from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe and a smaller number from the Americas. The Consulta promoted the engagement of migrant and diaspora communities in municipal and civic affairs and supported the work of diverse community associations. 

However, under the subsequent Mayor Roberto Lagalla, the Consulta languished, and the city administration took away the space it used in Palazzo Cefalà. While the Lagalla administration could not legally close the Consulta, it did not organize new elections, and in 2026, it effectively replaced the elected Consulta with the Forum delle Culture, an unelected body of people from migrant and diaspora communities selected by the administration rather than the wider public of migrants in the city. 

While participants in the photo-voice interviews for this research rarely discussed political participation and voting in specific terms, many identified how Italy’s lack of birthright citizenship and barriers to attaining legal status limit migrant and diaspora communities’ ability to realize their rights to fully participate in Italian society in various ways.