Urban Anthropology: Southern Europe NICK DINES University of Milan–Bicocca, Italy Placing southern European cities in context As with many macro-regional labels, there is no fxed defnition of southern Europe. Here it refers to a noncontiguous geographical area consisting of four countries: Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Tis is at once a partial defnition—insofar as it does not include, say, Malta, Turkey, Albania, or Bulgaria which could all be considered part of the same area—and a refection of how, over the last half-century, southern Europe has come to be associated in the social sciences and public discourse with these specifc nation-states. Te underlying premise for this enduring combination is that Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece are seen to share similar economic, political, and demographic character- istics such as late and limited industrialization, the strong role of the family in areas of welfare provision, a past record of far right authoritarian regimes, and depopulation of the countryside and emigration during the postwar period. More recently, the crippling impact of the 2008 global fnancial crisis on these countries’ economies and the mani- fold forms of resistance to ensuing austerity policies reinforced the idea of southern Europe as a distinct place. At the same time, representations of the area are shaped by diferent contexts and vantage points and are therefore mutable and ofen contradictory. Hence, southern Europe has been variously viewed as an economic periphery (epitomized by the derogatory English acronym PIGS which asserts the countries’ collective defciencies), the cultural cradle of European civilization (testifed to by centuries of tourist trafc), and a border zone with the wider “global South” (confrmed by the securitization of EU migration policy since 2000). Moreover, most scholars working in the region are keen to underline the signifcant variations that cut across the four countries, including the presence of multiple internal “Souths” such as those encompassed by Italy’s Mezzogiorno. In like manner, the cities of Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain possess common histo- ries and features. Mass internal migration in the decades following World War II led to rapid population growth and the proliferation of high-rise apartment blocks, self-built condominiums, and shanty towns around the edges of cities. Over the last 40 years, southern European cities have been further distinguished by, among other things, high levels of homeownership (compared to northern Europe), the arrival and settlement of international migrants, and the persistence of socially mixed neighborhoods and vibrant public spaces, albeit reconfgured by the accumulated efects of aging popula- tions, suburbanization, tourism, and gentrifcation. Since the 1990s, locally based schol- ars, especially in the felds of geography and urban planning (e.g., Leontidou 1996), have Te International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan and Simon Coleman. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2468