“INLAND AREAS” AND INTEGRATION POLICIES Starting again from “the pulp and the bone”

Resumen

Following a long process of modernization - of which the urban systems and the plains have been the nuclei - the territories on the margins of development are beginning to be the subject of renewed widespread interest today. Nonetheless, looking at and reflecting on this space does not mean focusing attention exclusively on it, however. It is not a matter of pitting marginal territories against those of modernity and development; rather, it is a matter of considering these parts of the territory, present in every country, in relation to each other. It is about reversing the dominant narrative, the one oriented by a discriminatory logic that divides the territory into areas that deserve more and others that deserve less. It is about reversing the gaze, through the acquisition of an awareness on the part of communities that the status of marginality does not represent a local and isolated condition, but instead concerns a significant part of European regional contexts.

Keywords: territorial differential, intra-regional gap, metaphor of “the pulp and the bone”, systemic territorial approach.