[The Italian deinstitutionalization: pathways and challenges]

This article aims to analyze if and how the long-term experience of psychiatric de-institutionalization in Italy has been affected by the neoliberal changes in social policies. And vice versa if and how these policies and especially the service organizations have been shaped by this experience. The first part presents a general picture of the ways the health and welfare system in Italy has been reorganised under the European Union's influence and highlights several differences at the regional level. Can these differences be traced back to different degrees in which a post-asylum mental health system has been achieved? In the second part the pathways of the de-institutionalization are shortly recalled, looking particularly at the displacement of competences and practices from internment to the community, and from curing mental illness to producing mental health. Did the displacement, where it has been accomplished, change the more general cultures and practices of health and welfare services and what has it generated in terms of social organization? It concludes that the de-institutionalization strategies support the construction of local communities as public spaces. In the third part three local cases are analyzed in which the de-institutionalization methodology guides strategies to face and orient the neoliberal principles of the new social policies. These strategies appear to support also the building up of local communities as public spaces. These strategies appear to have strong effects in mobilising local communities and in conferring on them the status of public arena.