In Italy, as almost everywhere in the European Union, immigration from outside the EU border is one of the most controversial political issues. Even in Southern Europe, usually defined as an area of emigration, the growing number of immigrants has produced waves of xenophobic protest. At the same time, however, the presence of immigrants has brought about demands for an enlargement of citizenship rights to non-nationals. The article uses concept and hypotheses developed in research on social movements to analyse mobilization and counter-mobilizations on the issue of immigration in Italy. Focusing on this specific issue, it presents some first results of a research project on the effects on social movement of the emerging challenges to representative democracies, in particular the weakening of identification capacity of political parties.