This project explores what we call “migrating politics,” that is, the political traditions and imaginaries migrants bring with them when they migrate, rooted in postcolonial popular politics from their home countries. We will examine how “migrating politics” have shaped Roman, Italian, and European politics today by investigating Rome’s first migrant-led social movement, known as the Pantanella (or Shish Mahal), led by manual laborers from South Asia and North Africa, who occupied an abandoned pasta factory in 1990. We argue that the Pantanella/Shish Mahal was a microcosm of the post-Cold War world-in-the-making, shedding light onto the origins of today's global illiberal politics and anti-immigrant ethnonationalism, and importantly, showing how things could still be different. The Rome Prize Fellowship will support ten months of full-time collaborative (auto)ethnographic and historical-anthropological field research resulting in Love’s next scholarly monograph and Lakhous’ next novel.