The North–South Myth Revised: A Comparison of the Italian and German Migration Regimes

Abstract

Since the beginning of the migration crisis in the 1990s, Italy and Germany have been considered to be the two showpieces of different migration control systems in Europe, where an ‘inefficient’ South is contrasted with an ‘effective’ North in terms of immigration control and humanitarian protection. Italy is often considered to have a lax immigration regime with weak border controls and few guarantees for asylum seekers and refugees, whereas Germany, in contrast, is shown as having an ideal asylum machinery with lower irregular immigration and no need for regularisation processes. This article challenges such a bipolar vision of the European immigration and shows that the ‘North–South axis’ dividing European control systems is not based on empirical evidence but on a myth which fails to take into account the logic of controls and the socio-economic contexts in which they are enforced.

Notes

1. These numbers refer to ‘asylum seekers and other people of concern of UNHCR’ (UNHCR 2007).

2. For the translation of the original Italian article into English see: http://www. immigrazioneoggi.it.

3. The European Council approved several directives on asylum and refugee protection between 2001 and 2005: the EU directive on temporary refugee protection (2001/55/EC), the EU directive on the minimum reception standards for refugees (2003/9/EC), the directive on subsidiary protection (2004/83/EC) and the directive on the harmonisation of the asylum procedure (2005/85/EC). The directives on subsidiary protection and minimum reception rules were ratified in July 2007.

4. Up to 1990 the Italian governments approved three immigration laws: the law n. 39/1990, the law n. 40/1998 and the law 189/2002, which is still regulating the entry and residence of foreigners in Italy.

5. The informal economy in Italy was considered to represent about 24.4 per cent of the national GDP (see Enste and Schneider 2006).

6. The only exception might be the Kurds from Iraq and Turkey as most of them continued their journey to other countries, Germany in particular, trying to reach their national communities.

7. Before the statistical depuration of the Central Foreigner Register (Ausländerzentralregister) carried out in 2004, the refugee population officially consisted of 416,000 de facto refugees, 115,000 recognised refugees, 128,000 asylum seekers, 75,000 Convention refugees, 6,500 so-called quota refugees, 150,000 relatives of recognised refugees and 188,000 Kontingentflüchtlinge from the former Soviet Union. After the statistical depuration of 2004 it was especially the number of de facto refugees that decreased considerably. However, Germany remains the European country with the highest refugee population in Europe.

8. After Iran, Pakistan, USA, Syria and Tanzania. In 2005 Germany was third after Iran and Pakistan and before the Republic of Tanzania.

9. We should remember that in 2005 a large regularisation process also took place in Spain that allowed the issue of about 578,000 residence permits. However, Spain remains second after Italy with 1.2 million regularised foreigners in contrast with 1.4 million regularised in Italy.

10. To these we should add the Eastern European seasonal and contract workers who came to Germany in the 1990s.

11. In the east of Germany the unemployment rate is 17.3 per cent against 9.1 per cent in the western regions.

12. Such persistence, however, is controlled periodically by state officials.

13. The only option for avoiding payment of social insurance is the so-called ‘minijob’. In such a case, the employed person may earn a maximum of [euro]400 per month.

14. All in all, the German government regularised 60,000 foreigners between 1996 and 2002. The last regularisation with a humanitarian background was decided in March 2007. Its objective was to resolve the situation of about 165,000 tolerated refugees, most of them from Kosovo, who have been living for a long time with a Duldung in Germany.

15. I am grateful to Bernhard Santel for suggesting these two expressions.