Between containment, confinement and dispersal: the evolution of the Italian reception system before and after the ‘refugee crisis’

ABSTRACT

In this article, I will analyse how the Italian reception system has been transformed after the ‘refugee crisis’, showing how the change cannot be reduced to a mere expansion of the reception capacity. I will do this by tracing a genealogy of the Italian reception system and highlighting its main features before and after the ‘refugee crisis’. My hypothesis is that the ‘refugee crisis’ and the sense of emergency it created has stimulated the emergence of distinct segments within the Italian reception system functioning according to radically different philosophies and objectives. This, in addition to increasing the overall lack of consistency of the system, is having a profound impact on the rights of asylum seekers, greatly increasing the risk of their spatial and social segregation within Italian society.

KEYWORDS:

• asylum policy
• refugee crisis
• hotspot approach
• reception centres
• asylum law

Notes

1. In replacing the regulation No. 343/2003 and the Dublin Convention (1990), the Regulation No. 604/2013 determines which Member State is responsible for examining the asylum application. Based on the principle of the ‘first country of entry’, the ‘Dublin regime’ is commonly held responsible for the uneven distribution of the ‘burden’ of reception among the different Member States. The Commission has recently published a proposal for an overall reform of this regime which is sparking violent controversies precisely because it proposes a new compulsory system for the distribution of asylum seekers among Member States.

2. The so-called ‘Hotspot Approach’ aims at ensuring that all the migrants and asylum seekers that reach the Greek and Italian shores are properly identified and fingerprinted. According to the Commission’s plans, they should be channelled into a number of processing centers (‘hotspot facilities’ in Commission’s jargon), where national authorities with the support of E.U. agencies should properly process their cases. This would ensure that each asylum seeker would be properly tracked entering the E.U. through Italy or Greece, thus preventing their secondary movements to other E.U. countries and ensuring a full implementation of the Dublin Regulation.

3. According to Eurostat, in 2017 Italy has been the second E.U. country by number of asylum applications received, preceded by Germany and followed by France and Greece (Eurostat 2018).

4. Legislative Decree No. 286/1998.

5. The Geneva Convention was enacted in 1951 to deal with the situation of refugees on conditions of ‘the incidents that happened in Europe before 1951’. This restriction was lifted in 1967 with the adoption of the Protocol on the Legal Status of Refugees.

6. Circular Order No. 104 issued on 8 January 2014.

7. See Article 8(2) of the Legislative Decree No. 142/2015 and Article 17(1) of the Decree No. 13/2017.

8. See Article 14 of the Legislative Decree No. 142/2015.

9. Though overtly contested in migration studies (Castles 2003), the distinction between ‘economic’ migrants whose mobility is driven by a desire to better their living condition, and ‘forced’ migrants whose mobility is triggered by the necessity to seek protection from danger, is a cornerstone of the contemporary international migration legal regime. Whereas the right to mobility of ‘economic’ migrants is always put in question, and essentially depends on state discretion, ‘forced’ migrants are entitled to the right to seek protection outside of their country of origin.

10. See Article 11 of the Legislative Decree No. 142/2015.

11. Over the last two years Ventimiglia, which is the last Italian city before the country’s Western border, was the focus of media attention due to the gathering of thousands of migrants trying to reach France in breach of the E.U. rules about the ‘first country of asylum’.

12. Article 7 of the Guidelines included in the Decree of the Ministry of the Interior issued the 10 August 2016.

13. See the Decree of the Ministry of the Interior issued the 7 March 2017.

14. For big metropolitan areas, two asylum seekers for each 1,000 residents; for small municipalities with less than 2,000 residents, six asylum seekers for each 1,000 residents; for municipalities with over 2,000 residents, 3.5 asylum seekers for each 1,000 residents.

15. See data available in Commissione parlamentare (2017, 107–8).