Unveiling Informality through Im/mobility. Conceptual Analysis of Asylum Seekers and Refugees at the Margins of the Reception system in Italy

ABSTRACT

Since 2015, the progressive tightening of border controls and the implementation of policy measures aimed at discouraging the settlement of asylum seekers in the Italian territories have increasingly left an unprecedented number of migrant people at the margins of the official system of reception. Though social research has variously explored their experience of informal settling by interrogating the power dynamics in relation to individuals and the processes of categorization, little attention has been devoted to their mobility dimension. The aim of this article is to place the relationship between mobility and informality in the foreground to examine the analytical purchase of the conceptual perspective of the mobility studies in order to explore the reality of asylum seekers and refugees outside the reception system in Italy, and not only. The article contributes to capturing the multiple mobility/immobility dimensions of their geographical and social trajectories, arguing for an overcoming of the representation of ‘passive pawns’ and establishing a more fine-grained analysis of the experience of ‘migrant informality’.¹

RIASSUNTO

Dal 2015, il progressivo inasprimento dei controlli alle frontiere e l'attuazione di misure politiche volte a scoraggiare l'insediamento dei richiedenti asilo nei territori italiani, hanno progressivamente aumentato il numero di migranti che, raggiungendo cifre senza precedenti, sono rimasti ai margini del sistema di accoglienza ufficiale. Sebbene la ricerca sociale abbia variamente esplorato la loro esperienza di insediamento informale interrogandosi sulle dinamiche di potere in relazione agli individui e ai processi di categorizzazione, una minor attenzione è stata rivolta alla loro dimensione di mobilità. L'obiettivo di questo articolo è portare in primo piano il rapporto tra mobilità e informalità per esaminare il contributo analitico che offre la prospettiva concettuale degli studi sulla mobilità nella comprensione della realtà dei richiedenti asilo e dei rifugiati al di fuori del sistema di accoglienza in Italia, e non solo. L'articolo contribuisce a far luce sulle molteplici dimensioni di mobilità e immobilità che informano le loro traiettorie geografiche e sociali e sostiene il superamento di una loro rappresentazione come “pedine passive” delineando unanalisi più precisa dell'esperienza di informalità vissuta dai migranti.

KEYWORDS:

• mobility
• immobility
• informality
• asylum seekers
• reception system
• Italy

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• mobilità
• immobilità
• informalità
• richiedenti asilo
• sistema di accoglienza
• Italia

Notes

1. This research work was conducted as part of the CNR-IRPPS activities in the context of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 870649, project Future Migration Scenarios for Europe (F.U.M.E.).

2. Through different disciplinary perspectives, there is a considerable and long-established body of literature that has explored the more recent patterns and the main actors, not just foreigners, involved in internal migration in Italy, though it focuses limitedly on trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees (among others, see Capello 2015; Grilli and Zanotelli 2015; Colucci and Gallo 2016; Riccio 2016)

3. The term im/mobility, with a backslash dividing the notion of mobility and immobility, is applied to account for the complementary relationships between forms of movement and multilevel components and practices that prevent them.

4. The first national legislation on asylum was elaborated only in the 1990s, pushed by the geopolitical changes that sweep across Europe (the fall of the Berlin Wall and the increase in the flow of refugees from ex-Yugoslavia and Albania) and which make Italy the destination of a growing number of asylum seekers.

5. It is worth noting that the shrinking of the reception system did not start during 2018, but we can find harbingers in previous regulations, as the Turco-Napolitano (1998) and Bossi-Fini laws on immigration (2002).

6. It is worth mentioning a 2018s study by the Italian Institute for Political International Studies, which maintains that after the abolition by the Law 132/2018 of a layer of international protection, namely the humanitarian protection, ‘by 2020, the number of irregular migrants in Italy may exceed 670,000’ doubling the numbers estimated just five years before (ISPI 2018; see also ActionAid and Openpolis 2019).

7. This term identifies those migrants who had not arrived through the Mediterranean routes and were therefore excluded according to the Italian national quota system of redistribution.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefano degli Uberti

Stefano degli Uberti (https://www.irpps.cnr.it/en/staff/stefano-degliuberti-3/) is a Researcher and Social Anthropologist at the National Research Council – Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies (CNR-IRPPS) in Rome (Italy) since 2016. His research interests include: transnational migration, im/mobility, diversity, migration policies, migration decision-making, imaginaries and culture of migration, mainly between West Africa and Italy. His more recent research focuses on: the policies and practices of inclusion/exclusion of asylum seekers, focusing on the Austrian–Italian border. Between 2012 and 2013, he served as an adjunct professor in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bologna, and he was visiting researcher at UNU-CRIS in Bruges (Belgium). He is currently co-responsible for the CNR-IRPPS research team in the HORIZON 2020 FUME project that aims at understanding the future migration mobility patterns in Europe at multiple levels by investigating the possible future regional sociodemographic, economic and environmental challenges shaping migrations.