The list. On discretion and refusal in the Italian asylum system

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the ethnographic account of the everyday functioning of an asylum support service in the North of Italy, this article explores contradictory tasks and thorny dilemmas of caseworkers engaged in the assistance to asylum seekers. In the name of the constraints imposed by a system on ‘permanent crisis’, asylum caseworkers find themselves engaged in discretionary processes of aid distribution, embedded in blurred subjective criteria. By doing so, they tacitly accept a burden of responsibility over asylum seekers’ lives that goes far beyond their regular duties. Yet, at times, some caseworkers refuse to comply with some of the directions – implicit or explicit – given by their coordinators. Their critical stance, although restricted by their institutional positioning, holds the potential of shedding light into some of the contradictions of the asylum bureaucratic machine. This scenario offers important insights on the open-ended reconfigurations of the relationships between ‘state power’ and ‘state intermediaries’, as well as on the possibility of producing forms of agency from within the system of state-managed humanitarian aid distribution.

SOMMARIO

Attraverso la descrizione etnografica del funzionamento quotidiano di un servizio per la protezione internazionale nel Nord Italia, questo articolo esplora compiti contraddittori e dilemmi complessi di alcuni operatori impegnati nell’assistenza a richiedenti asilo. In nome delle limitazioni imposte da un sistema in “crisi permanente”, gli operatori si trovano impegnati in processi di aiuto caratterizzati da profonda discrezionalità e confusi criteri soggettivi. Essi si trovano così ad accettare il peso di una responsabilità sulle vite dei richiedenti asilo, che va molto oltre i loro compiti ufficiali. Tuttavia, alle volte alcuni operatori rifiutano di adeguarsi alle direttive – implicite o esplicite – impartite dai loro coordinatori. La loro posizione critica, per quanto limitata dal loro posizionamento istituzionale, può potenzialmente illuminare alcune delle contraddizioni più profonde del sistema burocratico di asilo. Questo scenario offre un’importante opportunità di approfondimento dei rapporti tra “potere statale” e “intermediari statali”, così come delle possibilità di produrre forme di agency dall’interno dei sistemi statali di aiuto umanitario.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylum
• Italy
• discretion
• street-level bureaucracy
• agency
• humanitarianism

PAROLA CHIAVE:

• Asilo
• Italia
• Discrezionalità
• Street-Level Bureaucracy
• Agency
• Umanitarianismo

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my many field interlocutors, who allowed me to enter in their lives and shared with me words and thoughts. I thank Kyra Grieco and Barbara Sorgoni for their careful reading of earlier versions of this article. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments and constructive critiques. This research was made possible by funding from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (Doctoral Fellowship).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Daniela Giudici is a social anthropologist (Ph.D.). In her Ph.D. work she studied the institutional management of asylum seekers in Italy, with an ethnographic investigation of the everyday life of asylum reception institutions. Prior to her Ph.D., Daniela spent several years conducting research and interdisciplinary consultations on migrants and refugees’ mental health, both in Italy and in Canada. She is currently postdoctoral researcher within a research project on the home experiences and trajectories of forced migrants in Italy, based at the University of Trento, Italy.

Notes

1 For an overview of social work in Italy (see Facchini & Lorenz, 2013).

2 During the same period, I also conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a reception centre (SPRAR) for women asylum seekers and in a theatre workshop for refugees.

3 Names have been changed in order to protect the identity of research participants.

4 This attitude, far from being grounded in an embedded lack of ‘civic spirit’ (see Putnam, 1993), has well-entrenched historical roots. Indeed, since Italy’s nineteenth century unification as top-down bourgeois revolution, Italian governments have often relied on clientelism, patronage and corruption in order to keep their precarious stability (see, for example, Ginsborg, 1990).

5 The ‘Common European Asylum System’ (CEAS) has been launched in 1999 at the Tampere European Council. Its aim is to improve the legislative framework, in order to achieve an harmonisation of common minimum standards for asylum among EU countries. For a clear and concise analysis of the asylum application process in Italy (see Sorgoni, 2015, pp. 5–11).