Immigration & Integration ⁄ Open Migration

Re-thinking the Representation of Refugee Children and Adolescents in the Media. Views from Italy’s frontline

March 9, 2021 - Valentina Baú

The narrative of refugee children and adolescents has been almost absent from the Italian media since the start of the migratory flows that have been crossing the Mediterranean. While these groups feature erratically in journalist reporting, media attention typically revolves around geo-political facts related to the areas of origin of minors, the hardship of their journeys, and crime-related news, particularly in relation to adolescents. Stories of refugee children and adolescents are seldom heard in the media, leaving them unknown to the public and forming a representation that alternates a frame of victimhood to one of poverty-related delinquency. This research-based article presents the views of some of the main inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations working on the migrant humanitarian response in Italy. Their experience, knowledge, and suggestions on journalist media coverage of refugee children and adolescents have been gathered and offered here through a series of critical points. This article also wants to be a useful resource to organisations involved in similar work and especially to media outlets, for a reflection on their present and future effort in communicating about refugee children and adolescents.

The transfer of men and women already present on Italian territory on “quarantine ships” is illegal and must be stopped

October 13, 2020 - Tommaso Fusco

The fear expressed by lawyers and rights-based associations month ago, at the time of the initial adoption of “quarantine ships” as a response measure is proving to be well-founded: the quarantine ships, now far from being an exceptional measure designed only for people rescued at sea, risk now becoming a new place for detention of documented migrants and potentially also for Italian citizens.

“Selective, punitive and symbolic”: the state of administrative detention in Italy

September 4, 2020 - Paola Petrucco

For our column on alternatives to detention, Paola Petrucco interviewed Giulia Fabini, Adjunct Professor and Research Fellow at the University of Bologna, and Assistant Editor at the European Journal of Criminology. Here is what she told us about the “selective, punitive and symbolic nature of administrative detention in Italy”.

Pre-removal centres and alternatives to detention: 5 questions with Professor Giuseppe Campesi

August 3, 2020 - Paola Petrucco

For our column on alternatives to immigration detention, Paola Petrucco interviewed Giuseppe Campesi, Professor of the Aldo Moro University of Bari, legal expert and founding member of the Observatory on migrants’ administrative detention and asylum seekers’ reception in Puglia.

Covid pandemic jeopardizes burial for the Muslim community

April 30, 2020 - Daniela Sala

Under Italian law, a person may only be buried in the Municipality of residence or in the Municipality where he or she died. On top of that, Islam forbids its believers cremation and burial in a sealed casket: the body must be buried, with the face towards Mecca. But out of 8,000 municipalities, only some sixty have a cemetery area dedicated to Muslim worshippers. Daniela Sala tells us how the Muslim community in the Lombard provinces most affected by the virus is getting organized to bury their loved ones.

Migrant detention in Covid-19 times

July 20, 2020 - Flaminia Delle Cese

What is the point of holding foreign nationals in immigration detention centres at a time when the limitation of international mobility prevents returns? Does it make sense to deprive of their personal liberty individuals who have not committed a crime and who in 50% of cases will be released from detention centres as irregular migrants? What sense is there in providing for quarantine periods on ships for persons landed on the Italian coasts, when the thousands of people arriving by air or across land borders are no longer obliged to undergo this measure? With its dossier, the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights aims to demonstrate the ineffectiveness, inutility and huge cost - in human and economic terms - of places of detention for foreigners.

Bergamo and the Seriana Valley, the solidarity of foreign communities in the Covid emergency

May 21, 2020 - Ilaria Romano

Three communities from three different corners of the globe, three different religious creeds, three different cultures, united by the health emergency that has affected the country where they have decided to live. Ilaria Romano tells us about the sympathetic response of foreign communities from the Seriana Valley - Bergamo.

Immigration & Integration