Right of asylum ⁄ Open Migration

“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”.

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.

The agriculture emergency in Italy: three proposals to solve the crisis and protect everyone’s rights

April 23, 2020 - Sara Manisera and Janos Chiala

During the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, much was said about “essential workers”, meaning those people whose job cannot be halted without serious repercussions on society. This category includes farm labourers, the invisible people who, often times exploited, work in Italian farmlands to ensure an uninterrupted supply of fruit and vegetables. Sara Manisera and Janos Chiala, from the Taurianova ghetto, explain how this crisis could be solved protecting everyone’s rights.

Regularisation of migrants. One step forward, but much more could be done

May 18, 2020 - Andrea Oleandri

The impression that many gathered from the proposed measures to regularise foreign workers is that it they are targeting more “us” and our needs (fruit and vegetables that risk staying unpicked in the crops, the elderly and the sick who will need assistance when the people they live with go back to work), than “them” and their right to dignity. It is one step forward, that is for sure, but with how many missed opportunities? Andrea Oleandri analyses them.

Migrants’ detention will not stop with the pandemic

May 27, 2020 - Giacomo Zandonini

Detention of irregular migrants is still the main instrument used to track down and repatriate unwelcome people, even when - like during a pandemic - this is not allowed. Giacomo Zandonini tells us how the Coronavirus emergency in Europe is leaving migrants’ detention unchanged.

The shadows of the Portugal’s migration model

May 8, 2020 - Giacomo Zandonini

The news that Portugal has extended a series of benefits to migrants waiting for regularisation in response to the coronavirus pandemic, has travelled around the world. But even if thousands of people, amongst the most precarious and vulnerable in the country, will be better protected thanks to the new measures, in force until June 30th, “it is untrue to argue that now all irregular migrants will have access to the same rights as the citizens”. Giacomo Zandonini helps us to understand why.

I would like to stay home. The emergency in the emergency of the homeless

April 16, 2020 - Daniela Sala

In Italy, around 50 thousand people live on the streets. Among them, an ever growing percentage of migrants who, deprived of assistance and left without the now dismantled SPRAR network, found themselves homeless. From Rome’s most well-known shelters, Daniela Sala describes the emergency in the emergency of those having to cope with minimal services and bureaucratic troubles.

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