Abstract
The recent migratory flow imposes a reflection surrounding the practices of subjectivation of immigrants inside the “welcoming/accommodation machine”. The extreme bureaucratisation, in the Italian case governed by the police and state apparatuses, unambiguously brings to light the extension of the administrative-technocratic dispositive that supports the actual practices of identification of subjects in late neoliberal societies from borders to the core of everyday life: cities. Even once through the border, asylum seekers condition is usually related to an absolute absence of documents—in French terms sans papiers—and is exactly the system of welcoming or accommodation that assumes the responsibility to fill this bureaucratic void in the life of immigrants. In addition to the sans papiers phenomenon, we witness another process of criminalisation: what we decided to address as “criminalisation of legality”. With this concept we describe a specific condition when an asylum seeker is de jure legalised—having applied and been recognised by the state apparatus as an asylum seeker—but de facto there are elements of discontinuity in this process marked by renewals of his permit of stay.
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- 1.
Glossario delle Linee Guida per l’applicazione della Carta di Roma. The definition is taken from: https://www.cartadiroma.org/cosa-e-la-carta-di-roma/glossario/.
- 2.
National Council of the Order of Journalists.
- 3.
National Federation of Italian Press.
- 4.
- 5.
We conceptually prefer to call the asylum system the asylum machine, taking in consideration the concept of abstract machines developed by Deleuze and Guattari in their A thousand plateaus where they write: “There is no abstract machine, or machines in the sense of a Platonic Idea, transcendent, universal, eternal. Abstract machines operate within concrete assemblages: They are defined by the fourth aspect of assemblages, in other words, the cutting edges of decoding and deterritorialization. They draw these cutting edges. Therefore they make territorial assemblage open onto something else, assemblages of another type, the molecular, the cosmic; they constitute becomings”. Deleuze and Guattari (2004, p. 562). In other words: the machine is not a technical device, but a social composition and concatenation. It is a conception of the machine as an arrangement of technical, bodily, intellectual, and social components.
- 6.
In Italian language called “Commissione territoriale”.
- 7.
The bureaucratic base for all personal documents and work-related issues.
- 8.
An exception is the right to access emergency hospital departments, creating “false” emergencies, artificially saturating a system dedicated to emergencies with non-urgent medical issues and thus creating social tensions or even hostile behaviour of professional medical staff.
- 9.
Giving access to priority medical issues for specialist visits, for example.
- 10.
Essential for access to education or to obtain a bank account.
- 11.
Bove (2015, p. 171).
- 12.
A raw definition of biopolitics, a concept developed by Foucault is as follows: “The second, formed somewhat later, focused on the species body, the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls: a biopolitics of the population” (Foucault 1975, p. 193).
- 13.
For a critique of most biopolitical analysis also related to the reception system and accommodation see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316738710_Beyond_the_Biopolitics_of_the_Refugee_Totality_Global_Capitalism_and_the_Common_Struggle.
- 14.
We are using the term “welcomed” in a clear relation and approval of the Refugees Welcome struggle.
- 15.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia is one of the 20 regions of Italy, and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The regional capital is Trieste. Friuli-Venezia Giulia has an area of 7924 km2 and about 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many Central European countries, the region is crossed by the major transport routes between the east and west of southern Europe. It encompasses the historical geographical region of Friuli and a small portion of the historical region of Venezia Giulia—known in English also as Julian March—each with its own distinct history, traditions and identity.
- 16.
In Italian language, we prefer to speak about operatore del sociale. In a lack of a better translation we address this kind of work as social work. Rather than working with different kinds of marginalized or disadvantaged groups, we see the operatore del sociale as etymologically—and conceptually—linked to the term “society” and, to make a long story short, its work is to operate as a guide and link between different understandings of everyday life and as a mediator and facilitator of the access to specific state (and non-state) services, e.g. the Italian health-care system, labour market or simply how and where to buy everyday tools.
- 17.
At the time of writing this article, the data are not yet published. We sincerely thank Italian Consortium of Solidarity and Caritas Trieste for letting us access and use these data. Moreover, we decided to present the data/current situation as of December 2017 in Trieste avoiding yearly statistics, for the simple reason that this is the most immediate official reality in our city.
- 18.
In some cases we could call them friends. Thank you: Saber, Chyenar, Khamo, Haji and Tagimul.
- 19.
For more information about SPRAR and CAS in Slovenian language see: Lipovec Cebron and Gregorc (2016, pp. 194–202). For an overview of the Italian reception system in English see: http://www.asylumineurope.org/reports/country/italy/reception-conditions/short-overview-italian-reception-system.
- 20.
Bove (2015, p. 174).
- 21.
Report ICS-Caritas (2015–2016). The numbers for the years 2015–2016 are overall elaborations of the data presented in the Official report: L'accoglienza e la tutela dei richiedenti asilo e dei titolari di protezione internazionale o umanitaria a Trieste. Dati Statistici settembre 2015 aprile 2016—Accommodation and protection of asylum seekers and holders of subsidiary and humanitarian protection in Trieste. Statistic data September 2015 April 2016. The pages of the report are not numerated.
- 22.
Report ICS-Caritas (2015–2016).
- 23.
Bove (2015, p. 187).
- 24.
All the data and various citations from here on are taken from the not yet published report “The reception and protection of asylum seekers, refugees and people with subsidiary and humanitarian protection in Trieste” written by ICS—Italian Consortium of Solidarity Onlus and Caritas Trieste; as in the previous report, pages are not numerated.
- 25.
Meaning that their fingerprints were recorded in the Eurodac and that they were identified as official asylum seekers in another European country. In these cases, the Italian government is trying—or tried—to contact the first country of entry in the EU or to identify the competent government for the asylum request. Under the Dublin III Regulation, their permit of stay cites the reason dublino.
- 26.
At the time this chapter was written, we could not imagine the formulation of the so-called Salvini decree (October 2018) which—among other things—implements the principle that asylum seekers cannot be registered inside the civil registry office, forbidding asylum seekers to have actual residence.
- 27.
Often irregularly, given the lack of legal routes or methods made impracticable by the increasingly restrictive measures of entry into the EU or even the European continent.
- 28.
Article 3.
- 29.
Brambilla and Morandi (2015, p. 75).
- 30.
Directive 2013/32/EU, Article 31.
- 31.
- 32.
Directive 2013/32/EU, Article 31.
- 33.
Conceptualized by Michel Foucault, a dispositif (apparatus) is: “…, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions—in short, the said as much as the unsaid. … Thus, a particular discourse can figure at one time as the programme of an institution, and at another it can function as a means of justifying or masking a practice which itself remains silent, or as a secondary re-interpretation of this practice, opening out for it a new field of rationality. … a formation which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need. The apparatus thus has a dominant strategic function (Foucault 1980, pp. 194–195).
- 34.
In some extent, this is a common experience of each citizen in contact with the contemporary bureaucracy system, but with different impacts.
- 35.
Due to large numbers, even the best NGO cannot always guarantee enough time to each person.
- 36.
At the end, in October 2018 this person unexpectedly left the accommodation system before obtaining a response from the court. We lost contact with him.
- 37.
A simple formula: no invitation paper, no accommodation place. This becomes a serious issue in winter if an asylum seeker arrives in Trieste on a Friday afternoon, and will not receive this paper until Monday morning.
- 38.
“Regulation (EU) N. 603/2013 of the European Parliament and of the European Council of June 26th 2013, establishes Eurodac for the comparison of fingerprints to obtain an effective application of Regulation no. 604/2013/EU that establishes the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for the examination of an application for international protection”. Brambilla and Morandi (2015, p. 60).
- 39.
The modalities of asylum in other EU countries may be different: in some cases, the simple release of fingerprints to the security forces does not coincide with the will of the person to seek asylum in that country, even if formally—for the Dublin treaties—it is in that country that the asylum seeker should carry out his/her request/procedure.
- 40.
Brambilla and Morandi (2015, p. 61).
- 41.
Ibid., p. 66.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 66.
- 43.
This involves all the foreigners—non Italian citizens—living and working in Trieste.
- 44.
We invite you to pass by Trieste Questura early (3–5 a.m.) on a Wednesday morning. It is not uncommon to see up to one hundred people forming a queue, waiting for the door to open and for the distribution of the queue tickets that starts at 8:30 a.m.
- 45.
For Trieste, the commission was until July 2018 in Gorizia, from July on is in Trieste.
- 46.
Where an asylum request is approved by the assignment of some kind of protection, or rejected.
- 47.
Change of name, surname and date of birth, in some cases even country of origin.
- 48.
Typos in surnames or names, resulting in further complications because the commission issues an electronic permit of stay. If the data differ from those in the home country document (be it ID card or passport), there will be serious problems for the holder. We had such a case with one of our interviewees; after waiting several months for the amendment of a typo by the commission, he decided to keep the wrong name and legally change the one recorded in his home country. Sometimes there are even worse cases of formal errors, such as a copy-paste error, done by the commission in which a part of the response is entitled to one person while another part (this might be the part where the decision is reported) is entitled to another person.
- 49.
Humanitarian protection is a type of protection issued by the Italian government, usually when a person would not have the same amount of rights or access to a functional system (usually health-care system) in his home country as he has in Italy. For details see: https://www.asgi.it/asilo-e-protezione-internazionale/permesso-soggiorno-motivi-umanitari-scheda-analisi/. From October 2018 with the above-mentioned Salvini decree, the Humanitarian protection is to be abolished. The result will be an enormous number of illegalized easily exploitable work force.
- 50.
Significant changes in the case of appeals were recently introduced by the Minniti-Orlando decrees, the more meaningful being the one that foresees only a first degree appeal, cancelling the existing second degree appeal, and thus considerably reducing the right to disagree with a court decision for the asylum seekers and accelerating the process of expulsion from Italy.
- 51.
For example, it is almost impossible to obtain a regular contract of work with only a receipt of a permit of stay, as it is also almost impossible to get a regular house-renting contract.
- 52.
Be it due to a favourable social context they come from or to a particularly open or experiment-oriented personality.
- 53.
We assume that contradictions and paradoxes are the basis of a neoliberal society.
- 54.
Savio (ASGI) (2017).
- 55.
Ministero dell’Interno (April 2017).
- 56.
In the past few years, the Immigration Office of the Police Headquarters in Trieste has tried (has been trying?) to reorganize the summoning of asylum seekers and the subsequent procedure in different ways and by different means, most recently by preparing lists of summoned people for issuing the electronic permit of stay that are sent to the NGOs welcoming those people. The NGOs are then in charge of communicating the date of the appointment. Before this change, the Immigration Office contacted the person directly or the person waiting for this document had to show up several times at the Office, most often to be informed that the document was not yet ready.
- 57.
The so-called Turco-Napolitano law, March 6, 1998, No. 40, enforced before the current one, aimed, unlike the old Martelli law and several supplementary provisions of a fragmented regulatory framework, to regulate migration as a whole, trying to overcome an emergency logic. It institutionalized—among other things—the CPTs, Centres for temporary stay, dedicated to all foreigners who are “subject to deportation and/or rejection measures, including coercive escort to the border”, when these measures were not immediately executable.
- 58.
E.g. people subject to check-ups of their expired documents.
- 59.
This goes even in cases people enter Italy with student visas or by working visa: when expired, to avoid deportation usually people make an asylum request.
- 60.
Mezzadra (2017).
- 61.
Mezzadra (2017).
- 62.
Ibid.
- 63.
“The perspective of the multiplication of labour emphasizes not the proliferation of meaning along an equivalential chain but the proliferation of borders that cut across and exceed existing political spaces. Corollary to this is the system of differential inclusion, which far from constituting the political through exclusion involves a selective process of inclusion that suggests that any totalization of the political is contingent and subject to processes of contestation” (Mezzadra and Neilson 2008).
- 64.
For a little bit different perspective of the debate refugee vs. economic migrant and its implications on a demographic-economic level, see Balibar (2015).
- 65.
With a receipt of the renewal procedure of his permit of stay.
- 66.
With an orthographic error resulting in Residence Register Service.
- 67.
Such as different legal statuses or different social categories (e.g. asylum seeker, refugee, economic migrant, homeless, holder of a handicap, Roma, Hazara, precarious worker, student, researcher, etc.).
- 68.
In Italian language “la guerra tra i poveri” describing the paradox situation when de-privileged citizens rage against migrants.
- 69.
See Mezzadra (2004).
- 70.
This is a simplification because the level of objectivation is just a part of the entire process that creates “intermittent” or easily exploited subjectivities inside the politics of differential inclusions.
- 71.
For details on this concept see: Foucault (1967).
- 72.
As intended by Bourdieu (1977).
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Pittioni, D., Gregorc, T. (2020). “Time Bandits”: Time as a Factor of the “Criminalisation of Legality” of Asylum Seekers. An Example from Trieste, Italy. In: Kogovšek Šalamon, N. (eds) Causes and Consequences of Migrant Criminalization. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 81. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43732-9_13
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