ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we discussed Germany’s immigration and asylum regime in terms of a bureaucratised and formalised hierarchy of rights, linked to various aspects of control. Italy differs from Germany in several fundamental respects, most notable of which are that it has only relatively recently become a receiving rather than a sending country, migration has been a largely spontaneous phenomenon and the outcome is extremely varied both in terms of the circumstances and origins of the migrants. The legal regime of statuses and rights is fairly newly established, but more importantly, it operates alongside a variety of informal practices which prejudice access to formally established rights, or grant them only on the basis of discretion. Claims that we are entering an era of post-national rights have always been subject to qualification through the notion of ‘implementation deficit’, and this is amply illustrated by the Italian system. However, there is a further element of informality which characterises the position of migrants in Italy, and that is the role of voluntary sector organisations in offering a variety of supports outside the structure of formal provisions. There are thus two aspects of ‘deficit’ which are prominent in the Italian system – the difficulties of meeting requisite conditions for formally held rights, and the centrality of provisions which by their nature fall short of full entitlement.
