Pubblichiamo la traduzione in inglese di un articolo suddiviso in due parti condiviso di recente “FRONTIERE, MILITARI, SBIRRI E CPR : UNA NUOVA ACCELERATA DEL RAZZISMO DI STATO IN ITALIA”. Ringraziamo The Blackwave Collective che ha curato la traduzione affinchè l’articolo raggiunga quante più persone possibili, oltre barrirere linguistiche e frontiere.
Di seguito la seconda parte (qui in italiano).
We receive and disseminate the first part of a text written by several hands by comrades fighting against Detention Center for Repatriation and borders between Italy and France. In the text, an attempt is made to make a synthesis of the European trends of recent months and the recent decrees passed by the government.
At this link, the first part.
Talks about repeated “migration crises” are a great classic of domestic and European politicians and newspapers. These narratives serve to justify the repression and exploitation of migrant people on European soil. In practical terms, exploitation and racist repression are sustained at the national level by a legislative production made up of decree-laws and at the supranational level by the relentless establishment of treaties and agreements. The ever-increasing presence of militarized borders, cops and jails for undocumented people are the practical implications of these policies.
The “Lampedusa crisis” of recent months, which has seen thousands of people stranded in a semi-prison situation on the island, seems to have accelerated some trends in Italian migration and border management. This text wants to try to dwell on some recent changes (especially from the legislative point of view) to give some small elements of analysis to those who fight against state racism, its jails and its borders. In particular, we will try to trace the latest developments concerning the role of Frontex in Europe, the trends in some European countries on the issue of administrative detention and deportations, and the latest decrees in Italy.
IN ITALY, THE CUTRO LAW: EXPLOITATION OR REPRESSION/EXPULSION
While there is a common trend at the European level to move toward the imprisonment and deportation of more and more people, national policies follow and sometimes anticipate these lines. Regarding Italy in particular, we would like to start by analyzing the so-called Cutro Decree, passed after the shipwreck in February 2023 and converted into law on May 5. This law aims to manage migration through a streamlining of vetting practices for bosses, a calculation of flow quotas that provides for the explicit exploitation of workers who will not be able to obtain documents, and by operating an ironic elimination of the already perverse economic migrant/exile migrant distinction. Any person arriving on Italian soil outside the unrealistic quotas established by the decrees finds their administrative situation squeezed onto the ultra-punitive and marginalizing status of poor migrants who are unable to justify their displacement within the parameters defined by “humanitarian reasons.”
The law provides for a three-year planning of flows, that is, the quotas of people who can enter for work. The measure was enacted primarily in response to pressure from employers’ organizations and trade associations of productive sectors such as agribusiness, for instance, which complained of a structural labour shortage. Despite the significantly higher quotas in this latest decree than in previous years (more than 450,000), the need is at least double (833,000 quotas, even though the government itself says so(1). That makes it clear that the Italian government expects to use undocumented people and is careful not to propose a form of regularization for those who are already in Italy.
The Italian government consistently used the instrument of flows, which existed since the 1990s, before there was an organic immigration law (the TUI). Its use has fluctuated over the years according to trends in the labour market and migration policies. When the Libyan route was opened (as a result of the NATO invasion of Libya) in 2011, de facto landings supplanted the quota contraction to the point of making it almost impossible to enter Italy legally for work purposes. The subsequent contraction of landings as a result of the policies of the Renzi government (Minniti and all those that came after him), together with the abandonment of some sectors (agriculture as an example) by workers from Eastern Europe, has created a structural labour shortage in some sectors. For a couple of years now, because of this, employer associations have been calling for the flows raised.
Another planned change, designed to simplify bureaucratic procedures, stipulates that, even without a clearance, the worker can already come to Italy to work. In addition, the master who applies to seasonal workers through the flow decree is free from controls. Under the guise of simplification, a rule created that validates irregularity.
Conversely, for those who land on European Mediterranean coasts or for those who are already in Italy, de facto, it is confirmed that the only channel to get documents in Italy remains the application for international protection, of which the criteria increasingly narrowed, while also growing control and repression, and the guarantees, already meagre for those who are asylum seekers, absent for those who no longer have any hope of regularizing themselves, decrease. The Cutro law also heavily intervenes in the discipline of special protection. Until now, special protection was the only meagre possibility of regularization for those who did not fit the asylum criteria and subsidiary protection. In fact, among the criteria was taking into account the violation of “private and family life”: that is, the applicant had a way to assert his family ties on Italian territory, social and labour insertion, and the length of stay in the country. It was also possible to apply directly to the Questore for recognition without going through the asylum procedure(2). The Cutro law eliminates the violation of private and family life as a legitimate reason for obtaining a residence permit, and the applicant will no longer have the Questura channel to apply. The special protection permit will continue to exist, but it can only be issued if there is a risk of torture or inhuman and degrading treatment in the country of origin. It almost eliminates the possibility of access to forms of regularization for all those people who have been living and working in Italy illegally for years. Residence permits for special protection will no longer be able to be converted into residence permits for work.
The condition of illegality in which people will left is particularly violent considering that the Cutro law also provides for an expansion of the list of safe countries, that is, those countries where Italy does not deem there to be a risk of persecution or degrading treatment. Gambia, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire are now on this list. Note that for these four new entries, these are the countries from which most migrants arrive on Italian shores, as well as those for which it is easier to implement deportation decrees because of the ease given by the bilateral agreements present.
In parallel, the Cutro law sneakily attacks the status of asylum seekers, re fining the control and repression devices provided for those who are applying for asylum. The law provides for an increase in hotspots (now there are three) for identification and registrationƒ procedures of asylum seekers. Hotspots are facilities where the Salvini Law (2018) provides for the possibility of deprivation of liberty for up to 30 more days and where the guarantor of detainees intervenes, reflecting their prison-like nature. In hotspots or similar facilities, identity verification will now also be able to take place through the use of photodactyloscopic surveying and access to databases, in line (avant-garde) with the future guidelines of the European pact on migration concerning how to divide “parcel migrants” among member countries of the union.
In the name of the same racist management and detention spirit, the new law stipulates that a resident’s identity is not verifiable, they may be transferred to a Detention Center for Repatriation for up to 90 days, to which 30 days may added. So, among the reasons why one can detained in Detention Center for Repatriation, one can add the case of waiting for a response to the application for international protection. To avoid detention, any asylum seeker must now prove that they can have 4538 euros available which to “buy” the state a life outside the Detention Center for Repatriation.
The structure of this decree converted into law already falters in the first months, with the first ruling to the contrary pronounced at the end of September 2023: a judge of the court of Catania does not validate the detention of 4 people in the hotspot of Pozzallo (Ragusa) (3). A second ruling to this effect comes on October 8, again from a judge in Catania, again concerning the detention of 6 people in the same Pozzallo hotspot, which is not validated. In any case, the structure of the law shows that it wants to translate in writing the evidence of the border as ubiquitous throughout Europe, enshrining in black and white that every detention, deportation and control post must be treated, in fact, as a border. The government is now analyzing appeals filed by judges, considering them mere bureaucracy (4). The legal text of the Cutro Decree remains standing and enforced.
THE LAMPEDUSA “CRISIS”: THE SOUTHERN DECREE AND SUBSEQUENT MEASURES
Still on the media wave generated after a series of landings of several thousand people in Lampedusa in the past two months, the Government passed two more decrees on the migration issue in September 2023.
The first decree concerns regulations on the housing and detention of migrants; it threaded into a Decree concerning the Mezzogiorno. There are two central points: the extension of detention time pending deportation and the ownership of detention facilities.
- Migrantsconsideredirregularandsubjecttoadeportationdecreecouldnowbe detained up to a maximum of 18 months, with 3-month extensions validated by the judge at the request of the Questore.
- BothCentersofPermanenceforRepatriationandHotspotsandCASsare transformed into “works intended for national defence for certain purposes.”
The Government, thanks to the assignment given to Defense and the reclassification of facilities, bypasses consultation with regions and municipalities in identifying the facilities. The Ministry of Defense is in charge of their design and implementation.
The Government has established a fund of 20 million euros for 2023: expenditure of 400,000 euros authorized for 2023 and one million euros in 2024.
Management of the facilities will be entrusted to private individuals, as is currently provided for Permanence Centers, while supervision will remain in the hands of the police force. Procedures for construction work are declared “Extraordinary,” so the MoD can order the immediate procurement of services and supplies as an exception to procedures (as in cases of earthquake or flood).
The number of centres will have deemed “suitable” and may increase over time. Existing buildings, probably former barracks, will also be converted. The armed forces will thus be primarily the operational arm that will allow for cuts in procedures, time, and costs.
In practice, the government is equipping itself with the tools to quickly and extensively set up a series of new prisons for undocumented people, where they will be locked up for a year and a half while awaiting deportation (the idea is one Permanence Center per region).
Yet another decree is then approved three days after the first one. The structure of the new immigration and “security” squeeze (included in yet another 11-article decree-law) provides an additional category of individuals at risk of deportation, i.e. people with long-
term residence permits but considered dangerous “for serious reasons of public order or state security.” It is a really serious measure because it implies that any foreign person, even one with documents, will be at risk of deportation.
Further tightening also to those administrative/legal avenues hitherto possible to try to slow down deportation proceedings: a repeated application for asylum (after the denial of the first one) will not block the execution of a pending removal order.
Another issue is that of the management of minors: the decree provides for the possibility of conducting “anthropometric” and health assessments more quickly, including the use of X-rays, to verify the actual age of people who declare themselves to be unaccompanied minors. If the age declared does not match the assessments (altought such measurements are often inaccurate and scientifically controversial [5]), the alien can condemned for making false statements to a public official, and the conviction may be deportation itself.
Finally, there is a further enlargement of funds designated for migration management: the measure allocates €5 million for 2023 and €20 million from 2024 until 2030 for interventions in favour of the Police and Fire Service. In addition, it increases police personnel at Italian embassies and consulates to enhance entry visa verification.
Summing up this legislative review, we can say that the Meloni government has only ever operated by decrees, starting with the so-called Piantedosi Decree of January 2023, which makes sea rescue more complicated and provides penalties for NGOs that fail to comply with complex procedures.
Legislatively speaking, operating by decrees emphasizes an emergency, emergency and racist management as well as reaffirming a war on the skin of the “migrant enemy,” a situation that reinforced in the use of military engineering for new detention centres.
All the legislative interventions we have written about increasingly operate in various measures an overlap between reception and detention, making the repressive reading more and more evident concerning the act of migrating.
The media necessity of the right-wing discourse on migrants has meant that the decrees were “legally” poorly written: the language denoting them is nebulous, and confused, not to mention that they contain a variety of contradictions, which is why the judges of the Catania section annulled the detentions. Despite this, the decrees are enforceable immediately, and the period of uncertainty about the actual application of the rules weighs even more heavily on the lives of those considered irregular.
It is yet another form of institutional racism.
In conclusion, it will consider how the measures discussed above will implemented in reality. We have spoken here in legal and technical terms, but the venues of the courts are not where we place our energies and expectations of struggle.
We do not yet know how the situation will unfold: the governments’ plans will clash with the struggles and resistance of all those who will continue to cross seas and walls, to break out and destroy the cages in which you want to lock them up, to fight to be able to make decisions about their own lives. And we will see if we can build effective and not just symbolic forms of solidarity with these struggles so that of all these cages will not remain only rubble.
NOTES
(1) https://www.governo.it/it/articolo/comunicato-stampa-del-consiglio-dei-ministri-n-42/23077
(2) https://www.asgi.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/1-Scheda-su-riforma-della-protezione-speciale-DEF.pdf