Over the past decade, asylum seekers and refugees arriving in Italy were accommodated in reception facilities located not only in large metropolitan centres but also in Small-medium Towns and Rural ...Areas (STRAs). Italy’s reception system evolved quickly to face the peaks of asylum applications, especially in the 2015-2017 period. At the same time, the changes in Italy’s reception policies were pushed by the increased polarisation in the asylum debate, which, in turn, has led to great heterogeneity in the development of reception practices. This paper argues that the reception-territory nexus is a critical dimension to focus on when investigating the implications connected to the arrival and establishment of asylum seekers and refugees. This appears particularly true in STRAs where the reception system provided new resources that, when well-managed, showed transformative potential, developing virtuous interconnections with the local territories and communities. These virtuous interconnections have, however, been affected by the continuous changes in reception policies and came to a critical juncture in 2018, when the so-called Security Decree entered into force. While further modifications are currently underway, such legislation profoundly affected the Italian reception system’s functioning and working principles, creating new frictions and tensions among institutional actors and within the local governance of the reception system itself. We argue that the reform contributed to disrupting, both materially and symbolically, the previous virtuous combination of refugee inclusion and local development, especially in STRAs. Our situated qualitative analysis – carried out between 2019 and 2020 through discursive in-depth interviews – investigates the interconnections between territory and reception in three small to medium-sized towns and rural areas before and after this regulatory shift. It does so by introducing a novel analytic framework, focusing on symbolic and material aspects within and around reception. The analysis suggests that the stress and disruptions connected to the regulatory changes have had a negative impact on the internal organisation of the reception as well as on the refugees’ inclusion and on the chances of local development.
Jornada dedicada a l’anàlisi de la pràctica dels drets humans en tres àmbits de destacada actualitat com són els drets humans en l’àmbit de la diplomàcia, el dret d’asil i els drets socio-econòmics.
In Apr 2018, the Trump Administration publicly announced a new zerotolerance policy for illegal entries at the US border. This action kicked off a wave of family separations that made headlines and ...drew criticism from around the globe. Despite resounding condemnation of these actions, the Trump Administration defended its family separation policy as a "tough deterrent." At least 2,600 families were torn apart in the ensuing months. And subsequent reports--from both the government and others--have detailed widespread abuses of and substandard conditions for children held in detention centers. The consequences of these separations and the maltreatment of children in detention are pronounced. The trauma that children have endured potentially has lifelong ramifications. This Article provides an indepth, children's rights-based analysis of the Trump Administration's family separation and child detention policies and actions. A children's rights perspective offers several critical insights. First, children's rights are rooted in a legal mandate. Second, examining the Trump Administration's actions from a children's rights perspective reveals the breadth of rights violations occurring. This more nuanced understanding of the events can help in devising appropriate strategies to respond to such violations. Third, a children's rights perspective helps place the Trump Administration's actions in their historical context to better understand the gravity of these actions. Children's rights law is as close to universally accepted as any human rights law, and thus any departures from such widely embraced standards are particularly revealing. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of this children's rights assessment, urging action on several fronts to address this harm and prevent violations of children's rights in the future.
Growing political and public rhetoric claim that immigration has contributed to drug crime and the overdose crisis of the 21st century. However, research to date has given little attention to ...immigration–overdose relationships, and almost no work has examined the ways that the sanctuary status of locales influences these connections. The current study draws on the immigrant revitalization perspective and Brayne’s (2014) systems avoidance theory to examine the connections between immigrant concentration, sanctuary status, and overdose mortality across MSAs for the 2015 period, overall and across races/ethnicities. The analysis uses data on overdose deaths drawn from the CDC’s Restricted Access Multiple Cause of Death Mortality files, combined with data on characteristics of MSAs drawn from the U.S. Census and other macro-level data sources. Findings reveal that the percent Latinx foreign-born is related to lower levels of overdose deaths overall and for White and Black populations but higher levels of Latinx overdose mortality. Contrary to expectations, sanctuary status has little effect on overdose deaths across most groups, and it does not significantly condition immigration–overdose relationships.
Some anthropological examinations of documents have emphasized their role as regulatory technologies that enact control and legibility over both citizens and "aliens." This article shows, however, ...that documentary practices and forms both reinforce and undermine attempts to make persons governable. My analysis centers on the "pink card," the identity document issued to asylum seekers in Greece, which in 2010 was the European country with the highest number of asylum cases pending in limbo. Examining how both state functionaries and asylum seekers engage with it, I show how the pink card takes on unpredictable meanings with indeterminate effects, which can disrupt the regulatory functions of the asylum procedure. Through ethnographic data drawn from encounters between asylum seekers and police, interviews with asylum seekers, and case material, I argue for a consideration of how things themselves govern—that is, dispose, position, and shape—the activities and tools of state regulation.
This article aims to shed light on some features characterizing the practice of the right of asylum. In the frame of an extensive international literature that highlights cross-national differences ...and emerging definitions in the construction of the "deserving asylum-seeker", this article focuses on the frictions in the management of refugee status determination in Italy, resulting in very fragmented local practices. Such practices will be analyzed according to ethnographic research on the role of the legal operators supporting asylum seekers, namely semi-professionals key actors in constructing the written narrations submitted to asylum caseworkers. Nonetheless, their work is under many pressures related to increasingly hostile norms, emergency framings, and limited acknowledgment.
Un principio fundamental vinculado al derecho de asilo es el de no devolución a un tercer Estado en el que exista peligro para la vida o la libertad del solicitante. Dicha regla se encuentra ...positivizada en el artículo 33 de la Convención de Ginebra de 1950 y desde este instrumento se ha incorporado tanto al Sistema Europeo Común de Asilo (SECA) como a las diferentes legislaciones nacionales, entre ellas, la española. Sin embargo, la especial situación a la que se enfrenta la Unión Europea, ha hecho que este principio haya sufrido diversas vulneraciones y que existan intentos de convertirlo más en una directriz que en una norma de obligado cumplimiento. El objetivo de este estudio es insistir en que la no devolución no debe considerarse una norma de soft law, sino que el derecho positivo deja constancia de su carácter vinculante y obligatorio para los Estados parte de la mencionada Convención y tiene que respetarse unido a una adecuada definición de la noción de tercer país seguro. Solo así es posible garantizar la seguridad jurídica tan necesaria en el ámbito del asilo.
Through legal interpretation of immigration categories, such as the refugee definition, signatories to the UN Refugee Convention restrict access to political asylum. This paper examines how scalar ...logics are used in legal interpretation to filter out particular people from national space and control the number legally entitled to enter and remain in the U.S. Scalar logics shape access by requiring asylum seekers to prove they have been 'singled out' for persecution and by steering the meaning of the 'particular social group' provision of the refugee definition. The restrictive effects of these scalar logics are analyzed in relation to case law involving Central American asylum seekers fleeing gang-related violence. These cases are often rejected on the basis that the asylum seekers possess identities and experiences exceeding the limited protection offered by asylum. Through analysis of these scalar logics, the paper highlights how interpretations of the refugee definition are an ongoing site of struggle over the scope of asylum protection.
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