2014 Chapters (Layout Features)

"We are not racist, but we do not want immigrants". How Italy uses immigration law to marginalize immigrants and create a (new) national identity

Faedda, Barbara

This chapter analyzes Italian immigration policy and immigration law, giving special attention to the political discourse that keeps forcing immigration to the top of the institutional policy agenda. In this body of discourse, immigration is criminalized and foreign-ness becomes synonymous with criminality. Italian political parties have reinforced this association between crime and immigration to keep a firm grip on the electorate in a climate of political instability. This chapter examines several aspects of this political strategy. It also observes that institutional approaches to immigration have not changed substantially over the past three decades. Most governments, whether conservative or progressive, have governed immigration through an axiomatic that relegates immigration policy to a constant state of emergency that associates immigration with criminality.