Paradoxical migrant allyship: the adoption of a disciplinary model of ‘compulsory integration’ for asylum seekers in Italy

Recent scholarship has focused extensively on the deployment of technologies of security as a tactic of migration governance. The analyses have largely been on the effect of prioritising state security over migrant rights and the subsequent impact on their well-being. In our analysis of a migrant accommodation centre called the L’Accademia d’Integrazione (Bergamo, Italy) we contribute to this literature through a multi-scalar analysis of the place-specific rationales justifying the use of these technologies. There, migrants are required to wear jumpsuits reading ‘Thank you Bergamo,’ and subject to behavioural regulation, restricted mobility, and omnipresent surveillance. We observe how this new model of migration governance based around compulsory training and discipline emerged as an attempt to gain political control over the dominant discourse around the perceived migrant threat. Racialised preconceptions of African migrants, their presumed lack of cultural compatibility and a perceived unwillingness to participate in existing integration programs permeated the media and political rhetoric, challenging state sovereignty and perceived control. We see how this approach designed to foster ‘palatability’ contributed to their further differentiation, subjugation, and marginalisation. We question the conceptualisation of integration within the program arguing that rather than produce parity it commits structural violence in form and practice

COVID-19 and (Im)migrant Carers in Italy: The Production of Carer Precarity

This article explores the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on foreign health workers in Italy. Focusing on caregivers in Lombardia, we explore what we call carer precarity, an emergent form of precarity resulting from pandemic restrictions exacerbating existing socio-legal vulnerabilities. The duality of the carer role-complete household and societal reliance in addition to simultaneous socio-legal marginalization-shapes their precarity. Utilizing data from 44 qualitative interviews with migrant care workers in live-in and daycare facilities that were conducted prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, we demonstrate how the migrant populations working in the care sector were particularly adversely affected due to their migratory status and working conditions. Migrants are excluded from or have differential access to a range of benefits or entitlements and are employed in undervalued work. Workers with live-in employment experienced tiered access to benefits plus the spatiality of restrictions, resulting in their near-complete confinement. Drawing on Gardner (2022) and Butler's (2009) conceptualizations of precarity, we describe the emergence of a new form of pandemic-induced spatial precarity for migrant care workers at the nexus of gendered labor, limited mobility, and the spatiality of and a hierarchy of rights associated with migratory status. The findings have implications for healthcare policy and migration scholarship

The Khartoum Process and human trafficking

The Khartoum Process’s emphasis on stopping northward migration comes at great cost to vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers

“It will kill your dreams, your goals, your everything”—Humanitarian migrants, governance through containment and the Italian accommodation system

While asylum seekers await the outcome of their claims to protection in Italy, they are dispersed to accommodation centers administered by subcontracted non-governmental agencies where they receive reception and integration services. In addition, in line with guidelines from the regional government, social operators regulate migrant behavior and mobility through the use of the use of behavioral regulation, deployed temporalities, and various forms of surveillance. Using the lens of migration governmentality and specifically, containment (Tazzioli and Garelli, 2018), this research explores the impact of these forms of governance on migrant settlement outcomes. I do so through a case study of accommodation centers and migrant experiences within accommodation centers in Turin (Italy) conducted in the winter of 2018 and 2019. Findings suggest that migrants are infantilized through the process, one which provides few opportunities to exert autonomy over self-direction and preferred settlement outcomes. Contained within reception centers without opportunities for external engagement, migrants are prevented from developing social ties or place attachment more generally. Migrants reject their subordinated status, and, exhibit a familiar form of autonomy in the post-reception period—migration, including circular and cross border mobility

Mutual Benefit: How Vocational Training Programs Utilize Employer Engagement and Refugee Strengths to Facilitate Integration

Successful integration of newly arriving refugees requires the engagement of the receiving community and active facilitation of integration through provision of employment, access to housing, and protection of basic rights. Understanding how local entities effectively facilitate integration is important for policymakers and scholars interested in identifying best practices and replicating outcomes. This study examines the integration outcomes of refugees who participated in a vocational hospitality training program in Chicago, Illinois between 2008 and 2012. In particular, we explore the integration experiences—using employment, housing, and homeownership—of Bhutanese origin refugees who represented the largest country of origin group in the hospitality course. We find that the Bhutanese refugees who participated in the course had high rates of homeownership, stable employment, higher wages and experienced socioeconomic upward mobility—positive indicators of integration. In our analysis, we identify three reasons the program is successful in facilitating integration: a practice of selective enrollment, active employer engagement, and informed industry selection. Importantly, our findings suggest a positive benefit for employers in addition to refugee employees