Abstract
Throughout the West, immigrants face the threat of falling under an illegal status. Currently, Italy stands at a point of potentially dramatic change, in which hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who work as domestic care providers, who work in agriculture, or sell items on the street are menaced with some of the harshest anti-illegal immigrant laws in the world. Although Italian immigration law both creates illegal immigrants and threatens them with dire punishments, implementation of the law to this point has been tempered by police discretion and local variations. Some illegal immigrants who possess social and cultural capital are able to integrate with relative ease, while others are caught in seemingly insurmountable social exclusion. This chapter presents ethnographic data describing some of the varieties of illegal immigrants’ experiences in Tuscany, toward grappling with the relationship between immigration law and marginalization.
When I arrived in this country, they asked me what made me leave Nigeria. I told them the reason why I left. I tell them the truth. Is it bad for somebody to say the truth?
From an interview with Leo, a 24-year-old Nigerian, after he had received an order of expulsion from the Questura in Florence (All names are anonymized)
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The European Commission is currently deciding how it will respond to this law, as it is considered by many as a human rights violation. See Goldston (2009), who has spoken up on behalf of the Open Society Institute against Italy’s treatment of immigrants. The Antidiscrimination Center of Pistoia successfully overturned this decision, allowing the man to return to his partner in Italy. At this time the law had only been approved, but not implemented; hence, the justice of the peace was in error.
- 3.
The dicretto flusse refers to the rather arbitrary number of immigrants who are permitted each year to enter with work permits from various countries. In 2006, 540,000 individuals applied for 120,000 openings, and in 2007, 700,000 individuals applied for 170,000 positions in the flusse (Ferraris, 2008, 36). Often these applications with the flusse are prepared weeks ahead of time, and the computer system of the Ministry of the Interior is so overwhelmed by applications that it closes within the first 10 min.
- 4.
In fact, states around the globe make concerted efforts to resist immigrants on the basis of poverty. See Dauvergne (2008).
- 5.
In conceptualizing the regularities and relevance of surveillance, especially in the Italian context, Wittgenstein (1953, para. 217) comes often to mind, especially when he notes, “If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do’.”
- 6.
For a discussion of the politics of access to space in the city, see Lefebvre (1992) and his interpreters (Dikec, 2002; McCann, 1998; Purcell, 2001). Meghan McDowell and Nancy Wonders (2009) asked 20 undocumented immigrants in Arizona to mark places where they felt “safe” and where they felt frightened on a local map. For most, the only “safe” place was home.
- 7.
Eastmond (2007, 260) notes, “As the injured body has become the terrain of ‘truth’, medical certificates are replacing refugees’ own words.” Timothy’s body, however, did not suffice to validate his claims.
- 8.
As Conquergood (1988, 197) notes, “People and actions that disturb order, violate categories, mess up the system are branded unclean… Labeling someone or something ‘dirty’ is a way of controlling perceived anomalies, incongruities, contradictions, ambiguities—all that does not fit into our categories, and therefore threatens cherished principles. ‘Dirt,’ then, functions as the mediating term between ‘Difference’ and ‘Danger.’ It is the term that loads the perception of ‘Difference’ with a moral imperative, and enables the move from description to action, from ‘is’ to ‘ought.’ Defining something as unhealthy, harmful, and dangerous establishes the premise for ‘moving in,’ for control.”
- 9.
The Vatican has denounced the security package as “laws which bring pain.”
- 10.
It is important to confront the stereotype that Italy (or worse yet, Italians) are somehow corrupt or disorganized. In fact, Eve (1996) demonstrates that these notions are due to the greater rigidity and specificity of laws and lesser official tolerance of discretion in Italy than in the USA or the UK. While discretion or “flexibility” is seen more as a natural process of “doing business” in the later countries, and thus is more likely to be overlooked, Italians tend to be more likely to be troubled by such matters and to bring them to public attention.
- 11.
See, for instance, “Italy’s prisoners suffer from overcrowded cells” http://www.dw-world.com/dw/article/0,,4547991,00.html.
- 12.
For an overview of 11 years of lessons learned from the expensive and counterproductive US immigration policy, see Cornelius (2005).
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Garot, R. (2013). Clandestine Tales from Tuscany. In: Brotherton, D., Stageman, D., Leyro, S. (eds) Outside Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6648-2_9
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