---

Lucia Facchini

Ph. D. Student (Scholarship holder 10/2012 - 09/2015)
1st Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marie-Claire Foblets
2nd Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Richard Rottenburg
Mentor: Dr. Bertram Turner

Formal and informal migration management in Italy: local, national and transnational factors

International migration poses a multilevel social and legal challenge. Seen at the macro level, it relates different political and legal systems, thus calling into question the notion of control through national sovereignty. Of all transnational phenomena, migration most explicitly reveals the consequences of territorial separation for people’s unequal grant of rights, assistance and representation. With regards to the micro level, the community experiencing migration processes is induced to reconsider its collective, if not private, behaviors in virtually every aspect of public life. If much of those behaviors can be explained on the basis of different actors’ rational conduct, the role played by identity patterns should not be underestimated. Identity patterns are here intended as culturally-based sources of social trust and of endorsement or opposition to various regulations and practices of exclusion and inclusion. The conception of identity in terms of individuals’ psychological spheres lies beyond the scope of this study.

Object of the present analysis are complex societies, whereby every actor can embrace, and adapt, discourses and loyalties ranging from the local to the global scale. In addition, migration processes address needs which, although being structural, are commonly conceived (possibly by migrants themselves) as exceptional or transitional. Thus the answer to this phenomenon consists of multiple interests and strategies that piece together in more or less successful ways, rather than systematic and coherent measures. It is worth mentioning that in the Italian context, the manifest troubles encountered by the central government in implementing its policies is to a great extent due to preexisting conflicts within the autochthonous civil society. Among other consequences, such widespread, deep-rooted institutional gaps have lead to the diffusion of precarious and informal immigration patterns, in which the access to services tends to be non-homogeneous and particularly dependent on local contingencies. In such context it is crucial to investigate the role in the prevention or exacerbation of social tensions of non-State actors – trade unions and third sector as well as criminal groups.

In this perspective, theories of multilevel governance and identity policies on the one hand and of network and social capital on the other hand will be the epistemological starting point of the research.

I intend to reach a better understanding of whether there is an ethnic, civic or legal commitment - of natives as well as of migrant groups - that inform everyday practices and the ideas of legitimacy of migration phenomena. How do different forms of initiatives and policies, shaped on the basis of local conditions, develop into dynamics of integration and marginalization, dominance and resistance with respect of immigration and, to a minor extent, emigration phenomena?

The ethnographically oriented fieldwork will focus on different sites within the Italian territory in the attempt to recognize and evaluate institutional and informal shortcomings and best practices. Positive proceedings include, among others, communal projects of integration, reorganization of public spaces in terms of capacity and intercultural competences, migrant groups successfully meeting economic or social demands. With regards to problematic practices we have, for instance, distorted uses of migrants’ detention or biased and prolonged asylum procedures on the part of the institutions, a fraudulent use of public funding on behalf of non-profit or charity organizations, abuse of migrant workforce and trafficking activities by natives as well as foreigners.

Educational background

Working experience

Languages

Italian: mother tongue
German, English: fluent in speaking, reading, and writing
Chinese: good knowledge
Spanish, French, Japanese, Latin, ancient Greek: basic knowledge

Up