IMMIGRATION IN ITALY By Laura Zanfrini* 1. From a source to a ...

ultimately kept up with a repeated resort to “exceptional” regularization actions. The number ofmigrants who have been “regularized” is so important as to significantly weigh not only upon theresident foreign population volume, but also upon the whole population itself. An overwhelmingmajority of regular migrants who live and work in Italy have been through an irregular approachwith the country and by a more or less long permanence in illegal conditions. Quite often, eventhose who have always been regular migrants succeeded in migrating thanks to the presence of arelative who had passed to legality through an amnesty. This datum alone provides tangibleevidence of the failure of sovereignty, or better, of its central manifestation, which in thecontemporary international juridical paradigm is represented by control on migration flowmovements. The price that the Italian society is going to pay represents a dangerous discredit of theprinciple of legality, with all the consequences that this implies for the social cohesion.3. The evolution of Italian legislationTraditionally an emigration country towards America, Australia and Northern Europe, Italyexperienced a migration turning point between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, that is, during apeculiar stage of the history of international migrations, characterized by the rise of restrictivepolicies, and particularly, by the closing of the traditional Central-North-European destinationareas. The role of historical and political factors in structuring migration flows has been by far lessimportant than in other European countries with an earlier migration tradition. Those migrationflows were in fact “spontaneous”, and migrants began to flow independently of any activerecruiting policy, usually with no links with the colonial past, attracted by the relative facility withwhich they could enter the country and stay despite an irregular status, and by the possibility tomask the real motivations of their permanence, considering Italy’s tourist vocation. Along withoffering many opportunities to include those migrants in shadow economy, this phenomenoncontributed to further increase a widespread irregularity, in terms of persons’ presence and labour,and was destined to weigh for a long time upon integration processes to such an extent as to beidentified as one of the distinctive features of what was later called, by some authors, the“Mediterranean immigration model”. It took several years to make Italy, as well as the other South-European countries, aware of its new role within the international migration system, and an evenlonger time before it recognized the existence of requirements for imported labour, considering thesudden turnabout of its demographic trends. In a situation of overall normative and institutionaldeficit, which characterized Italy’s migration transition, lay and religious associations andorganizations acted as real substitutes for an insufficient and inadequate public intervention action(to such an extent that several scholars talk about a situation of “functional overload” in charityorganizations, which were obliged to make themselves responsible also for tasks that did notconcern them).Juridical vagueness has thus become a basic element in the structure of the relationsbetween immigrants and Italian society. In fact, the first law on immigration dates back to 1986,that is, more than ten years after the “turning point” of 1974 (the year in which, as we have seen, forthe first time the number of incoming foreigners exceeded that of the Italians who emigratedabroad). Law 943/1986, besides establishing an entry and access mechanism to the labour market(which however remained substantially not enforced), granted equal protection to Italian andforeign workers, and acknowledged to the latter a few social rights, including the right to familyreunifications. Broader was the reach of the so-called “Martelli Law” (Law 39/1990), which besidesintroducing a yearly flow planning system, also laid down some regulations concerning foreigners’legal protection, expulsion, asylum, and self-employment.The first organic set of rules came only in 1998, through the passing of the “Napolitano-Turco” Law (Law Decree 286/98), which was also the fruit of the pressures of third-sectorinstitutions and civil society. In countertendency with the juridical frame prevailing in Europe inthose years, this law acknowledged, along with pull factors in the sending countries, also theexistence of attraction elements strictly connected with Italy’s economic requirements for importedLaura Zanfrini, Immigration in Italy, June 30, 2013. 7