Convenors
Francesca Vianello, University of Padova
francesca.vianello@unipd.it
Omid Firouzi Tabar, University of Padova
omid.firouzitabar@unipd.it
Ten years after the so-called «refugee crisis», and in the wake of the COVID pandemic (Stierl, Dadusc, 2021; Fabini, Firouzi Tabar, 2023), the intertwining of humanitarian and repressive approaches to migration policy in European countries such as Italy, Germany, France and Greece seems to have undergone a sort of «securitarian squeeze» (Heller, Pezzani, Stierl, 2023). This new direction does not simply entail the exclusion of the migrant from the so-called «Fortress Europe», but seems, on the contrary, to configure and to privilege new lines of differential and selective inclusion (Mezzadra, Neilson, 2013; Cutitta, 2016).
Recent policies and legislative solutions appear to increasingly focus on controlling the mobility and lives of migrants. The recrudescence of the security approach to migration policies has included: the tightening of sanctions on facilitating illegal immigration and the consequent criminalization of smuggling; the criminalization of NGOs and solidarity groups both at sea and on land; and the provision of new crimes for people who organize or participate in protests in prisons, administrative detention centers and reception centers.
An increasingly higher degree of the deprivation of liberty has become a central element of the border apparatus (Campesi, Fabini, 2020). This trend materializes with the expansion and introduction of new forms of administrative detention (including externalized ones) and through the introduction of new reception models which, on the border between criminal, administrative and informal/humanitarian control, produce dynamics of radical segregation or semi-detention.
In this new scenario, empirical research is important, on the one hand, to better understand the violations of rights and the new forms and consequences of discrimination, criminalization and marginalization suffered by the migrant population and, on the other, to shed light on the counter-conducts and on the resistance implemented by migrants themselves (Hess, Kasparek, 2017; De Genova et al., 2018).
Ethnographic research, in particular, is fundamental to investigate these two dimensions. For example, ethnography offers a tool for exploring the subjectivities kept on the margins of the law, such as migrants who inhabit self-organised settlements and informal living contexts in the «interstices» of the countryside and cities (Ambrosini, Fontanari, 2018). It also enables us to reconstruct the life trajectories of numerous subjects who live in different contexts of imprisonment and detention.
We invite contributions that address, through ethnographic inquiry, the themes outlined above, with reference to the legal culture of institutional actors, to the relationship between «law in books» and «law in action», and to the power effects and social implications of policies upon the biographical trajectories of migrants, their resistance and counter-conduct.
Open questions
- How is the relationship between «humanitarianism» and «securitarianism» currently configured in the governance of migration?
- How can ethnography and other qualitative methods illuminate the role played by criminal law and administrative law in shaping recent migration policies in Italy and elsewhere?
- How can qualitative methods investigate the emerging forms of deprivation of liberty for refugees and asylum seekers, and the impact they have on their lives?
- How can qualitative methods address the interaction between new migration and border regulations, their practical application by institutional actors, new forms of criminalization and the broader legal context?
- How can qualitative methods address and illuminate the forms of individual and collective resistance among migrants in this new context, and the ways in which anti-racist and solidarity organizations are adapting to these challenges?
Keywords
bordering; counter-conduct; securitarian policies; confinement; detention; social exclusion; racialization.
Sub-disciplines or cross-disciplinary areas of concern
sociology of crime; sociology of migration; critical border studies; vorder criminology; antropology of migration; convict criminology; sociology of prison.
References
Campesi, G., Fabini G.
2020 «Immigration Detention as Social Defence: Policing “Dangerous Mobility” in Italy», in Theoretical Criminology, 24, 1, pp. 50–70.
Cutitta, P.
2016 «Mandatory Integration Measures and Differential Inclusion: The Italian Case», in Journal of International Migration and Integration, 17, 1, pp. 289–302.
De Genova, N., Garelli G., Tazzioli M.
2018 «Autonomy of Asylum? The Autonomy of Migration Undoing the Refugees Crisis Script», in The South Atlantic Quarterly, 117, 2, pp. 239–265.
Fabini, G., Firouzi Tabar O., Vianello F.
2019 Lungo i confini dell’accoglienza. Migranti e territori tra resistenze e dispositivi di controllo. Rome: Manifestolibri.
Fabini, G., Firouzi Tabar O.
2023 «Governing Immobility in the Covid-19 Crisis in Italy: Non-conforming Behaviour of Migrants Confronting the New Old Processes of Othering», in Critical Criminology, 31, pp. 307–325.
Fontanari, E., Ambrosini M.
2018 «Into the Interstices: Everyday Practices of Refugees and their Supporters in Europe’s Migration “Crisis”», in Sociology, 52, 3, pp. 587–603.
Mezzadra, S., Neilson B.
2013 Border as method, or the multiplication of labour. Durham, Duke University Press.
Heller, C., Pezzani L., Stierl M.
2023 «Migration: Security and Humanitarianism across the Mediterranean Border», in Peters, K. et al. (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space, pp. 247–260. Abingdon: Routledge.
Hess, S., Kasparek B.
2017 «Under Control? Or Border (as) Conflict: Reflections on the European Border Regime», in Social Inclusion, 5, 3, pp. 58–68.
Stierl, M., Dadusc D.
2022 «The “Covid excuse”: EUropean border violence in the Mediterranean Sea», in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45, 8, pp. 1453–1474.
Convenors’ bios
Francesca Vianello, PhD, Associate professor in Sociology of Law and Deviance at the University of Padua, Italy; Professor in Sociology of Prison Life; Director of the Master program in Critical criminology and social security, University of Padua and University of Bologna. Her studies and research focus on prison conditions and penal policies, sociology of prison and convict criminology.
Omid Firouzi Tabar holds a PhD in sociology of cultural phenomena and normative processes. He is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Padua and didactic coordinator of the Master in «Critical Criminology and Social Security» at the same university. His studies and research focus on new forms of borders and migratory movements governance, with particular attention to new forms of differential inclusion, the role represented by law, and the multiple counter-conducts and forms of resistance enacted by migrants. Specifically, he is working, especially through ethnographic research, on the evolutions of asylum law and the organization of the reception system of refugees and asylum seekers.