Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXII, 2020, 1, pp. 293-299, 2020
The article discusses the relationship between vulnerability, sensory perceptions and law in ligh... more The article discusses the relationship between vulnerability, sensory perceptions and law in light of the debates on critical legal studies and identity politics. The epistemological question raised by a philosophy of vulnerability calls for law to 'stay with the trouble' of discriminatory social practices rather than to search merely for a resolution.
Etikk i praksis. Nord J Appl Ethics (2020), 14(2), 71–88, 2020
The article considers the changes that have affected European border regimes of migration control... more The article considers the changes that have affected European border regimes of migration control as a test case for discussing arbitrariness. The argument highlights the limited capacity of notions of arbitrariness-defined as a departure from the rule of law-to capture the ongoing conflict at the borders of Europe and instead brings the ambivalent meaning of arbitrariness to the fore. By comparing Santi Romano's classical theory of legal pluralism with recent analyses of legal globalization processes, arbitrariness emerges either as an authoritative attempt to impose a different order on society or as a reaction to acts of resistance. In both cases, arbitrariness forcefully blurs the limits between the ordered and unordered, indicating the paradoxical impossibility of excluding the law's outside from the legal order. On these premises, the article advocates the importance of reframing the demand for open borders as a call for freedom of those who challenge the pragmatic order of migration regimes. Indeed, arbitrariness is necessarily limited when the legal order recognizes, to an extent, the agency and the claims of subjectivities that resist the dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion.
The South Atlantic Quarterly 119:1, January 2020, 2020
On March 18, 2019, the Italian-flagged boat Mare Jonio, operated by the platform of activists Med... more On March 18, 2019, the Italian-flagged boat Mare Jonio, operated by the platform of activists Mediterranea, rescued forty-nine migrants forty-two miles off the Libyan coast and sailed toward Lampedusa, Italy. The very evening, the Minister of Home Affairs, Matteo Salvini, issued a directive with the aim to restrict the entrance of rescue boats in Italian territorial waters. 1 The directive does not introduce any specific prohibition but, rather, provides an interpretation of international conventions and national legislation according to which the passage of a rescue boat in territorial waters is deemed to be in conflict with national security as it aims to bring illegal migrants into national territory. Additionally, it recommends that The Italian Coast Guard strictly follow the directive's interpretation in order to prevent the illegal entry of migrants into domestic territory. The next day, while approaching the Italian coast, the Mare Jonio's captain disobeyed the order issued over the radio by the Coast Guard to stop the engine at the limit of the territorial waters of Lampedusa because he considered that doing so could endanger the passengers. As a consequence, after an inspection by the Italian police, on March 19, the boat was seized and the forty-nine migrants were disembarked, while the captain and the head of mission were put under investigation for the charge of migrant smuggling. 2 This episode came after a series of disembarkation crises which have taken place in the Mediterranean from the summer of 2018 and which have involved boats belonging to humanitarian organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, Sea Watch and Sea Eye, as well as a the Diciotti ship belonging to the Italian Navy.
The article reflects on the Italian experience of the Non Una di Meno (No One Less) feminist move... more The article reflects on the Italian experience of the Non Una di Meno (No One Less) feminist movement and the interconnection between the struggle against patriarchal violence and the struggle for the freedom of movement of migrants. By starting from the concrete and everyday battles of migrant women for the recognition of their freedom and their own paths to autonomy, the feminist movement has tried to construct a common battle against violence across borders, without hiding the ambivalences and difficulties that this entails. At the same time, the movement has attempted to develop a feminist perspective on migration that moves beyond merely considering the specificity of the condition of women within migration.
By drawing on the Italian case, this article critically discusses the use of crisis as a tool of ... more By drawing on the Italian case, this article critically discusses the use of crisis as a tool of knowledge and expertise production. In recent years, the theme of crisis has played a key role in shifting migration management towards a humanitarian agenda based on the premise that migration today to Europe is comprised of forced mass movement. The article considers the extent to which migrants’ subjectivities call into question the knowledge that has been produced during the current era. It also reflects on the ways in which gender and race provide fundamental insights for a better understanding of the evolution of migration management within the context of crisis.
During the summer of 2015, 69 Nigerian migrant women intercepted at sea were transferred from Sic... more During the summer of 2015, 69 Nigerian migrant women intercepted at sea were transferred from Sicily to the detention centre of Rome-Ponte Galeria in view of being deported from Rome-Fiumicino airport. A media campaign denounced the fact that the women were potential victims of trafficking, but only a few were admitted for protection status by Italian authorities while, on 17 September, twenty were forcefully repatriated to Lagos. By drawing on this case, the article will critically discuss the recent gendering of the Italian southern border as well as practices of reclaiming political subjectivity which deconstruct the discursive and normative criteria that hierarchize people's claims to transnational mobility.
Drawing on research on detention decisions at the political, administrative and judicial level, t... more Drawing on research on detention decisions at the political, administrative and judicial level, the article discusses the administrative detention of migrants through the lens of jurisdiction. Through considering the limits of power and the criteria that assigns jurisdictional competence, this perspective draws attention to the processual and polycentric dimension of power, as well as the role that law and jurisdiction play in legitimising administrative detention. As such, administrative detention provides an opportunity to scrutinize both the processes that invest the legal order and the adjustments implemented when a deficit occurs at different levels of the decision chain.
The feminist critique of the alleged neutrality of asylum law has a long established tradition, y... more The feminist critique of the alleged neutrality of asylum law has a long established tradition, yet the issue of international protection in a gender perspective is still marginal among Italian legal scholars. The article addresses the issue by contextualising recent changes in legislation within international debates and judicial developments at national level. By drawing on a case study based on the asylum procedures of 56 Nigerian women, the article also discusses how the legal discourse embodies and reproduces gendered hierarchies.
This chapter examines migrant labor in the agricultural sector of Southern Italy as a lens throug... more This chapter examines migrant labor in the agricultural sector of Southern Italy as a lens through which to interrogate the impact of broader political, institutional, and economic changes upon migration and citizenship. The upheavals in North Africa during 2011, coupled with the severe financial crisis of Southern Europe, have deeply reshaped the Euro–Mediterranean border area. Drawing on the tools of postcolonial theory, this chapter combines different perspectives and levels of analysis to critically conceptualize these transformations, focusing in particular on Southern Italy. First, this chapter addresses the rhetorical frames that have been used in public discourse in the last decade to portray migrants who work in agriculture in the Italian Mezzogiorno as victims of slavery, driven by desperation and lacking in agency. This image reaffirms an almost feudal situation that feeds into stereotypes about the backward nature of southern Italian society. While this picture might be considered a legacy of the center/periphery dichotomy around which Italy has always been represented, it also tends to leave out the key players in the global food production chain, such as the local agro–business or processing industry. Second, the chapter considers the European management of migration flows across the Mediterranean Sea with the aim of demonstrating the consequences that border regimes have had on the Italian South. Finally, the perspectives of the first two sections are integrated to illustrate how the increasing “humanitarian” management of migration tends to overshadow the centrality of labor relations while at the same time producing what we term the “refugeeization” of the workforce.
Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXII, 2020, 1, pp. 293-299, 2020
The article discusses the relationship between vulnerability, sensory perceptions and law in ligh... more The article discusses the relationship between vulnerability, sensory perceptions and law in light of the debates on critical legal studies and identity politics. The epistemological question raised by a philosophy of vulnerability calls for law to 'stay with the trouble' of discriminatory social practices rather than to search merely for a resolution.
Etikk i praksis. Nord J Appl Ethics (2020), 14(2), 71–88, 2020
The article considers the changes that have affected European border regimes of migration control... more The article considers the changes that have affected European border regimes of migration control as a test case for discussing arbitrariness. The argument highlights the limited capacity of notions of arbitrariness-defined as a departure from the rule of law-to capture the ongoing conflict at the borders of Europe and instead brings the ambivalent meaning of arbitrariness to the fore. By comparing Santi Romano's classical theory of legal pluralism with recent analyses of legal globalization processes, arbitrariness emerges either as an authoritative attempt to impose a different order on society or as a reaction to acts of resistance. In both cases, arbitrariness forcefully blurs the limits between the ordered and unordered, indicating the paradoxical impossibility of excluding the law's outside from the legal order. On these premises, the article advocates the importance of reframing the demand for open borders as a call for freedom of those who challenge the pragmatic order of migration regimes. Indeed, arbitrariness is necessarily limited when the legal order recognizes, to an extent, the agency and the claims of subjectivities that resist the dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion.
The South Atlantic Quarterly 119:1, January 2020, 2020
On March 18, 2019, the Italian-flagged boat Mare Jonio, operated by the platform of activists Med... more On March 18, 2019, the Italian-flagged boat Mare Jonio, operated by the platform of activists Mediterranea, rescued forty-nine migrants forty-two miles off the Libyan coast and sailed toward Lampedusa, Italy. The very evening, the Minister of Home Affairs, Matteo Salvini, issued a directive with the aim to restrict the entrance of rescue boats in Italian territorial waters. 1 The directive does not introduce any specific prohibition but, rather, provides an interpretation of international conventions and national legislation according to which the passage of a rescue boat in territorial waters is deemed to be in conflict with national security as it aims to bring illegal migrants into national territory. Additionally, it recommends that The Italian Coast Guard strictly follow the directive's interpretation in order to prevent the illegal entry of migrants into domestic territory. The next day, while approaching the Italian coast, the Mare Jonio's captain disobeyed the order issued over the radio by the Coast Guard to stop the engine at the limit of the territorial waters of Lampedusa because he considered that doing so could endanger the passengers. As a consequence, after an inspection by the Italian police, on March 19, the boat was seized and the forty-nine migrants were disembarked, while the captain and the head of mission were put under investigation for the charge of migrant smuggling. 2 This episode came after a series of disembarkation crises which have taken place in the Mediterranean from the summer of 2018 and which have involved boats belonging to humanitarian organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, Sea Watch and Sea Eye, as well as a the Diciotti ship belonging to the Italian Navy.
The article reflects on the Italian experience of the Non Una di Meno (No One Less) feminist move... more The article reflects on the Italian experience of the Non Una di Meno (No One Less) feminist movement and the interconnection between the struggle against patriarchal violence and the struggle for the freedom of movement of migrants. By starting from the concrete and everyday battles of migrant women for the recognition of their freedom and their own paths to autonomy, the feminist movement has tried to construct a common battle against violence across borders, without hiding the ambivalences and difficulties that this entails. At the same time, the movement has attempted to develop a feminist perspective on migration that moves beyond merely considering the specificity of the condition of women within migration.
By drawing on the Italian case, this article critically discusses the use of crisis as a tool of ... more By drawing on the Italian case, this article critically discusses the use of crisis as a tool of knowledge and expertise production. In recent years, the theme of crisis has played a key role in shifting migration management towards a humanitarian agenda based on the premise that migration today to Europe is comprised of forced mass movement. The article considers the extent to which migrants’ subjectivities call into question the knowledge that has been produced during the current era. It also reflects on the ways in which gender and race provide fundamental insights for a better understanding of the evolution of migration management within the context of crisis.
During the summer of 2015, 69 Nigerian migrant women intercepted at sea were transferred from Sic... more During the summer of 2015, 69 Nigerian migrant women intercepted at sea were transferred from Sicily to the detention centre of Rome-Ponte Galeria in view of being deported from Rome-Fiumicino airport. A media campaign denounced the fact that the women were potential victims of trafficking, but only a few were admitted for protection status by Italian authorities while, on 17 September, twenty were forcefully repatriated to Lagos. By drawing on this case, the article will critically discuss the recent gendering of the Italian southern border as well as practices of reclaiming political subjectivity which deconstruct the discursive and normative criteria that hierarchize people's claims to transnational mobility.
Drawing on research on detention decisions at the political, administrative and judicial level, t... more Drawing on research on detention decisions at the political, administrative and judicial level, the article discusses the administrative detention of migrants through the lens of jurisdiction. Through considering the limits of power and the criteria that assigns jurisdictional competence, this perspective draws attention to the processual and polycentric dimension of power, as well as the role that law and jurisdiction play in legitimising administrative detention. As such, administrative detention provides an opportunity to scrutinize both the processes that invest the legal order and the adjustments implemented when a deficit occurs at different levels of the decision chain.
The feminist critique of the alleged neutrality of asylum law has a long established tradition, y... more The feminist critique of the alleged neutrality of asylum law has a long established tradition, yet the issue of international protection in a gender perspective is still marginal among Italian legal scholars. The article addresses the issue by contextualising recent changes in legislation within international debates and judicial developments at national level. By drawing on a case study based on the asylum procedures of 56 Nigerian women, the article also discusses how the legal discourse embodies and reproduces gendered hierarchies.
This chapter examines migrant labor in the agricultural sector of Southern Italy as a lens throug... more This chapter examines migrant labor in the agricultural sector of Southern Italy as a lens through which to interrogate the impact of broader political, institutional, and economic changes upon migration and citizenship. The upheavals in North Africa during 2011, coupled with the severe financial crisis of Southern Europe, have deeply reshaped the Euro–Mediterranean border area. Drawing on the tools of postcolonial theory, this chapter combines different perspectives and levels of analysis to critically conceptualize these transformations, focusing in particular on Southern Italy. First, this chapter addresses the rhetorical frames that have been used in public discourse in the last decade to portray migrants who work in agriculture in the Italian Mezzogiorno as victims of slavery, driven by desperation and lacking in agency. This image reaffirms an almost feudal situation that feeds into stereotypes about the backward nature of southern Italian society. While this picture might be considered a legacy of the center/periphery dichotomy around which Italy has always been represented, it also tends to leave out the key players in the global food production chain, such as the local agro–business or processing industry. Second, the chapter considers the European management of migration flows across the Mediterranean Sea with the aim of demonstrating the consequences that border regimes have had on the Italian South. Finally, the perspectives of the first two sections are integrated to illustrate how the increasing “humanitarian” management of migration tends to overshadow the centrality of labor relations while at the same time producing what we term the “refugeeization” of the workforce.
This paper is based on preliminary findings from the monitoring of two months of decisions of the... more This paper is based on preliminary findings from the monitoring of two months of decisions of the Justice of the Peace (JP) in migration matters in Italy. The research raises a range of critical issues on the consistency of JPs' judgments with the European legal framework and the Constitutional limits as defined by national higher jurisdictions. JPs were introduced into the Italian judicial system in 1991 as non-professional judges recruited on the basis of their curricula and honourableness. Since 2004 they have been designated the competent authority in judicial procedures regarding the expulsion and detention of migrants. The paper questions whether and to what extent a specific conception of justice emerges from JPs' activities and decisions when the rights "of others" are at stake.
Il titolo del regolamento interno della Croce Rossa Italiana (CRI) le definisce «strutture di acc... more Il titolo del regolamento interno della Croce Rossa Italiana (CRI) le definisce «strutture di accoglienza dei cittadini migranti stagionali». A leggerlo senza conoscerne il contesto, si potrebbe pensare a una sorta di colonie estive destinate a cittadini privilegiati che trascorrono parte dell'anno nella residenza di città e con la bella stagione si traferiscono al mare o in campagna, magari per godersi i frutti e il meritato riposo di una vita di lavoro. Basta però scorrere qualche riga per rendersi conto che i «cittadini migranti stagionali» non sono altri che i «lavoratori stagionali extracomunitari», che ogni anno sono impiegati nella raccolta del pomodoro nei comuni di Venosa e di Palazzo San Gervasio. L'involontaria ironia del titolo del regolamento rivela un'incontestabile verità: ormai da alcuni anni, una quota della manodopera impiegata nella zona è composta da lavoratori originari dell'Africa sub-sahariana che si spostano seguendo il ciclo delle raccolte, da Cassibile, a Rosarno, a Nardò, a Foggia, alla Basilicata. Un conto è tuttavia riconoscere l'estrema mobilità dei lavoratori – che, in questo senso, sono certo «migranti stagionali» – un altro è rispondere alle loro richieste alloggiative sovrapponendo ipocritamente mobilità ed emergenzialità, in una confusione di piani che delega a strumenti di carattere umanitario-emergenziale esigenze che dovrebbero invece essere affrontate con politiche sociali e abitative. I due centri di Venosa e Palazzo San Gervasio rappresentano, al momento, un'esperienza ancora isolata. Pensati dalla cosiddetta task-force della Regione Basilicata per risolvere il problema dei ghetti, sulla scia di quanto proposto anche dalla Regione Puglia (dove strutture analoghe sono rimaste vuote), si tratta di campi destinati ai lavoratori, ma realizzati sul modello di campi profughi. A confermarlo, durante un'intervista realizzata dall'Università Roma TRE, è lo stesso volontario della CRI responsabile delle strutture, che ha maturato la sua esperienza nella gestione di un CARA durante l'emergenza nord-Africa del 2011, nonché nella gestione dell'emergenza dopo il terremoto in Abruzzo. Come specifica l'operatore, a differenza di quanto accade nei centri per richiedenti asilo, l'ospitalità nella struttura è demandata all'adesione del tutto volontaria dei lavoratori, e questo comporta altresì che «chi non lavora non mangia», dal momento che nessun servizio ulteriore è assicurato dalla CRI, neppure la distribuzione dei pasti. Ai migranti è assicurata la possibilità di utilizzare alcuni punti cottura (inizialmente erano garantiti 11 fornelli elettrici, il cui numero si è progressivamente ridotto a 4 per mancanza di manutenzione), oltre all'utilizzo dei servizi igienici (attualmente 4 bagni e 4 docce per i 70 lavoratori alloggiati nel centro di Venosa). Ciò che, a detta dell'operatore, i migranti chiedono con più insistenza sono però i materassi, poiché i posti letto sono attrezzati solo con brandine da campeggio: richiesta che tuttavia non viene soddisfatta per ragioni legate alla sicurezza del campo. D'altro canto, è noto che le rivolte nei CIE e nei CARA prendono quasi
Le reti del valore: Migrazioni, produzione e governo della crisi, 2017
Capitolo nel libro "Le Reti del Valore: Migrazioni, Produzione e Governo della Crisi" a cura di S... more Capitolo nel libro "Le Reti del Valore: Migrazioni, Produzione e Governo della Crisi" a cura di Sandro Chignola e Devi Sacchetto
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Papers by Enrica Rigo
JPs were introduced into the Italian judicial system in 1991 as non-professional judges recruited on the basis of their curricula and honourableness. Since 2004 they have been designated the competent authority in judicial procedures regarding the expulsion and detention of migrants. The paper questions whether and to what extent a specific conception of justice emerges from JPs' activities and decisions when the rights "of others" are at stake.