Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

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B.’S STORY (INTERVIEW 20)
B. is a forty year-old Algerian citizen, who arrived in Italy in the summer of 1992. He was
escaping from the civil war that was taking place in his home country at that time: “fights [...]
were happening daily at that time in Algeria, [...] people were dying on the streets every day”. He
reached Turin and settled in the neighbourhood of San Salvario, where he has been living for
twenty years. B. entered Italy as an irregular migrant and for his entire twenty years of
residence in Turin he never had a valid passport or residence permit, nor did he ever attempt
to regularise his stay.
B.’s work situation has always been unstable. Being without documents, he could not work
with a regular contract. He used to oscillate between different short-term jobs, periods of
unemployment and street crimes such as theft and drug possession, for which he was
respectively sentenced to one year imprisonment and eight months imprisonment.
Notwithstanding this precarious situation, B. gradually built his private and social life in Turin.
As a matter of fact, he is currently in a de facto relationship with a girl from another EU country
(“C.”). B. describes C. as “my wife” even though they were married in a Muslim religious
ceremony and did not legally register their marriage according to Italian civil law. B. and C.
have a daughter who is two and a half years-old. B. also has a son who is thirteen and was born
from B.’s ex-partner who is an Italian lady. It is not clear whether B. was married to this Italian
lady or living in a de facto relationship. However, the latter option seems the most likely, since
it is clear from B.’s words that he believes that he is not allowed to get legally married in an
Italian civil registry due to his status of irregular migrant. For the very same reason, B. believed
that he could not recognise his children legally. So, although B. is a father to his children and
involved in their lives, both his son and his daughter only have their respective mothers’
surnames and EU nationalities.
B. was the only interviewee who proved to have such strong ties with family members living in
the city of Turin. Indeed, during his first three months of detention, his partner C. and their
baby had visited him regularly. B. has also received a couple of visits from his ex-partner and
their teenage son. From this point of view, B. was much luckier than most of the detainees that
we interviewed because he had been detained in a CIE in the town that he was previously
living in.
Nonetheless, at the time of our interview B. was very upset about how his family was suffering
outside CIE. His partner C. was a caregiver for elderly people, however she lost her job after B.
was taken to CIE. C. could not afford to pay the rent for their flat anymore and consequently
she and their baby were evicted and had to temporarily stay in a cheap hotel.
Whilst living in the hotel, C. was consistently looking for a job but with no positive result.
Unfortunately, the sum that C. owed for their accommodation was increasing and the hotel
owner started to put strong pressure on C. who did not have any money at all. Given this
situation, lately C. has stopped coming to CIE regularly to visit B. Moreover, she does not have
telephone credit to call him: “I have too many worries: my family outside, with no money, and my
two-year-old daughter […] my wife is suffering and she needs money to pay the owner of the hotel.
Today, at midday my daughter could not eat properly [due to money problems]. Only God knows”.
According to B., this is the third time that he has been in Turin’s CIE because he was detained
for twenty-one days in 2006 or 2007 and then for two months in 2008 or 2009. On both prior
occasions, B. was released from the centre with an order to leave the country that he obviously
did not comply with.
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