Chronicles of ordinary racism 2011 - Cronache di ordinario razzismo

SECTION 2
REGULATIONS AND CASE‐LAW
Emergency as the norm.
Institutionalized racism in the legislation on immigration from 2008
onwards. Andrea Callaioli
1. Does safety have a nationality
Over the years, Italian legislation on immigration has become progressively more
severe and unyielding, its detachment from constitutional values growing more
marked, with excessive enforcement of emergency decrees and use of “rule of law” as a
deterrent against immigration. Furthermore, this stricter legislation has not only had an
effect on foreign citizens hailing from tertiary countries, but also on those from the EU,
often in open contrast with European community legislation. 169 The key idea behind
this tendency has been the equating of migration issues with matters of public safety,
mainly dealt with by means of emergency procedures. In other words, all the laws
passed in this field during the 2008‐2011 period were advanced not so much in view of
adapting Italian legislation to European directives or of solving, with adequate
planning, the problems encountered during this time; instead, they were used as
instruments that would help guarantee public safety 170 and, in particular, “the safety of
Italian citizens, compromised by foreigners” understood as separate, indeed, totally
opposed to, that of all the individuals who inhabit the country, regardless of their
citizenship or the stability of their condition. With these aims in mind, the methods
used have been, among others, a ban on marriage for unauthorized immigrants, limited
opportunities for stable integration for underage foreigners and restrictions applied to
family reunification. These laws clearly have little to do with public safety. It seems
obvious that the latter should represent a social value which may be applied in general
to the civic cohabitation of all human beings rather than a negative value built
exclusively on ones personal predicament as a foreigner. In other words, while
recognizing the legitimacy of our Republic’s concern with controlling immigration, it is
necessary to bear in mind that the safety of a community, in both its effective and its
perceived aspects, cannot be enforced by means of legislation that proposes penalties
against illegal immigrants as the main instruments in the fight to keep the migratory
influx under control; on the contrary it should be done by instating a more realistic
regulation of the influx, by introducing a standard procedure in which foreigners may
shed their illegal status and by backing measures that favour effective social integration.
The adjustments made to the Consolidated Law on Immigration since 2002 (namely
the 189/2002 Law, better known as the Bossi‐Fini) had, in most instances, as a goal, or at
least an outcome, the introduction of more rigid measures for (or, depending on how
169 Aside from the content of the 2008-2009 safety package, the most important decree is n. 32/2008, too lengthy to
be expounded here.
170 The names themselves of the laws better known under the heading ‘safety package’ are significant: 2008 (Urgent
measures in the field of public safety); 2009 (Rules in the field of public safety)
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