- 1 This article was written jointly by the authors. Emanuela Dal Zotto and Chiara Marchetti wrote the (...)
1When the Geneva Convention was adopted in 1951, the consensus view was that the refugee issue would be resolved gradually after the end of World War II. Contrary to this assumption, since the 1960s, situations leading to forced migration have multiplied throughout the world, and today, this phenomenon affects more than 100 million people1.
2At the same time, in Europe, both at the European level and in individual states, in the context of increasingly restrictive immigration policies, there have been a proliferation of discourses against the reception of asylum seekers and of measures that have both made it more difficult for those entitled to international protection to be recognized and undermined this right in substance.
3In Italy, forced migration is not a recent phenomenon, but since 2011 and the response to the arrivals following the Arab Spring that the issues of reception and asylum have entered the public discourse in a significant way, occupying a large space in politics, the media and civil society. Although the events of 2011 provided an important opportunity to rethink reception in Italy, the following years have seen the prevalence of rhetoric of closure and the sabotage of a system that, if expanded and improved, could have led to the undermining of the framing and management of protection in terms of emergency.
4The constant invocation of the categories of crisis and emergency (Calhoun, 2004; Dal Zotto, 2014), although often unsupported by data, reinforces the welding between nationalist and populist rhetoric (Marchetti, 2023) and the scenario in which the asylum system is immersed, reproducing and amplifying the protectionist and identity-based arguments that pervade public discourse. In the opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’, migrants – especially those arriving by sea – are no longer refugees in need of protection, but ‘invaders’ and ‘undeserving subjects’ (Marchetti, 2020a) that legitimize the declaration of a state of emergency (a rhetorical but also normative tool that, not coincidentally, was used again in 2023 after the Cutro shipwreck, just off the coast of Calabria in the southern Italy). The victims – of shipwrecks, of traffickers, of persecutory regimes in countries of origin and transit – are suddenly transformed into threats to be rejected, detained, delegitimized socially and politically, as can also be seen from a strictly regulatory and administrative point of view through the succession of measures that have dotted the last year. In this context, any movement, any action, any discourse that puts freedom of movement and the right to self-determination back at the centre is explicitly opposed, and those who propose and defend it suffer a process of criminalization similar to that suffered by migrants, effectively entering the same polarized field as the ‘enemy’.
5In this scenario, we are witnessing a «darkness of hospitality» at the local level, but at the same time the emergence of innovative experiences based on community and intercultural relations, that move in the opposite direction to the dominant one, in the operational and discursive interstices that are still practicable and deployed on the battlefield (Campomori, Ambrosini, 2020). This contribution proposes to critically explore and investigate some of these experiences, which are not so much in the phase of arrival, initial reception and access to procedures of asylum seekers/refugees, but rather in the subsequent phases more related to settlement, integration and citizenship pathways. Through the theoretical lens of social innovation (which makes it possible to study the transformative dimension of practices, to the extent that bottom-up initiatives manage to merge with the mechanisms of multi-level governance), we will analyse realities such as the Inclusive Universities, which are widespread in many Italian universities, and the Community Matching program, which focuses on social integration processes and the construction of meaningful intercultural ties between Italians and refugees. The ultimate aim of the proposed analysis is to grasp, in the interaction of these practices with the context characterized by the new faces of obscurantism, the signs of possible new forms (and scenarios) of citizenship, not intended in its formal aspects, nor as the outcome of a reception and integration process, but as the basis of a broad set of rights, the substance of asylum (Ager, Strang, 2008).
6This article is structured as follows: in the first section, within the theoretical framework of forced migration studies, we trace the evolution of the phenomenon and the category of refugee from the Geneva Convention to the present day; in the second section, we outline the rhetoric of closure policies that characterizes Europe and Italy. The aim of these first two sections is to highlight the shadows that have cast over the right to asylum and to provide useful elements for contextualizing the case studies described in the third section, where we describe the empirically observed experiences of Community Matching and Inclusive University within the «battlefield» of reception and integration. In the fourth and final section, we offer reflections on the innovativeness and transformative scope of the two initiatives.
7The mass movement of refugees, as well as the intervention of states «to define and control them» (Sassen, 1999), affected Europe in the first half of the 20th century, as a consequence of the rise of nation states and the two World Wars that turn Europe into a battleground. At the end of the Second World War – when there were an estimated 40 million displaced persons – the international community agreed on the need for a legal definition of a refugee capable of guaranteeing the right to reception and protection and this led, in 1951, to the adoption of the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, known as the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention, before the 1967 New York Protocol broadened its scope, applied only to events that had taken place in Europe before 1951: these spatial and temporal limitations were the result of the conviction that similar horrors could never be repeated and that the refugee phenomenon would come to an end.
- 2 Translation of the authors.
8The following decades betrayed this expectation with the division of the world forming into two opposing blocs, decolonization, the creation of new borders and the alteration of existing ones. And we have seen the refugee phenomenon reproduce itself outside Europe, especially in Africa and Asia, and take on an «incontrovertibly global» character (Malkki, 1995): the root causes of forced migration are to be sought in the system of global inequalities (Castles, 2003), just as the trajectories of involuntary movements have become global. However, the process of globalization has not affected protection, which has remained the prerogative of individual states, which «for various reasons of political expediency, whether internal or international, adopt more or less broad, more or less strict definitions»2 (Marchetti, 2006, 35). While the labels (Zetter, 1991) defining the different situations of forced migration and the – increasingly weak – forms of protection associated with them have multiplied, the refugee status as conceived (and protected) by the Geneva Convention has become residual, making the right to asylum a privilege for the few (Zetter, 2007).
9From 1951 to the present day, when the highest number of forced migrants ever recorded (108.4 million in 2022) will be documented3, social representations of the phenomenon have undergone a transformation in parallel with the evolution of the refugee regime. Exiles, once regarded as figures of political significance, have been superseded by a more victimized perspective, with migrants often portrayed as exploiters of the reception systems and, ultimately, as threats to the physical, economic and cultural integrity of their host societies. This latter theme, which has gained traction in nationalist and populist rhetoric, has evolved in parallel with the endeavors of Western nations since the 1970s to restrict migrants’ entry. The enforcement of border control, initially motivated by economic reasons, has ultimately impacted those who moved and still move in search of protection, often compelling them to undertake irregular migratory journeys (Ciabarri, 2020).
10In the public discourse, the term ‘illegal immigrants’ is frequently used, along with the images and numbers that are commonly cited in the media’s portrayal of migration. The term is often used to refer to a huge group of people. This makes it easy to believe myths, like the idea that the invasion, and feelings, such as fear and hatred for an enemy who is seen as responsible for various reasons for insecurity and discomfort, from the spread of disease, crime, terrorism to competition for work and the welfare state (Musarò, Parmigiani, 2022).
11Whether they are the intended victims or the people who make money from humanitarian action (profiteers), forced migrants are described as one of the great emergencies of our time (Triandafyllidou, 2018). Applying the emergency frame to forced migration poses limitations, both cognitive and organizational (Goffman, 1974). Any phenomenon classified as an emergency is seen as sudden and unexpected in the reality in which it occurs, which obscures the underlying causes (which may instead be distant in time and space) and make it difficult to attribute responsibility. In the case of refugees, this approach disregards the underlying global inequalities that drive these movements, while also deflecting attention from the role of border closure policies in exacerbating pressure on the borders of the Global North. From an organizational perspective, utilizing the emergency framework exerts significant influence on both the normative framework and the policies and practices, where the criteria of exceptionalism and urgency take over respectively. The emphasis on the here and now hinders the planning of reception processes that support asylum seekers upon the granting of protection and the becoming part of the communities in which they live.
12Finally, the emergency frame applied to forced migration is characterized by an ambivalent nature (Calabrò, 1997), combining a humanitarian and a securitarian dimension. Those in position of governance may, depending on the circumstances, choose to emphasize one aspect over the other in order to garner consensus around their actions. This dynamic gives rise to policies (and practices) that are also ambivalent in nature, whereby the concepts of reception and control, the right to protection and criminalization become intertwined at all levels of governance.
13The evolution of Europe’s migration policies, from the signing of the Schengen Treaty to the present day, serves as an example illustrating of how the gradual restriction of migrants’ access to the European continent has progressively shaped the mobility, recognition and enjoyment of the rights of asylum seekers and refugees at the borders and within the Union. The activities of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (established in 2004), and agreements with third countries (such as the one with Turkey in 2016) are some of the tools with which the EU has fueled the process of securitization of its space (Campesi, 2015), making the act of migrating increasingly dangerous and costly and migrants, pushed into clandestinely, and forced criminality.
- 4 The new Pact on Migration and Asylum was adopted on 10 April 2024. The Pact overcomes the Dublin Re (...)
14In the context of asylum, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union established the foundations for a unified policy that aligns with the principles set out in the Geneva Convention and its protocol. Despite the establishment of the Common European Asylum System in 1999 and the issuance and subsequent updating of three directives pertaining to qualification, reception and procedures between 2001 and 2013, the rates of recognition of protection and reception measures for applicants and holders exhibit significant variation across different member states of the Union. The Dublin Regulation, a cornerstone of the European Union’s Migration and Asylum policies, has been instrumental in the governance of the European Unions’ policies until the advent of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum4. Entered into law in 1997, the Regulation stipulates that the country of entry into Europe is responsible for the reception of asylum seekers. The objective of this approach is to prevent the phenomenon of ‘asylum shopping’ (Moore, 2013), whereby individuals seek asylum in multiple countries within the European Union. The Dublin Regulation effectively allocates the responsibility for receiving and granting protection to the countries that are geographically closest to the European Union’s external borders where illegal migration is most prevalent. In this study, we draw upon the seminal works of Brekke and Brochmann (2015), for a comprehensive analysis of the operational dynamics and ramifications of the Dublin system: our primary focus herein is its pivotal role in shaping one of the most salient anti-immigration arguments within the context of nationalist rhetoric. The theme of the Union’s inability to distribute “burden” fairly between member States (because asylum seekers and refugees are regarded as a burden) is employed by leaders who advocate for sovereign control of their borders and who fuel anti-immigration and anti-asylum-seeker sentiments within their own countries (Basile, Olmastroni, 2020). A notable illustration of this phenomenon is the stance adopted by the Visegrad Group States, which in 2015, during the so-called ‘European refugee crisis’, opposed the relocation of migrants arriving via the Mediterranean. In Hungary, Prime Minister Orbán articulated a discourse emphasizing the imperative to safeguard borders against the purported identity threat posed by Muslim refugees arriving via the Balkan route (Mendelski, 2019). In pursuit of this objective, he initiated the construction of a border wall with Serbia and Croatia.
- 5 SPRAR, now known as SAI (Reception and Integration System), consists of a network to which local au (...)
15In Italy, the issue of reception rose to prominence in public discourse and the political agenda in 2011. The utilization of an emergency frame that year facilitated the depiction of migrants arriving from the North Africa, migrating away from the Arab Springs, and from Libya in particular, as asylum seekers and their subsequent distribution throughout the national territory within a system created ad hoc and designated ‘Emergency North Africa’. The 208% increase in requests for protection compared to the previous year, and the time required for their examination by the competent Territorial Commissions (at the time ten for the entire country), made it necessary to prolong the state of emergency and the presence of the applicants on the local territory, in reception facilities, for over two years. The establishment of an extraordinary reception system in parallel to the ordinary Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (the so-called SPRAR, in Italian) established in 2002 and based on the principle of integrated and widespread reception5, on the one hand, raised protests from municipalities that considered that these presences were imposed (Marchetti, 2020b), and, on the other hand, encourage them to join SPRAR (if not already done), in order to ensure that the knowledge and efforts invested in transforming reception into integration were not lost, and in order to be prepared for any future “emergency” (Dal Zotto, 2022).
16Italy’s ambivalence towards arrivals by sea – which was not the only illegal entry channel, but certainly the most spectacular one (Cuttitta, 2012) – continued until 2015. In October 2013, two dramatic shipwrecks, which resulted in the drowning of hundreds of migrants from countries afflicted by war and authoritarian regimes, such as Syria and Eritrea, prompted the Italian government to initiate the military-humanitarian operation, with the objective of searching and rescuing migrants at sea. The operation, which was concluded exactly one year later, resulted in the majority of rescued individuals being brought and accepted in Italy as asylum seekers (Marchetti, 2017). A smaller number were permitted to transit to Europe, albeit in invisibility, by the Italian authorities (Dal Zotto, 2020). Despite the limited expansion of the SPRAR following the North African Emergency, the highest number of presences continued to be registered in structures of an extraordinary nature. The Coast Guard’s rescue operations at sea garnered increasing controversy and protest, with media portrayals of the costs of reception and actual impediments to the arrival of new applicants emerging (Castelli Gattinara, 2017).
17The European refugee crisis, with the intensification of arrivals from the Balkan route and the further tightening of border controls foreseen European Agenda on Migration of April 2015, favored the spread of the perception of forced migrants as a threat to be defended against as opposed to individuals with the right to seek protection. The adoption of the hotspot approach, proposed by the EU as a filter to distinguish economic migrants from forced migrants, ended up further restricting access to asylum applications, using as a discriminator the conditions (security or otherwise) of the country of origin and hasty and superficial procedures to establish the reasons for entry (Dal Zotto, 2020). To give one example, only migrants of Syrian and Eritrean nationality were admitted to relocation procedures in European countries other than those of entry. In short, discourses and practices shifted from considering everyone a refugee on the high seas during the Mare Nostrum operations to considering everyone a criminal, including the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that multiplied their efforts in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean after the end of the operation.
18Although closure without alternatives is the workhorse of the political right – it was from the Interior Minister, Salvini, from to the Lega party, who issued the 2019 directive on closed ports – it was a centre-left government that first adopted a code of conduct for NGOs in 2017 (Decree-Law No 13 of 17 February 2017, known as Orlando-Minniti) and reorganized the asylum application process downwards in terms of guarantees.
19The overlapping of applicants and beneficiaries of protection with unwanted migrants has severely affected the Italian reception system in recent years. Also Minister Salvini’s measures – issued in 2018 – have also downsized the Italian system, both in terms of resources (material and human) and protection, eliminating humanitarian protection (the one most granted to applicants in Italy). The blows dealt to reception have ended up severely limiting the integration prospects of forced migrants. Measures such as the exclusion of asylum seekers from the SPRAR system, and the reduction of activities such as language courses in the Extraordinary Reception Centres (the so-called CAS, in Italian), have contributed to the erosion of the already precarious rights of people waiting for, but also already entitled to, protection.
20With the installation of the Meloni government on 22 October 2022, the colors of the reception and asylum landscape in Italy have become even darker. Emblematic in this sense is the most recent decree issued on immigration, Decree-Law No. 20 of 2023: leaving aside here the details of the further restrictions imposed both on rescue at sea and on reception and the right to protection, we will focus here on the circumstances in which it was presented. The DL is also known as the ‘Cutro Decree’ after the name of the place where it was proposed to the press during a meeting of the Council of Ministers. A few days earlier, on 26 February 2023, the beach of Steccato di Cutro was the scene of the shipwreck of a boat from Turkey in which 94 people from countries such as Afghanistan and Syria, recognized as departure points for forced migrants, lost their lives. At the site of the shipwreck, Interior Minister Piantedosi emphasized that under certain circumstances one should not leave. After a few days, he placed the responsibility for these deaths on the migrants themselves, adding to the criminalization of their journeys the blame for their decision to leave by denying their right to mobility (Giudici, de Wenden, 2017).
- 6 Translation of the authors.
21The context just outlined, characterized by the denial of the Right to reception and protection and the widespread aversion to asylum seekers and refugees, does not seem to consider the possibility, already hinted at by some authors in the 2000s (Ambrosini, Marchetti, 2008), of citizenship for the latter. In this section, however, the conceptual tool of multilevel governance understood as a «battlefield» (Campomori, Ambrosini, 2020), allows us to look beyond the vertical alignment between the different levels in terms of rhetoric and closure policies. Considering also the actions of different actors moving in the horizontal dimension and their intersection with policies, allows us to grasp «the emergence of (fragile) socially innovative practices»6 (Campomori, Feraco, 2018). In particular, the following lines will describe and analyze the experience of Community Matching and that of Inclusive Universities. Both initiatives concern the post-recognition phase, which has received less attention from both policies and research.
22The aim is to reflect on the elements that made them possible and on their scope in terms of innovation, especially with regard to the concept of citizenship. Indeed, the European refugee crisis of 2015 has seen the proliferation of solidarity actions by different social actors, alongside the sharpening of attitudes and policies of closure towards migrants (Agustín, Jørgensen, 2018; Della Porta, 2018). Some of them – just like those analyzed here – do not belong to the classic institutional or third sector actors involved in asylum governance: not only international and/or humanitarian organizations, NGOs, no-border activists, cooperatives and associations traditionally involved in the professional management of services for asylum seekers and refugees, but also ordinary citizens (who do not necessarily identify themselves in the role of ‘volunteers’ or ‘activists’). The same applies to Universities, which are not absolutely new to the issue, but which have played a new and stronger role precisely in contrast to the general spread of policies of closure and exclusion legitimised by the emergency framework.
- 7 More precisely: 24 interviews with buddy pairs (tot. 48 participants, in Turin, Naples, Milan, Rome (...)
23From a methodological point of view, data collection took place during the authors’ direct participation in the Community Matching activities, as project manager and researcher, and in the activities of the University of Pavia’ dedicated to refugee students, as support to the project designer and to the student beneficiaries. As far as Community Matching is concerned, the author has not only had the opportunity to observe and live frequent situations of direct implementation of the program, but has also been appointed to carry out a research in 2023, with interviews, focus groups and questionnaires7 collected in the 10 cities involved (Marchetti, 2024). As for the initiatives of the University of Pavia, the author, in a dual role, research-oriented and organizational at the same time (Dal Zotto, Fusari, 2022) carried out a participant observation that began with the conception of the project ‘Diamo Rifugio ai Talenti’ in September 2015 and is not yet fully completed.
24Coinciding with the so-called European refugee crisis and in line with other subsequent crises (e.g. the Ukrainian crisis in 2022), we have seen an increase in grassroots initiatives and willingness of ordinary citizens, not necessarily previously mobilized, in support of asylum seekers and refugees. Some have remained at the level of spontaneous and uncoordinated actions that have fizzled out once the bubble of emergency on duty deflated (e.g. the direct aid provided by thousands of volunteers in major European cities). Others have become institutionalized (see, for example, the experience of domestic hospitality that began in Germany and then spread under the umbrella of Refugees Welcome International, now active in Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden). Many others have been picked up and sometimes absorbed by organisations already active in the field of asylum, which have been able to make the most of the spontaneous and grassroots commitment of citizens, alongside the skills and services provided in a more stable and structured way by experienced and trained operators. In the latter case, Community Matching can be involved.
25The importance of considering the development of meaningful intercultural relations as central to refugee integration pathways has become increasingly evident, when observing how – even at the end of potentially virtuous paths of integrated and comprehensive reception – people arrive at the end of their project with apparently satisfactory integration indicators (in terms of training work, knowledge of local services), but they are still very fragile in terms of real social roots, in-depth knowledge of the language, as well as in terms of building solid and diversified networks that could act as a support and a possible “parachute” in case of negative events and partial regression in the integration process. The need for greater interpenetration between institutional responses and informal resources is therefore considered by many to be the key to rethinking the welfare system of services alone into a system of community welfare, in which the theme of social solidarity and reciprocal relations is central to overcoming the gap – visible in the reception paths of asylum seekers and refugees – between passive adaptation and the development of subjective life projects. However, in order to experience levels of social and community participation, it is necessary to gradually reduce the impact of «architectural barriers» that are often invisible but also active: language, bureaucracy, procedural constraints, categorization of needs and responses, implicit expectations of behaviours and communication, and a lack of sensitivity to cultural differences.
26Therefore, in order to overcome these barriers and at the same time, to valorize the willingness of many Italian citizens to be at the side of a refugee, the first experiments with buddy schemes have also been launched in Italy, proposing and developing particularly intimate and long-term relationships between volunteers and refugees in within a very informal context (Cantat, Feischmidt, 2019). These projects represent a “move away from a humanitarian imperative of helping in times of conceived crisis towards a more personalized form of long-term informal social support between individuals who choose to care for each other’s needs outside of organized public structures within the private realm. In this sense, voluntary buddy schemes are similar to the informal caring relationships often found between family members or friends” (Stock, 2019, 129). Since 2016, the figure of the territorial tutor for integration has been tested within the AMIF Àncora project, promoted in the areas of the province of Parma (where the CIAC8 lead partner is active), Brescia, Trieste, Ivrea and Chivasso (Turin), and later extended by the subsequent Àncora 2.0 to 9 regions from Northern to Southern Italy. But the possibility of reaching another level of dissemination and institutionalization was realized in 2021, when the project was recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which promoted it within the Community Matching programme, which is now active – through the direct implementation of CIAC and Refugees Welcome Italia and the support of the Italian Buddhist Institute Soka Gakkai – in 10 cities: Rome, Milan, Turin, Bari, Palermo, Naples, Parma, Bologna, Bergamo, Padua9 (for an analysis of the different experiences of buddying and befriending in the framework of social cohesion, see Marchetti, 2022).
27By the end of 2023, a total of 825 individual matches had been initiated, with important results for both refugees and Italians and local communities. With regard to the former, in the last year, 33% of the participating refugees showed an improvement in their general condition, 63% improved their level of Italian, 84% improved their ability to find their way around the territory and to access services, the number of refugees with a work contract at the end of the project increased by 20%. And 30% of beneficiaries of protection who did not have any kind of institutional reception or autonomous housing at the beginning of the match found accommodation10. As far as Italian volunteers and communities are concerned, Community Matching has allowed them to get to know directly a large number of refugees, in addition to those with whom they were directly matched with (+150% more refugees than before the match), contributing to the reduction of prejudice between majority and minority groups, as already highlighted in Gordon Allport et al.’s seminal «contact theory» (1954). Research on the impact on communities (Marchetti, 2024) has confirmed that Community Matching plays a direct and indirect role in the participants’ experience of living and being rooted in the cities. But it also makes the places they pass through more familiar with the presence of refugees and Italians together, and it counteracts racism and discrimination through greater awareness and activation on the part of the Italian buddies in the various instances of everyday racism with which they come into contact.
28In September 2015, while news and images of shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea were multiplying, driven by the desire to ‘send a strong signal of welcome and brotherhood’11, the University of Pavia activated a network that included bodies from its Board of Directors, the Agency for the Right to Education12, and some of the student residences that make up the city’s campus. They offered fifteen students with international protection the opportunity to enroll free of charge in their degree courses (both three-year and master’s degrees) and to benefit from free of charge accommodation and meals for the duration of their studies. The students, selected from over fifty applicants, came from the Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees, with which the University of Pavia had developed and signed a memorandum of understanding. The following year, a private foundation from outside the University also became part of the protocol, committing itself to providing financial support for the students. In nine years, a total of twenty students have enrolled in courses under this initiative (not all of whom have managed to graduate). While other works have been dedicated to the description of the project and to the contribution that the social sciences can make to projects of this kind (Dal Zotto, Fusari, 2021, 2022), we would like to focus here on how the Pavia experience, together with many others that were born during this period, transformed, albeit partially, the Italian asylum scene.
29Like the University of Pavia, others have moved this year, or in the years immediately following, to offer their support to students with – but also seeking – international protection. This support took different forms: among the 300 or so good practices surveyed in 2017 in 32 countries by the Erasmus + «inHERE» project13, in addition to access to higher education, there were language courses, employability measures, economic support, but also forms of humanitarian assistance such as the provision of housing for asylum seekers. A sense of welcome, as opposed to the prevailing sense of closure, spread through European and Italian universities, forming a diverse framework of interventions of great symbolic significance, but of an extemporaneous and limited scope.
30In 2018 in Italy, the UNHCR, taking advantage of the willingness of the University to interact and work on issues of reception and inclusion, launched the proposal of a Manifesto of an Inclusive University for Refugees14, opening a space for exchange and confrontation between universities. The Manifesto15, drafted the following year, focuses on the principles of equality and non-discrimination, welcome, integration, awareness, appreciation of differences and participation. By 2023, the number of universities that had signed it has reached 59.
- 16 In Italian: “Diamo rifugio ai talenti”.
31By closely following this process, from the privileged observatory of participation in the Pavia project (then called «We give asylum to talents»16), it has been possible to identify a number of changes that have taken place in the university in the meantime in relation to asylum. First of all, the various interventions that began as expressions of solidarity have given way to the «normalization» of the enrolment of refugees in degree courses offered by Italian universities, and thus to an increase in the number of university students seeking or benefiting from protection, even outside initiatives dedicated to them. This has been made possible by political decisions to make universities more inclusive (not only with regard to refugees) and by the spread of a culture of asylum within universities. Indeed, the presence of these students has created within the academic community a need for knowledge of their geographical and bureaucratic trajectories, for the acquisition of intercultural skills and technical expertise, especially in the recognition of refugee titles and qualifications, as well as for openness to the territories and cooperation with the actors of reception. In order to meet these needs, numerous training activities are organized by the UNHCR within the framework of the Manifesto and by the universities themselves, also with funding from the ERASMUS+ programme. Although there are still obstacles and resistance to the full realization of the project of an Inclusive University for Refugees (Dal Zotto, Fusari, 2021, 2022), it is undeniable that starting with the recognition of the right to study of applicants and beneficiaries of international protection, a transformation has been triggered that affects both the university (internally and in its relations with the outside world) and the asylum system.
32Even if studies on the impact of experiences such as Community Matching and Inclusive Universities on the integration of refugees and their representation in the long term still seem limited, we have enough elements here to affirm that they are both cases of socially innovative practices with regard to Italian policies on reception and integration (albeit, as has already been pointed out, limited).
33Both the Community Matching initiative and the Inclusive Universities initiative were born in response to a relevant social problem and to promote inclusion: two factors common to all definitions of social innovation formulated in the 2000s (do Adro, Fernandes, 2020). Other aspects that characterize social innovation for several authors and that we find in the two case studies are: the prominent role of organisations whose primary purpose is social (Mulgan, 2006) – such as civil society actors (Ludvig et al., 2018) – the transformation of social practices and long-term outcomes (Voorberg et al., 2015) that invest in the lives of individuals and their interaction with social systems (Mumford, 2002). The European Commission in its definition insists on the contribution of new ideas and new collaborations for greater effectiveness in meeting social needs (Bureau of European Policy Advisors, 2011). Again, Moulaert and other scholars (2009) focus on the territorial dimension of social innovation, on the changes that affect the structures and governance of local communities.
34Third sector organisations and universities have entered the ‘interstices’ (Fontanari, Ambrosini, 2018) of the dominant political and discursive frameworks, marked by the emergency to propose novel solutions in the field of reception and asylum, practices that have become innovative not only because they are new, but also because they are institutionalized. In both situations, the UNHCR, a supranational organization, played a crucial role, facilitating the harmonization of the different realities involved and encouraging exchange and mutual learning. In particular, it is thanks to the facilitation of the Italian Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that Community Matching and Inclusive Universities have been transformed from a good practice to a component of refugee integration policies.
- 17 In Italian: “Carta per l’Integrazione per i rifugiati”. Cf. https://www.unhcr.org/it/wp-content/upl (...)
- 18 In Italian: “Fondo Migrazioni Asilo e Integrazione – FAMI”.
- 19 Cf. FAMI Notice «Qualification and strengthening of public services in support of third-country nat (...)
35If this step was taken by the universities with the signing of the Inclusive University Manifesto, it was taken by the municipalities for Community Matching by its inclusion in the Charter for the Integration of Refugees17. Drawn up together with UNHCR, the Charter for the Integration of Refugees was drafted and signed in 2022 by six major Italian cities (Bari, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome and Turin), followed in 2024 by Genoa, Ravenna, Bologna and Brescia. The Charter, which aims to strengthen cooperation between cities for the integration of persons benefiting from international protection by promoting the exchange of practices, experiences and tools, and the development of services already available in the territories, recognizes that municipalities are at the forefront of the reception and integration of refugees. By ensuring access to local services, education and employment opportunities, they promote full social inclusion, and lay the foundations for building a better future for refugees. By signing the Charter for Integration, the municipalities emphasize that the inclusion of refugees in their territory is a factor of enrichment and harmonious development, a fundamental value in which to invest collective energy and effort, and commit themselves – among other things – to promoting exchanges and encounters between refugees and the local community, through volunteering, mentoring and inclusion programs. Community Matching has also been included in some of the lines of the new programming of the Ministry of the Interior’s Fund for Asylum, Migration and Integration18 which finances actions for the integration of third-country nationals through European funds. The approval of the rankings and the corresponding allocation of funds were completed at the end of 2024. However, a clear picture of the extent of Community Matching’s distribution and potential impact across different regions is not yet available, as project implementation has not yet begun19.
- 20 In Italian: Piano Nazionale per l’Integrazione di Persone con Protezione Internazionale.
- 21 Cf. inter alia the Ministry of the Interior’s «Handbook for the identification, referral and care o (...)
36On the other hand, what can already be reported as an achievement in terms of broadening and scaling up of the activation experiences of civil society and universities is the approval of the National Plan for the Integration of Persons with International Protection20 for the biennium 2022-2024. This document, drawn up in accordance with the specific directive set out in art. 5 of Law 173/2020 (converting Decree-Law 130/2020), has, on the whole, been little disseminated and implementated, due to the inauguration – the day after its final approval – of the Meloni government, which would soon introduce further restrictive regulations on asylum and reception. Its success is due to the inclusion of ‘Community Matching’ (understood as ‘building networks of trust’), together with ‘Whole-of-society’ (i.e. the involvement of all actors involved in the integration process, including universities) and ‘One-stop-shop’ (the creation of multifunctional centres and one-stop-shops for integration) among the transversal approaches on which the entire National Plan is based. It is therefore somewhat downgraded by the positions of the new government and it should be noted, for instance, that although it was distributed in hard copy at conferences and cited in several relevant official documents subsequently published21, it is not to be found in any ministerial online source. Nevertheless, it represents a significant policy document in terms of multi-level innovation, thanks to its emphasis on the strengthening cooperation – within the existing territorial welfare framework – between the reception system, territorial services, and institutional and private actors involved in integration processes. It also recognizes the centrality of social relations in integration processes, as realized through the encounter of refugees with institutions, third sector bodies, associations, but also with volunteer citizens: through the direct interaction between refugees and volunteer citizens, according to the Plan, even the local community’s perception of refugees can be changed.
37With regard to the level at which these policies operate, it should be noted that both the Inclusive University Manifesto and the Charter for the Integration of Refugees bring together local experiences, but are spread throughout the country; the same is true for the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund and the Integration Plan for Persons Entitled to International Protection, which have a national dimension. From the interstices in which they took shape, the practices described in this contribution have made their way up the different levels of governance to the national level, where their presence, though not ostentatious, can be read as the seeds of a transformation in the notion of asylum.
38In carrying out this reflection, we refer to Ager and Strang (2008) who proposed a conceptual framework to identify integration processes by formulating an inverted pyramid model with «rights and citizenship» as its foundation stone. With this guarantee, moving up the pyramid, we have a level of ‘facilitators’ identified in ‘cultural knowledge’ and ‘language’, which in turn are the premise of ‘social connections’, divided into bonds (within a group), bridges (between groups) and links (with state structures), which in turn preside over four basic indicators: ‘housing, work, education and health’. The model is innovative because it identifies the key social relationships (bonds, bridges, and links), the development of the foundation – rights and citizenship – and the basis on which access to employment, housing, education and health rests. Without such development, and without such development creating a social network, there can be no integration. Not only that: Ager and Strang’s framework shifts the focus from isolated pathways of ‘adjustement’ to collective pathways of building social relationships. These are key to guiding the process of reception and integration. Interpreted broadly, the framework provides a mandate to host societies and – within them – to host policies. Building bridges, contacts and social links, not for, but with the migrants themselves: institutional social relations, contacts to be addressed, but also meaningful relations from an identity and personal point of view. Only in this way, at the end of the process (note: not as a premise, but as a consequence of an effective recognition and a successful path to ‘citizenship’), will the objectives more classically understood as indicators of successful integration, i.e. housing, work, education and health, be achieved.
39Also innovative in this theoretical framework is the presence of rights and citizenship as a founding element. Not a citizenship defined by national borders, that produces the exclusion of those who do not share it, but a citizenship that transcends those borders, because it finds its constitution in the recognition of rights such as «dignity, equality, justice, security and independence» (Ager, Strang, 2008, 175). These are rights that are not only the responsibility of the state but are shared under its guidance, by all sectors of society including, relevant to our study, the education and training system (Ager, Strang, 2008). A reversal of perspective, placing rights at the base of the inverted pyramid, which together with that of the «political posture» towards foreigners, makes it possible to rethink hospitality away from the notion of a favor that is done to the recipient (Agier, 2020).
40The innovation introduced by Community Matching and Inclusive Universities points a step in this direction, a step that also takes the issue of refugee integration out of the sole perspective of asylum and into the broader one of citizenship (Ambrosini, 2022). In this perspective, it is not so much a matter of formal citizenship, granted and defined “from above”, but a process activated “from below”, that is from the point of view of actual practices of accessing and using, re-interpreting and negotiating the contents of citizenship (see, for example, Turner, 1993; Bellamy, 2008; Isin, Nielsen, 2008; Sassen, 2008b). Overcoming emergency policies, the criminalization of refugees and the erosion of asylum cannot, in our view, be achieved through a mere defense of rights, which risks trapping the debate, practice and policy on the subject in an increasingly stifling and defensive blind spot. Rather, it can be done by recomposing and reintegrating a more complex plot that brings together broader and transversal categories of subjects and different spheres of rights promotion and defense in a precise context, acting forms of «lived citizenship» (Lister, 2007), through which people understand and negotiate rights and responsibilities, belonging and participation. In this sense, informal relations with members of local communities and the involvement of universities through their diverse composition (from institutional to administrative bodies, from professors to students) can promote forms of community-based protection, as defined and promoted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), among others. In its broadest sense, community-based protection does not refer exclusively to refugee communities, but involves host communities – in all their components – in defining priorities and programming of interventions. This includes communities that would therefore be both recipients and active subjects of inclusion and citizenship policies and practices. In this sense, inclusive Universities put the right to study for all back at the centre; Community Matching promotes forms of intercultural social cohesion that weave bonds and counteract the isolation not only of refugees but also of long-term residents.
41The current tendency to criminalize migrants, which manifests itself in the violence of borders (national borders against others) and in exclusion within the states that those borders protect, affects, among others, those who are supposed to be welcomed and protected. This is undoubtedly one of the new faces of Obscurantism in Western Societies, in spite of the commitment they made by signing the 1951 Geneva Convention not to reject and to protect those who fear for their safety. In the darkness of this scenario, however, there are glimmers of light. The realities of Community Matching and Inclusive Universities, presented here as innovative practices, are an example of how, despite the closure imposed by national policies, there is still space at the different levels of governance for different actors, not necessarily those who usually populate the asylum scene, to carry out interventions dedicated to integration. Their innovative character lies not only in the novelty of the proposed activities or their authors, nor only in the process that has led them to have an impact, albeit under the radar, on integration policies. The innovation lies also and above all in the transformation – faint, limited, but underway – in the approach to the refugee issue in Italy. It is a transformation that replaces the emergency framework, in which the figure of the refugee is depoliticized and reception is reduced to a humanitarian duty, with citizenship and rights as the cornerstones of paths to integration. The transformation involves the protagonists of these pathways in the realization of these principles. This includes not only the beneficiaries of protection, but also the whole community, which is called upon to establish and strengthen relations, links, and connections between all its parts, by placing the welfare of services alongside that of the community.
42The limitation of this paper, like that of the case studies presented, is that it applies, at least for the time being, almost exclusively to those who are already beneficiaries of international protection. While it is true that there is a paucity of research that examines what happens to refugees and host societies after the process of granting protection has been completed, it is also true – as noted at the beginning of this paper – that refugees constitute a residual population compared to those who have received more precarious forms of protection, and even more so compared to those seeking protection. Studies that take into account the socially innovative reception and integration experiences of these groups of forced migrants could help to advance the reflection on protection, taking it further beyond the confines of asylum to broader terms of citizenship and rights.
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