Immigrant Detention and the Double Logic of Securitization in Italy

Abstract

In this chapter I describe the birth and evolution of immigration detention in Italy, showing how this process has responded to different logic of migration securitization. The securitization process may indeed take place following two slightly different dynamics: on the one hand, it may respond to a process of symbolic dramatization of threats, leading to a sudden fracture in the normative order with the adoption of exceptional measures; on the other hand, it may stimulate the progressive institutionalization of control measures that act below the threshold of exceptionalism in security bureaucrats’ everyday practices, without dramatic fractures in the normative order but through a slow erosion of existing legal standards. I believe that the Italian case is an interesting exemplification of the double dynamic of securitization, and in this chapter I will try to illustrate how both dynamics have been at work in the genesis of the system of immigration detention centres in Italy.