Rules, Paper, Status

Migrants and Precarious Bureaucracy in Contemporary Italy

Anna Tuckett

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781503606500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie

Whether motivated by humanitarianism or concern over "porous" borders, dominant commentary on migration in Europe has consistently focused on clandestine border crossings. Much less, however, is known about the everyday workings of immigration law inside borders. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Italy, one of Europe's biggest receiving countries, Rules, Paper, Status moves away from polarized depictions to reveal how migration processes actually play out on the ground. Anna Tuckett highlights the complex processes of inclusion and exclusion produced through encounters with immigration law.

The statuses of "legal" or "illegal, " which media and political accounts use as synonyms for "good" and "bad, " "worthy" and "unworthy, " are not created by practices of border-crossing, but rather through legal and bureaucratic processes within borders devised by governing states. Taking migrants' interactions with immigration regimes as its starting point, this book sheds light on the productive nature of legal and bureaucratic encounters and the unintended consequences they produce. Rules, Paper, Status argues that successfully navigating Italian immigration bureaucracy, which is situated in an immigration regime that is both exclusionary and flexible, requires and induces culturally specific modes of behavior. Exclusionary laws, however, can transform this social and cultural learning into the very thing that endangers migrants' right to live in the country.

1

The Center

My central fieldsite was a trade union–affiliated migrant advice center that helps migrants complete application forms, as well as navigate the documentation regime more generally. Although affiliated with the trade union, in the eyes of its visitors and in practice the center’s role is often blurred with that of the questura (immigration office) and the state in general. In what follows I outline the history and daily functioning of the center and illustrate the ambiguous role it holds.

Good advice is essential for migrants navigating the immigration bureaucracy, and the center played an important role in helping migrants to effectively navigate the documentation regime. Providing advice, however, is a difficult task that requires experience, knowledge, and finesse. There were vast discrepancies in the quality of advice offered by different staff members at the center. After introducing the center’s staff members, who provide an important backdrop to the subsequent chapters, I briefly describe the immigration regime’s shifting terrain, which profoundly shaped the workings of the center.

History and daily operations

At the time of my fieldwork the advice center was the most frequented migrant advice organization in the city. Its long opening hours, free services, and regular meetings with the questura made it in high demand among its mainly migrant client base. Its established role in the city’s immigration nexus was due to Paolo Brigadini, an activist passionate about social inequality, discrimination, and migrants’ rights, who set up the center in the early 1990s. When it first opened, the only paid staff member was Brigadini himself, and its single room, a cupboard-like office, was staffed by volunteers. It grew rapidly, and by 2009, when my fieldwork began, the center employed seven staff members and several volunteers.

The center was situated around the corner from the central trade union offices that housed the trade union federation groups serving different categories of workers. For example, there is a federation that represents workers in the commerce, services, and tourism sector; separate federations represent workers in construction and woodwork and other employment sectors. The center’s space was divided into two halves: the inner office, where the majority of administrative duties were carried out, and the outer waiting room and reception counter (sportello). The waiting room was usually extremely busy. Families, friends, and individuals sat in plastic chairs either chatting or sitting in silence. Mothers breast-fed babies, children ran around playing, and people made and received phone calls. Notices of upcoming protests relating to the trade union decorated the walls, alongside posters showing migrant children accompanied by slogans reading, “We are all the same” (Noi siamo tutti gli stessi).

Staff members at the center, and from other departments in the trade union, often remarked that the migrant advice center was the trade union’s busiest office. Before the center opened in the morning, and after the lunch break, queues of people waited for its doors to open. The reception counter was the center’s hub and was typically busy and hectic. People gathered around it trying to make appointments to complete their applications or to check the status of their permit renewals online. Queries ranged from those concerning the requirements for a particular application to those involving complex and often unsolvable situations. How the latter were dealt with depended on who was working at the counter and how many other people were waiting. Some staff members dismissed such queries, telling clients that they needed to go elsewhere or that what they were asking was not possible. Others consulted more experienced staff members, who were usually in the inner office, and the issue was either dealt with immediately or deferred. It was common for clients to return multiple times before their problem was resolved, and without persistence their cases could easily become forgotten.

In addition to help with documentation, many clients asked for help with housing, social services, the police, bills, fines, and employment. Again, the attention and service that people were given depended on which staff member they saw and when, but they were usually referred to different offices specializing in the particular issue. Working at the reception counter was stressful, and staff bore the brunt of migrants’ frustrations with the immigration bureaucracy and long waits. Both clients and staff members frequently raised their voices. Clients were sometimes accusatory, believing that they were not receiving fair treatment, and staff members were sometimes openly aggressive or irritated by clients’ failure to understand or perceived rude manner. In contrast, the atmosphere of the inner office was more relaxed. Here there were six desks where staff members completed application forms on computers, usually by appointment. Staff members and clients chatted as their applications for permit renewal, family reunification, and citizenship were completed. Those working at the reception counter would come in and out to photocopy or ask advice from other staff members.

The center’s growth reflected both the increasing number of migrants in Italy and the increased bureaucratization of immigration processes. Given the necessity of employment for permit issue and renewal, it was logical for the trade union to become involved in the immigration bureaucracy for two reasons. First, migrant workers dominate the trade union’s strongest sectors—industry, construction, services, and domestic work. Therefore, by offering permit application completion and advice, the trade union was providing an essential service to its current members, as well as potentially cultivating new ones. Second, as part of the original “advocacy coalition,” trade unions have historically played a role in the formation of immigration policy in Italy (Zincone 2011). The center’s services were free, but clients who were not already members of the trade union were gently encouraged to join. Membership cost 1 percent of a member’s monthly salary. Similar migration advice centers existed across the trade unions in Italy, but because of Brigadini’s activism, the center where I conducted fieldwork was considerably larger, better staffed, and open more days a week than its counterparts across the country.¹

The center’s role as a trade union affiliate was ambiguous, as reflected in migrants’ attitude toward it. Many clients did not know about its trade union connections and presumed that it was affiliated with the questura or comune. The services the center offered were also available in other sites across the city, but usually at a cost (see Chapter 4). Because this center’s services were free, many were suspicious of the quality of the services available, presuming that quality and value could only be bought and not freely given. In response to complaints about delayed applications, staff members emphasized to clients that the center was “il sindicato” (the trade union), not the questura or the state. The organization of the Italian welfare state, however, which is closely intertwined with trade unions and other nonstate bodies, makes clients’ confusion understandable. The key function played by the center in completing application forms related to its position as a patronato. Patronati are intermediary institutions attached to trade unions in which workers can receive free advice, assistance, protection, and representation. They play a central role in the history of the Italian welfare state, and trade unions have been key players in both their implementation and operation since the Second World War (Agnoletto 2012: 22). Besides immigration-related issues, assistance provided by patronati includes help with pensions, welfare benefits, sick leave, and unemployment. Their role is to protect and advocate for welfare users and ensure that the social security system is functioning correctly. Although they are not part of the state infrastructure, the state pays the patronato for each assistance file opened. Thus trade unions are protagonists in the Italian welfare state (Agnoletto 2012: 13, 22), playing the roles of provider, advocate, and protector. Because patronati hold a unique position as gatekeepers to public assistance, as well as guarantors that they function correctly, Stefano Agnoletto has described them as a “peculiar institution wherein the distinction between public and private is poorly defined, its trade union identity overlapping its public utility function” (18). The center’s role as a patronato exemplified this peculiarity.

The center received state funds for each permit renewal, long-term permit, and family reunification request it completed. It was paid by the state to complete paperwork but, as a patronato, was not an arm or representative of the state in name or practice. Rather, the center acted as a mediator between the state—in this case usually represented by the questura—and migrants. This mediation was crucial for migrants in their encounters with Italian immigration law. As the following chapters illustrate, the questura frequently acted in “unlawful” ways, including denying applications on unfair grounds, making errors on official documents, requesting unnecessary documentation, and delaying applications. In the Italian legal system, it is common for recently passed laws to directly contradict existing ones. The laws that the questura chooses to implement are at the discretion of individual questura directors, meaning that in practice immigration law differs in different Italian cities. Ministerial circolari (circulars), which are designed to clarify acts of law, create further discrepancies as there is no obligation on the part of the questure to follow the directives of the circolari. Because the questure officials had such decision-making discretion, migrants were highly dependent on the protection of institutions such as the center, which held weekly meetings with the questura director or vice director, during which its representatives challenged the reasons for delayed or rejected applications. In Chapter 2 I explore examples of these issues in more depth.

This setup put the center in an ambiguous role. Reflecting this, clients frequently directed their complaints and dissatisfaction about their ongoing applications, and the law in general, toward the center. Their confusion was due to the indistinct boundary between the work of the state and that of trade unions, as well as the fact that the questura had no procedures for allowing migrants to contest decisions.

The questura was responsible for processing applications and making decisions, but it did not officially disseminate information about applications to individuals or to the broader public. On entering the heavy metal gates, visitors saw a cabin where a police officer sat. Taped onto the cabin’s glass window was letter-size sheet of white paper that read, in capital letters, “NO INFORMAZIONI” (see figure 4). When people tried to ask this officer for help, he mutely pointed to the sign.² Sometimes, though, visitors to the center repeated information that the officer occupying the cabin had given them, suggesting that some officers were friendlier than others. This information, however, was frequently incorrect, and center staff members were then left with the task of trying to convince skeptical clients that the police officer was misinformed.

Inside the questura there were also no opportunities to ask about submitted applications or general procedures. Interaction between officials and applicants was confined to three kinds of meetings: appointments to give fingerprints, which occurred at the beginning of the renewal phase; appointments to collect issued permits; and permit renewal appointments for family members of Italian citizens, whose applications were submitted directly at the questura rather than via the postal system.³ These interactions took place at either the beginning or the end of the application phase, excluding any opportunity for individuals to inquire about ongoing applications. When individuals did attempt to request information, for example, by attracting a passing official’s attention while at the questura, they were either ignored or told to send an e-mail. E-mails sent to the questura, however, consistently bounced back to the sender’s e-mail account.

The impenetrability of the questura meant that the kinds of interactions clients desired to have there instead took place at the center. This was partly because some thought that the center was affiliated with the questura. It was also due to the existence of the reception counter and the center’s relative ease of access. In relation to his study of French benefit offices, Vincent Dubois (2010: 4) notes that, in administrations, reception counters usually bear the brunt of users’ frustrations. This was certainly true at the migration advice center, whose reception counter absorbed the anger and complaints caused not only by its own errors and delays, but also by the questura.

On hearing that a permit renewal was still delayed or that an application had been rejected, people frequently responded with raised voices, tears, and panic. Staff members’ reaction to such behavior varied according to the individual and the atmosphere of the center at a given moment. Some responded sympathetically but told the client they were unable to help; others became angry, telling clients, “We are not the questura”; and others were proactive, asking the client for paperwork, which they photocopied before asking Alberto or Ginetta to make inquiries at the questura at the next meeting. This last option was not always available to even the most sympathetic staff members. The load of inquiries that Alberto and Ginetta took with them to the weekly questura meetings was always heavy, and not everybody’s case could be given sufficient attention. When applications were delayed, it was usually futile to make further inquiries. The standard wait for a permit to be issued was several months, and only those applications that were considered to be abnormally delayed would be inquired about at the weekly meetings. Therefore, because space (physical or temporal) for contestation and complaint was limited at the questura, many encounters between bureaucrats and nonbureaucrats took place at the center, despite the fact that it was not a state bureaucratic office (Dubois 2009, 2010).⁴

Figure 4. Photograph of sign at the questura. Photograph by author.

New leadership

After the departure of Brigadini in the summer of 2010, the character of the center changed in both its working patterns and its ethos. The official story was that Brigadini had retired. He was replaced by Maria, a forty-year-old woman who had previously worked in the central trade union administration. Prioritizing the political struggle for migrants’ rights, Brigadini had had little interest in using the center to raise money for the union. The center ensured funding for the trade union in its role as a patronato, but it had a low record for membership recruitment, since under Brigadini clients were not strongly encouraged to enlist. Writing in the 1990s, Zincone (1998: 72–73) noted that migrants’ “free-riding” of trade unions’ services was encouraged by unions on both sides of the political spectrum as they were investing in the unions’ future: the aim was that migrants would join the union once they found more stable work. But by 2010 such free-riding was no longer considered acceptable by the trade union administration.

Unlike Brigadini, Maria had no previous connections with migration associations, questura officials, or others who may have been useful to a person in her role. Staff members largely interpreted her entry into the center as motivated by the trade union administration’s desire to bring the center into line and to increase its membership. People told me that the trade union was suffering because of the economic crisis, as members who had become unemployed or were no longer able to afford the dues were canceling their memberships. This was a problem across the trade union, and those I knew from other sectors told me they were under increasing pressure to recruit new members.

Fueling these rumors, Maria introduced various initiatives designed to increase membership. These included encouraging clients to enlist, restricting access to the center’s lawyers to members only, introducing a type of unemployment membership for those who did not work but wanted to attend the center’s “free” Italian language courses, and organizing training about the history and principles of trade unionism for staff members and volunteers. Staff members and volunteers implemented these initiatives unevenly, with most considering the new rules nonsensical. For example, the idea of an unemployment membership to a trade union was considered a contradiction ...