While in Italy for my PhD fieldwork examining the interaction between separated children and the Italian migration regime as they transition to adulthood, the far-right coalition government was elected. Wide-ranging changes were made to immigration law via the so-called Decreto-Salvini, named after the Interior Minister who drafted it.
An Italian friend once commented that in Italy discussing the negative impact that migrants have on society has become so commonplace as to ‘be like discussing the weather’. Other friends have recounted stories of overhearing conversations in the post office queue, the doctor’s surgery, where the sheer wait, the difficulties were all blamed on ‘the immigrants’. Etienne Balibar refers to this as an “immigration complex”, which induces “a transformation of every social ‘problem’ into a problem which is regarded as being posed by the fact of the presence of ‘immigrants’ or, at least, as being aggravated by their presence”—regardless of the problem in question.
The number of racially motivated attacks in Italy has surged since the far-right Lega election campaign. Salvini utilises social media effectively as a campaign tool, adopting the hashtag #closedports [portichiusi] referring to his ruling that Italy’s ports would not allow migrant boats to dock, as a result of which, many migrants have been held at sea for days (a horrific situation still continuing today). The division in deserving between those who belong and those who do not is made clear as Salvini states: “We will use the money that we save to help Italians or whoever else is in need”, thereby enhancing the border between ‘them’ and ‘us’ and reinforcing the ‘immigration complex’.
