When emancipatory integration does not work
Two stories of refugees’ bad experiences within the SIPROIMI system in Rome
GUEST POST
by Sara Forcella | University of Rome
Following the closure of ports to migrants’ rescue ships and the reduction of search and rescue sea operations last summer, the number of migrants disembarking on the Italian coasts has sharply dropped. In 2019, only 11.471 migrants have reached Italy crossing the Mediterranean in a boat, a very small number compared to 2018 (23.253) and 2017 (118.935).[1] However, despite the decrease in sea arrivals, migrants within the reception system are still many (91.424).[2] Over the past year and a half, policies that regulate migrants’ reception have also undergone major changes. The Italian migration reception system comprises two main tiers. The first one is designed for asylum seekers and consists of specific facilities ̶ generally called CAS (Centre of Extraordinary Reception) or CARA (Reception Centre for Asylum Seekers) ̶ , which now can offer only basic needs as a consequence of law n. 132/2018 on security and immigration enacted by the previous coalition government between the Five Star Movement and Salvini’s right-wing Lega. Integration services, as well as psychological support and proper legal assistance, have, in fact, been cut out of these centres.[3]
On the other hand, migrants who have obtained international protection and unaccompanied minors are housed within the SIPROIMI (Protection System for Beneficiaries of International Protection and for Unaccompanied Foreign Minors).[4] The SIPROIMI centres, which represent the second, advanced tier of reception, provide job orientation, Italian language school, education and training courses. Nevertheless, the quality of the services offered in these centres is not homogenous throughout the country. Facilities of both tiers are, in fact, administered by different contractors, and poor or bad management is sometimes registered even within the SIPROIMI system, which is subjected to regular controls by the Ministry of Interior and should, therefore, guarantee higher standards of reception.
The two stories that follow testify to critical situations of beneficiaries of international protection hosted in two different SIPROIMI centres in Rome.[5] In these cases, instead of being supported in their socio-economic emancipation, migrants found themselves stuck in a system that fails to meet their requests for an independent and dignified life. They felt that their requirements, namely their aspirations, interests, projects and, above all, their well-being due to the possibility of a fulfilling life, were ignored to such an extent that they adopted hard solutions.
Moussa,[6] a 22-year-old young man from Guinea, was granted subsidiary protection status in Rome in February 2019. As he was no longer an asylum seeker, he was transferred to a SIPROIMI centre. Before getting his residence permit, Moussa had lived for three years in a CAS centre, in which he received insufficient help for his education and training. Hence, moving to a reception centre of the second tier that is designed to improve people’s emancipatory integration Moussa’s life was supposed to change for the better. However, when Moussa entered the new centre, he found himself confined to an unpleasant area on Rome’s outskirts. He was cut off from all contacts with the people, including workers, with whom he had lived for three years and put in a bedroom with six unknown roommates. He could not sleep well at night for the noise in the room and the bedbugs in his bed. Moussa started feeling nervous. He was told by the operators and the centre’s director to be cooperative and seek a favourable “alliance” with them if he wanted help with work or training opportunities. Nevertheless, something went wrong in the way in which this alliance was built.
Communications with the reception staff were restricted; pocket money, which is a right for any refugee or holder of beneficiary protection, was not given and no answer was provided for this. He made several requests, among which was one to change room, and he was denied once again without proper justification. The operators and the social assistant wanted him to be compliant, yet the lack of explanations undermined trust in the relationship. Feeling the ambiguity and with no familiar faces around him, Moussa shouted a couple of times, and therefore was immediately reported by the staff as oppositional. It must be said that alleged disrespectful or bad behaviour can be the exhausted, even desperate, attempt to react in a non-responsive, careless context in which poor attention is paid to the real requirements of the individual.[7] As a dramatic consequence, the person feels misunderstood or not supported, so he loses trust in the possibility that the reception system can concretely help him/her achieve independence. This has severe effects, for the services provided by SIPROIMI centres, when efficient, are vital for the integration of the migrants.
Moussa was offered an underpaid internship as dishwasher by the operator in charge of job orientation in his reception centre in September 2019. He declined. “You are lazy”, he reported he was told by the operator. “You should accept what we can offer to you. You don’t speak good Italian. You can’t expect anything better”. Moussa then chose to enrol at the secondary school to improve his linguistic skills but didn’t go through this with his centre. He asked for help from one of the many associations that help local migrants.
Jahid,[8] from Bangladesh, faced a similar plight. He was an unaccompanied minor until April 2019, being hosted in a residential care facility for minors.[9] When he turned 18, he was moved to a SIPROIMI centre. An educated young man, he achieved his secondary school diploma last June. Jahid works a lot, doing whichever job is available. He spent last summer in a Chinese shop, being an underpaid cashier without a contract. Moreover, he does the cleaning in a bed and breakfast, to earn cash on the side. A couple of months ago he heard from a friend about the possibility to enrol in an evening high school, namely a public school for adults who have not achieved a high school-level education. His friend had started attending the hotel management school, which in Italy is a three-year high school course. Jahid loves working in restaurants, so he thought that this could be a great opportunity for him. Evening high schools in Italy are designed for adults who work. Courses are run in the evening to allow adult students to work during the day. Study workload is reduced, and internships and interviews with companies are strongly encouraged, to put attendees easily in contact with future employers. Going to school would not exclude the possibility of working at the same time. Jahid is still very young and had brilliantly achieved the secondary education diploma, so he presumably had all the capabilities to keep studying and aim for something a little safer – economically speaking - and more rewarding.
When he went back to his reception centre and asked the social assistant for economic help to finalize the enrolment at the school – though the economic support for educational purpose is not always guaranteed by the SIPROIMI centres ̶ he was turned down. He was also told that his idea was not a good one, for he had better think of seeking an internship or a job. “You will leave the camp in a year, so you need to earn a living”, he said his social assistant told him. Jahid was very confused. For a forced migrant in a situation of economic and social disadvantage, making a longsighted decision whose results are not immediately tangible is a risk. Thinking of one’s own aspirations while having no economic security requires the capability to bear uncertainty. The idea of improving his life thanks to a school degree dawned on him. He wanted to continue his formal education, but the sharp opposition he faced, and the claim that he would no longer receive any kind of support if he pursued his choice, strongly discouraged him. In his precarious position, he had to abandon the idea.
Both Moussa and Jahid recently left their SIPROIMI centres to go to France and Germany respectively, well before the end of their term ̶ generally lasting six months, which is renewable for a further six months under certain circumstances. They said they felt that staying within the reception system was useless to them, if not even harmful, and wanted to try their luck someplace else. For an emancipatory reception system which is meant to offer refugees tools to easily integrate and give them (a sense of) equal opportunities, losing the people that it is supposed to help represents the failure of the principles on which reception should be built.
[1]Italian Ministry of Interior (2019, 31 December). Cruscotto statistico giornaliero [Daily statistics dashboard]. Available: http://www.libertaciviliimmigrazione.dlci.interno.gov.it/sites/default/files/allegati/cruscotto_statistico_giornaliero_31-12-2019.pdf. (accessed 4 January 2020). It is important to remember that the Italy-Libya agreement in 2017 had already resulted in a drastic decline in newcomers crossing the Mediterranean.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Law n.132/2018 was the result of the conversion, with amendments, of the Decree-law n. 113/2018 on security and migration (the so-called Salvini Decree), enacted on 4 October 2018. The last tender specifications schemes (capitolato d’appalto), which establish services and conditions of the first tier of reception, were released on 20 November 2018, following the Decree law n. 113/2018. The text (in Italian) of the tender specification scheme can be found here: Italian Ministry of Interior (2018, 20 November). Nuovo schema di capitolato d’appalto dei sevizi di accoglienza [New tender specification schemes of reception services]. Available: https://www.interno.gov.it/sites/default/files/schema_capitolato.pdf (accessed 4 January 2020).
[4] The second, advanced tier of reception directly managed by the Ministry of the Interior, which used to be called SPRAR (Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers), has changed name by law n.132/2018: it is now called SIPROIMI (Protection System for Beneficiaries of International Protection and for Unaccompanied Foreign Minors) since access to this system has been restricted to refugees and unaccompanied minors, excluding asylum seekers.
[5] The two stories that follow have been collected by the author, cultural mediator and teacher of Italian as a second language, during interviews that took place in July 2019 in the framework of a bottom-up cultural and artistic project, which has been carried out by the author since 2017 in Rome and involves a group of young men, both asylum seekers and refugees. The project was presented in ‘L’accoglienza delle esigenze: conoscere il territorio attraverso l’arte’ [Human Requirements in Reception Camps: Art and Territory], paper delivered at the conference Reason of State, Humanitarian Reason. Genealogies and Perspectives of the Asylum System. University of Milan, Italy, 28-29 June 2018. The project was also described in the article ‘Esigenze e qualità del tempo dell’accoglienza dei richiedenti asilo: nuove prospettive dei percorsi di sensibilizzazione artistico-(inter)culturale’ [Human Requirements and Quality Time of Asylum Seekers: New Perspectives on Artistic and (Inter)Cultural Activities with Migrants], in Osservatorio Romano sulle Migrazioni. Quattrodicesimo Rapporto, Roma, Edizioni Idos, 2019.
[6] Invented name.
[7]Requirements (esigenze) are meant here according to Fagioli’s definition, as the individual’s tendencies towards evolutionary relationships with other human beings, which are crucial to the development of personal identity (p.19). Requirements are to be separate from basic needs (bisogni), which provide for bodily survival. For a complete explanation of the concept of requirements, refer to Fagioli, Massimo (2019). Death Instinct and Knowledge. Rome: L’Asino D’Oro.
[8] Invented name.
[9] Unaccompanied minors are hosted in dedicated reception facilities in the first phase of their reception, and then moved to SIPROIMI centres. However, if SIPROIMI facilities are not available, they can be assigned to reception facilities administered by local municipalities. For more information, refer to: Pannia, Paola, Federica, Veronica, & D'Amato, Silvia (2018, 14 September). Italy – Legal and Policy Framework of Migration Governance (Version V1). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1418579.
Sara Forcella
*Sara Forcella is an Arabist and cultural mediator. Graduated with a Master in Arabic Language and literature, she is a Ph.D candidate at Sapienza, University of Rome. She has worked with refugees and asylum seekers as a cultural mediator, cultural and didactic operator and Italian language teacher since 2012. She has dealt with cultural mediation in different contexts, including legal, medical, psychological mediation and job orientation. Over the last three years, Sara has been undertaking projects of (inter)cultural-artistic activities with migrants to promote cultural and social engagement in the new country or residence.
*The author is not a member of the Respond Team. RESPOND does not endorse any stated opinions.