The variance in multilevel governance of asylum seekers’ reception in Italy : the key roles of policy legacy, politics and civil society

Abstract

It is common knowledge that asylum seekers’ reception in Italy has been and still is a contentious matter. Under the pressure generated by the rapid succession of the “migration crisis” of 2011, triggered by the collapse of the Tunisian and Libyan regimes, and the “refugee crisis” of 2015, following the Syrian war, the Italian reception system has undergone profound changes. By using multilevel governance (MLG) as an analytical concept, this chapter analyses the Italian reception system focusing on the relationship between the national and local levels of government, and on the interactions the 2011–2018 period. The chapter compares and contrasts two local case studies in northern Italy—Torino in the Piedmont region and Treviso in the Veneto region—characterised by different political backgrounds and socio-political legacies. The purpose of this chapter is, first, to analyse the specific configuration of MLG in the field of asylum seekers’ reception in Italy and the factors that account for it, and second, to explore whether and how it relates to policy convergence dynamics as defined in the Introduction to the volume. In doing so, we assess the level of homogeneity or heterogeneity in the reception system, which may result respectively in policy convergence or divergence. In addition, we investigate the main factors influencing homogeneity or heterogeneity and determining converging or diverging trends in the reception policy field. Based on empirical findings from the local case studies, we consider in particular the role of the following factors: socio-political legacies in the local community; the level of involvement of local institutions in the coordination of reception; the level of organisation of civil society; the relationships among local institutions and between local institutions and civil society organisations (CSOs); and politics (in terms of governing parties at the regional and municipal levels).