More or less eligibility?: Prospettive teoriche sui processi di criminalizzazione dei migranti irregolari in Italia

Abstract

This article is focused on a critical review ofRusche and Kirchheimer's category of less eligibility. The attempt of applying this theoretical model to interpreting and explain­ing the process of criminalisation and incarceration of irregular migrants in Italy, in fact, highlights some relevant contradictions. According to the results of a recent field research - based on biographical interviews recorded in prison - doubts emerge about the dissuasion capability of a criminal policy rooted in a les s eligibility strategy. The relation between the penal regulation of the migrant workforce and the high levels of migrants' incarceration appears to be heavily influenced by their legal position. Irreg­ularity, in other words, shows its consistency with the practice of exploitation typical of informal economies. Following this perspective it is possible to argue that, since pe­nal sanctions may contribute to eliminate a migrant's hope for future regularization, they are also functional to the reproduction of the conditions of their permanence in the most unprotected areas of the labour market. On the other hand, such conditions are so distant from the migrants' project and so restrictive with reference to their struc­ture of opportunity to provoke the failure of this kind of institutional form of dissua­sion. The aim of the article is therefore to discuss the hypothesis of the more eligibili­ty of a process of criminal adaptation for irregular migrants, also considering how the prison system offers to thousands of them the first contacts with social and medical services, compared to an external situation which, from biographical reconstructions, cannot be defined as more eligible.