Seeking Asylum in Times of Crisis: Reception, Confinement, and Detention at Europe’s Southern Border

Abstract

This article analyses from a socio-legal point of view how the European Union Agenda on Migration is reshaping the Common European Asylum System by focusing on the impact it has had on the reform of the Italian reception system. After a preliminary examination of the European Union standards on reception, this article focuses on the European Union Agenda on Migration and shows that its main aim is to stimulate frontline Member States to reform their border control and reception practices by strengthening powers for the surveillance and detention of asylum-seekers. It then explores the Italian case, analysing how the hotspot approach has been implemented in practice and the influence it is having in pushing the Italian reception system from a policy model driven – albeit with a certain degree of ambiguity – by humanitarian concerns, to a model where security and border control priorities prevail. Finally, it concludes by describing some of the main features of the social sorting apparatus which was created by the European Union Agenda on Migration for discriminating between asylum-seekers in clear need of protection who can be relocated to other Member States, and others who should be trapped in the reception systems of frontline Member States.