Stuck and Exploited. Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Italy Between Exclusion, Discrimination and Struggles. Edited by Francesco Della Puppa and Giuliana Sanò

Abstract

Stuck and Exploited: refugees and asylum seekers in Italy often remain entrapped in the bureaucratic and juridic limbo of an inefficient and unjust ‘reception’ system, characterized by opacity and discretion. On the one hand, due to the state of this system, refugees and asylum seekers’ vulnerabilities and fragilities arise, together with exploitation of their labour. On the other hand, this structural situation opens the door to a cultural and media struggle: political and economic subjects use the term asylum seekers differently, manipulating it, exploiting the refugees’ conditions to feed their purposes. The book edited by Della Puppa and Sanò critically investigates the forms of exclusion and segregation of asylum seekers, as well as the disparities and discriminations they are subject to in their everyday lives in Italy. The volume presents numerous studies focused on what is referred to as a depersonalized system: The standardisation and depersonalisation of relationships, amplified by the intercultural character of the encounter, produces infantilisation and dependence. In so doing, it reproduces the welfarist logic of aid. Although this logic is demonised in official discourse, it tends to be reproduced – sometimes unconsciously – through everyday tools and practices in this sector. (Spada, p. 139)