How Decision-Makers’ Perceptions of Public Attitudes on Immigration Drive Responses to the Refugee Crisis: the Case of Public Utility Works for Asylum Seekers in the Veneto Region

This paper examines sensemaking processes and organizational decision-making in the framework of the refugee crisis in Italy, with a specific focus on the Veneto region, governed by the far-right populist “Lega Nord” and characterised by the highest number of anti-migrant mobilisations in the country in 2016. Applying the literature on sensemaking in organizational studies and relying on semi-structured interviews with Mayors, MPs, political leaders and officials, I will focus, first, on how different understandings of the causes and effects of asylum-seeking flows and perceptions of public attitudes and anti-migrant demonstrations affected the actions and strategies of mainstream and non-mainstream parties/actors in the region. Secondly, I will analyse the impact of these strategies and actions on the governance system, showing how they produced diverse (reactive vs proactive) policy responses and how they led to a deep political-institutional crisis within the region. Finally, I will focus on one of the main policy outcomes of this process: the development by local authorities of local policies for the involvement of asylum-seekers in voluntary public utility works as a response to anti-migrant mobilizations. I will specifically show how this policy, first developed in the Veneto region and later adopted throughout the whole Italy, has been variously developed by local authorities depending on their different strategic or ideological considerations.