The Frontiers of Rights: Exploring Solidarity in the Case-Law of the Italian Constitutional Court on Non-EU Citizens' Social Rights

At the time of the so-called post-refugee crisis, when confused, fast changing and frequently inconsistent immigration legislations have become more and more frequent across European countries, turning to courts, and particularly to Supreme/Constitutional courts, has proved being one of the few successful strategies to resist the progressive erosion of migrants' fundamental rights and liberties. The article enquires into the role of the Italian Constitutional Court in securing spaces of legal protection for immigrants, invoking the principles of equality, human dignity and solidarity. The purpose is on the one hand to unveil the effective potency of the legal reasoning underpinning the court's decisions and, on the other hand, to discuss whether such a case-law can effectively provide new solidarity-based legal frames to immigration law. The contribution focuses on the Italian case, as a paradigmatic example of a country strongly affected by migration inflows, severely hit by an economic crisis that has caused dramatic cuts in social welfare and has contributed exacerbating the political climate, but where solidarity, equality, fundamental rights and human dignity are explicitly and strongly entrenched in the Constitution, and where courts, especially the Constitutional Court, have been proactive in protecting and promoting migrants' fundamental rights.