Migration crisis and the Arab Spring: understanding EU-Italian bewildering relations

With political turmoil sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East, since January 2011 hundreds of thousands of persons, mainly from Libya, have been displaced. While the majority of them have fled to Tunisia, Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa, about 60,000 persons have reached Italian shores. Accordingly, the European Union and Italy in particular have sought to respond to the putative migration crisis by enacting both bilateral and multilateral policy-initiatives. Against this context, this paper seeks to examine and explain the relation between Italian response towards irregular migration from North Africa and the one developed by the European Union. The focus is on migration policies, and underlying values, at the interstice of domestic politics and broader foreign policy re-engagement vis-a-vis North Africa. My interest is on the construction of images of “migration crisis” and their political significance in the context of EU-Italian relations. The paper addresses three interrelated questions: How does the domestic debate among key Italian parties relate to the policies implemented by the government to tackle migration from North Africa? How has Italian-European collaboration been affected by such debate? To what extent notions of crisis help us understand shifting EU-Italian relations concerning North Africa? In keeping with these broad objectives, the paper divides into three sections. The first section outlines Italian policy response to migration between January and October 2011. It also investigates whether notions of “emergency” and “crisis” have informed the domestic debate and the related policy-response. The second section documents the conflicting efforts of Italy and the European Union to “manage” migration from North Africa. Finally the third section elaborates on the lines of connection between domestic and foreign domains. This final section will present a critical re-examination of policy formation and policy-outputs eventually to defy singular explanations. Discrepancies between rhetoric and underlying policy interests remind us of the complex array of values and motivations that go well beyond populist-oriented discourses of crisis.