Making sense of change in asylum policy in Italy: from outlier to forerunner, to EU mainstreaming

Similarly to other Southern EU countries, until the early 2000s Italy has charaterised as an outlier in the field of asylum policy, given the lack of an asylum law and of a proper reception system. However, in the 2010s, in face of increasing arrivals of asylum seekers from the shores of Lybia and Tunisia and tense relations with other – central and Northern – EU contries over borders control, the asylum system became increasingly complex and multi-layered. In the midst of the 2015 crisis, whereas most EU countries undertook a process of centralization of competences and top-down mangement of reception, Italy stood out as a forerunner in promoting the building of a complex system of multilevel governance, with the introduction of various consultative venues in the attempt to foster coordination with local and regional authorities on the one hand, and with NGOs on the other. This incipient MLG governance system was dismantelled in 2018 by the Gentiloni government under the pressure of EU concerns for borders control, leading also in Italy to the structuration of an increasingly centralised and restrictive asylum system. In this article we analyse this trajectory of the Italian asylum system from outlier to forerunner, to final EU mainstreaming, by focusing on the years of the European asylum crisis and contrasting the Italian path with that of two trational asylum countries, i.e. Germany and Finland, and of two outliers in Southern Europe, i.e. Spain and Greece.