Negotiating the Governance of Migration through Informality: An Ethnographic Account from the Italian-Slovenian Border

This contribution examines the increasing informalisation of the governance of migration in securitised border zones and investigates different types of informalities implemented by state and non-state actors in order to respectively reinforce or challenge securitarian approaches to migration. The securitisation of migration entails emergency-like and crisis-driven techniques of control that usually conflict with legal and procedural safeguards for migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees. Against this background, this work argues that state actors rely on informal, semi-official, and opaque practices to bypass normative constraints, which allows them to exercise control over migratory flows without taking active responsibility for it. At the same time, bottom-up solidarity initiatives benefit from their non-institutional approach and unmediated access to people on the move to counteract such actions and expose state misconduct or inaction, ultimately calling for greater accountability. Focusing on the informal readmissions affair that involved the Italian-Slovenian border between 2020 and 2021, this paper explores the micro-dynamics that shape the management of migration in securitised border zones and how informality is strategically wielded. This work contends that informality is complex in practice and can be understood as a technique of power ‘from above’ as well as a strategy of resistance ‘from below.’ Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted along the so-called Balkan route and in Trieste from 2020 to 2023, this article illustrates that informal readmissions at the Italian-Slovenian border were part of a ‘grey area’ of governmentality in which state and non-state actors negotiated their field of action at the margins of the formal law and public space. Through this, light is shed on the practices performed by both state and non-state actors, highlighting their interconnectedness and the articulations developing among each other. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with institutional and non-institutional actors, participant observation, and analysis of policy and legal documents. The empirical material has been interpreted through an interdisciplinary approach, combining security studies, political geography, and informality studies.