The starting premise of discussions at this roundtable on migration, organized by Aspen Institute Italia, was that current tensions within Europe demonstrate how Italy has effectively become – and is being seen by its continental partners – as a buffer state: a country deputized to serve as a “shock absorber” in the new geopolitics of the Mediterranean.
This situation naturally comes with high costs, though perhaps also – it was observed – with some advantages. For instance, the greater flexibility accorded to Italy on the fiscal front could in part be a form of indirect redress, or at any rate signal that countries such as Germany or France have come to the decision that shifting Europe’s borders to the north of the Alps is definitely not in their interests. Having shut down the Balkan route (in however makeshift a manner), the deluge of migrants is raining down on Italian shores that are nominally a European border, but still – in point of fact and most importantly – a national border.
In the context of this somewhat charged topic, the words of the UN Special Representative for International Migration Louise Arbour, who gave an address at the roundtable, were seen as useful to maintaining a sense of proportion and to seeking sophisticated solutions that look beyond pressing concerns.
Indeed, Louise Arbour cautioned those present of the need to ground perceptions in reality. In the case of Italy, a mere ten years ago, annual net migration exceeded half a million people, in a situation where unemployment was contained. Today, paradoxically, this has dropped to 135,000 people, a figure that is on par with that for the previous year, as confirmed by ISTAT data, but which is the result of a higher number of arrivals (including landings: 180,000 people) and departures, and in a context where youth unemployment has reached 37%, such that political conditions are unfavorable to any great deal of openness being shown towards jobseekers arriving from abroad. Against such a backdrop, the perceived numbers are far higher than the reality.
In terms of advancing possible solutions, the participants wavered between what would be rational and sensible in the long run and what is currently politically feasible. Arbour, who is tasked with putting in place a global governance framework for migration, argued that national policies should in the long term not be aimed solely at “halting emigration”, in part because both the push factors (conflicts and poverty) and pull factors (the structural need for migrants that Europe will have in the coming decades) will remain too strong. The question is how to mediate between these two levels, which today seem so far apart.
To that end, Arbour proposed a focus on gradually replacing illegal immigration (run largely by criminal organizations) with legal entry channels. However, in order for this strategy to take effect fairly quickly, there needs to be a clear and explicit quid quo pro arrangement in place with countries of origin. Nigeria, the country which most people rescued in the Mediterranean today come from, was cited as a case in point. The African colossus would never be willing to take back the tens of thousands of its citizens expelled from Europe in the absence of any concrete incentive to do so. Hence, the readmission agreement concluded by Italy cannot work unless a more direct link is established between the management of legal immigration and the reopening of legal entry quotas. As many of those who addressed the roundtable noted, this is one of the lessons – seemingly forgotten today – learned at a time when Italy, with some degree of success, used the mechanism of legal entry as a quid pro quo for curbs on migration flows from the Mediterranean. It was conceded, however, that the fragility of Italy’s African counterparts unquestionably makes everything much more difficult. Without agreements in place with Europe as a whole, and not just with Italy, this kind of “exchange” will never work, given the numbers involved.
The suggestion was made that while it may seem counterintuitive to reinstitute national legal immigration quotas as one of the tools (though many others will be needed) to combat the current migration crisis, the reality is that without a genuine trade-off with countries of origin (so that for every person repatriated, as many are admitted legally), it will not be possible to control flows. Consequently, Italy cannot help but continue to invest in such efforts. Indeed, it was underlined that failure on the immigration front would ultimately call into question the ability to reconcile democracy with liberal principles. In this regard, it was urged that Italy’s European partners need to understand that this is where the real challenge lies, rather than just looking upon the country as a convenient bulwark.