The North–South Myth Revised: A Comparison of the Italian and German Migration Regimes

Since the beginning of the migration crisis in the 1990s, Italy and Germany have been considered to be the two showpieces of different migration control systems in Europe, where an ‘inefficient’ South is contrasted with an ‘effective’ North in terms of immigration control and humanitarian protection. Italy is often considered to have a lax immigration regime with weak border controls and few guarantees for asylum seekers and refugees, whereas Germany, in contrast, is shown as having an ideal asylum machinery with lower irregular immigration and no need for regularisation processes. This article challenges such a bipolar vision of the European immigration and shows that the ‘North–South axis’ dividing European control systems is not based on empirical evidence but on a myth which fails to take into account the logic of controls and the socio-economic contexts in which they are enforced.