Lying the Truth

Italy’s 1998 Immigration Law 40 includes Article 18, which allows foreign “victims of human trafficking” the right to temporary residence permits on the condition that they participate in a rehabilitation program. The first step of this program, the act of denuncia, is to file criminal charges against exploiters at the police station. However, the resulting testimony cannot be understood through the victim/agent trope of the bureaucratic state, which uses these categories to make the other understandable through a process of what I call “confessional recognition.” In this article, I show how, despite the proliferation of biometric technologies to identify foreign others and so control migration flows at borders, confessional practices continue to play a central role in deciding who is admitted legally. Moreover, I illustrate how the question of redemption and expiation is not only a crucial issue for Catholic groups involved in aid programs for foreigners but is also central to Italian state integration policies, thus revealing how juridical norms are deeply influenced by the vocabulary of religious morality and vice versa.