The Making of Policies: Immigration and Immigrants in Italy

The aim of this article is to explain three paradoxes of Italian immigration policies: 1) the relative continuity of immigration policies regardless of changes in the governing coalition; 2) the fact that policy changes relate more to conceptualisation and policy-framing rather than to actual policies; 3) the discrepancy between a general public rhetoric hostile to illegal immigration on the one hand, and public action, which has introduced mass regularisations, on the other. The article is based on empirical research carried out in two stages. The first stage investigated the formation and development of the main systematic immigration reform law (the Turco–Napolitano Act passed in 1998), while the second analysed the formation and development of the ‘reform of the reform’ approved by the centre-right government (the Bossi–Fini Act passed in 2002). Although the research found a degree of convergence between the immigration policies of the two governments, it also revealed a discrepancy in the decision-making style of the two reforms: the one of the centre-left was based more on bargaining between government and opposition, while for the centre-right it was more the result of a unilateral move; the first was more governmental and open to consultation with civil society, the second was more political and sensitive to public opinion. To investigate variations over time, five main approaches to immigration and immigrants were identified: solidarist, functionalist, legalitarian, multiculturalist and identitarian.