The governance and local Integration of migrants and Europe's refugees: Italy, Calabria

The right to asylum in Italy is enshrined in article 10.4 of the Constitution, granting protection to “the foreigner who is denied in his country the effective exercise of the democratic rights guaranteed by the Constitution”. Over the years, different laws regulating the asylum issue have been put in place, notably the so-called “Martelli Law” of 1990. Until the beginning of the 1980s, Italy was considered by the international community almost exclusively as a transit route for refugees to other countries (Petrović, 2011: 35). Between 1980 and 1989, 11,831 asylum applications from non-European countries were made in Italy (Hein, 2010). We must remember that the Martelli Law only regulated some fundamental aspects of care given to displaced migrants. This act recognized a contribution of first assistance provided by the Prefectures to all asylum seekers "without means of subsistence or hospitality in Italy". The continuous waves of forced migration in the 1990s, especially from the Balkans, destabilized the asylum system envisioned by the Martelli Law.