Lost in the Fog: Non-Returnable Migrants in Italy Stuck in a Quasi-Limbo Condition

In Italy, although the Return and Readmission of migrants in an irregular administrative status is one of the preferred policy answers to irregular migration since the early 2000, safeguards are applied to those migrants who cannot be returned for practical (de facto) or humanitarian (de iure) reasons, so-called “non-removable”. The institution of “non-returnability” was established in 1998, modified throughout the years, fragmented into strict categories. These changes took place within the continuous modification of the legal condition of migrants, whose rights were stretched and compressed according to the political coalitions governing the country, the policy agendas' priorities, and the public discourses.

When delving into the topic of non-returnability in the Italian policy and normative framework, there are many controversial aspects, which have important consequences on migrants’ social life, starting from a stable precarity of the administrative status and a mobile rights stratification.

Based on the Horizon Project MORE (Motivations, experiences and consequences of returns and readmission policy: revealing and developing effective alternatives), this paper presents the results of a study on non-returnable migrants in Italy through the analysis of the relevant policy and law framework, interviews to experts and state agents. The findings revealed that non-returnability is not equal to regularisation, with consequent hampering of social integration; it unveiled several controversial aspects in the policy and law framework, such as the obligation for a de facto non-returnable migrants to leave the country, the important administrative arbitrariness, the scarcity of data on the topic. Within the given framework, this contribution examines the condition of those migrants finding themselves in a position of non-returnability, but unable to obtain their documents. We argue that this condition can be defined “quasi-limbo” because, on the scale of administrative and social precarity, it comes right after the one of undocumented migrants but before regular migrants.