Conflicting Models of Pluralism in Local Migration Policies: Empirical Evidences from Italy

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1 Conflicting Models of Pluralism in Local Migration Policies: Empirical Evidences from Italy Angelo Scotto, University of Pavia Abstract Italian municipalities must face difficult problems about immigration: they are the main direct providers of welfare services, but their powers and resources to perform these duties are limited by budget cuts decided by national governments. Moreover, the activities and services for immigrants often raise discontent among Italian citizens who ascribe to the foreign population negative effects on public safety and access to welfare. This is why immigration is often relevant in local political agendas, and causes some of the clearest differences between different parties and candidates. Here I assume that municipalities, when dealing with migration, adopt models of integration and pluralism that range from the subordination of minorities to the coordination of differences, and the chosen model influences the policies, the policy process itself, the government s relationships with other public and private actors, and the visibility of the issue in the political agenda. Specifically, subordination approaches lead to reduced collaboration with the non-profit sector and migrants organizations, and to greater visibility of the issue, in order to build political consensus on restrictive decisions. I try to verify this assumption by analyzing local migration policies in the province of Pavia, in Lombardy, where the main municipalities adopt very different approaches to migration policy, thus providing a valid case for comparation. The analysis has been conduced with qualitative techniques: semi-structured in-depth interviews with politicians, civil servants, non-profit workers, and analysis of municipal decisions on immigration. THIS IS AN EARLY DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE Immigration, integration, policies The integration of migrants in host societies has been a relevant issue in European countries for decades. Particularly, the change in the economic and productive system that took place in the middle of the 20th century has also caused changes in the features of the migratory phenomenon in Europe, and in the way governments dealt with the issue. As stated by Ambrosini (2005, 60), after the Second world war and until the early 1970s the main migration flows were mainly from the Southern European countries toward Western European ones, and migrants were employed mainly in the industrial sector; but during the 1970s these flows became less and less relevant in terms of numbers, while new migration flows from other global region (Latin America, East Asia, Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and, after the collapse of the USSR, Eastern Europe) began; moreover, the destination of these flows included also previous emigration countries like Italy, Spain and Greece. These post-fordist migrants are employed in a wide range of sectors: the construction industry, the tertiary sector, agriculture; and they are often given the so-called 3Ds; dirty, dangeorus and demeaning jobs (Abella, Park, Bohning 1995), that are no longer interesting for native citizens. However, the change in the attitude towards migrants and integration is not due only to the change of migration flows: before the post-fordist transition, the governments of many host countries assumed that migrant workers were temporary guests, who would go back home when the need for 1

2 foreign workforce was over. But when in the 1970s the energy crisis led to recession and rise of unemployment rates all over Europe, the majority of migrants did not go back to their countries, since at that point they were settled and wanted to stay permanently. The host societies were taken aback by such a situation, and the migration policies implementated since then had to face not only the management of foreign communities within the national borders, but also the social and political integration of the migrants, and the management of social and cultural diversity. The European countries dealt with these issues by adopting different models that were linked to their national concepts of citizenship: the main models were assimilation and pluralism (Martiniello 2000). In the assimilationist model, which is typical of France, citizenship is universal, as the rights and duties linked to it, and cultural differences are relegated to the sphere of private life; at the other side of the spectrum, pluralist models do not deny the public role of cultural differences, and sometimes also promote it, e.g. with multicultural policies like the ones the Netherlands implemented until the early 2000s. While these models do have an impact on migration policies (e.g. they determine which principle is adopted for citizenship, jus solis or jus sanguinis), they are abstract constructions that have never been fully applied, and in the last decades there has been a convergence which led to the development of models in which both assimilationist and pluralist features are present. This trend is due also to the acknowledgement that in every society there is some degree of pluralism, and the role of integration policies is trying to direct social processes towards the preferable kind of pluralism. According to Pollini (1993, 88) there are four possible model of integration for multicultural societies, and they all have an underlying model of pluralism: subordination, in which there is antagonism between the dominant culture and the subdued ones, which leads to unequal pluralism; corporatisation, in which the different cultures are separated and conflicting, which leads to segmented pluralism; absorption, in which secondary cultures mostly conform to the dominant one, which lead to residual pluralism; coordination, in which all the existing cultures, or the most of them, contribute to create a new and different culture, which leads to equal pluralism. This classification is useful because actual and more specific policies can descend from these models: e.g. a subordination approach could translate in denying migrants access to some work sectors. How does a society adopt a model of integration and pluralism? It is hard to explain such a process, since several actors factors play a role at the same time, and not all of them may be easily observable; anyway, in this paper we are interested mainly in the role of political subjects: persons and groups who hold offices, or compete for power and try to influence the agenda-setting in order to do that. Since we focus on Europe, we refer to democratic systems in which the main political actors are parties. As Downs famously said, parties formulate policies in order to win elections, rather than win elections to formulate policies (Downs 1957, 28); a corollary of this axiom is that policies are more likely to be formulated when they are related to issues that are relevant for the majority of citizens. Immigration has been a relevant political issue in Europe since the l980s, and its relevance has been constantly increasing, so it is not surprising that many parties put migration policies at the core of their programs and manifesto. These policies are more or less explicitly formulated on the basis of the above-mentioned models of integration, on the expectations on how foreigners will settle in the country, and on the priorities parties think are the most important. It is important to note that all across Europe the parties which have been more successfull in exploiting immigration to raise consents and gain votes are the ones which have a negative view of 2

3 the impact of immigration on the host society and promote restrictive approach to migration flows or even subordinating practices for migrants. Not only do these parties have grown quickly both at national and European level, but they also participated to governments in some countries, and are able to influence the agenda and the policymaking also where they are at the opposition (Schain 2006). At the same time, leaders and parties which have a positive or realistic view of immigration usually try to de-politicise the issue, e.g. by focusing on other themes during the electoral campaignis and, when involved in migration policymaking, by framing it in wider questions, like solidarity. These considerations are valid for politics not only at the national level, but also at the local level. The tasks and powers of local governments have increased in many European countries since the 1980s, for several reasons among which we point out the implementation, in the European Union, of the principle of subsidiarity, according to which decisions have to be made at the level of government as near as possible the citizens. This is why regional and city governments are involved in policymaking on issues that in the past were exclusive jurisdiction of the national level, and among these there are the reception, management and social inclusion of migrants. The migration studies have acknowledged the importance of the local level, and the multilevel nature of migration policymaking in the European Union and many member states. Several studies showed that the factors who shape migration policies work in a similar way when regions or cities are concerned. Case study Italy has became an immigration country in the late 1970s, but there has not been a common awareness of this social change until the 1990s, when new and larger migration flows from Eastern Europe began. Nowadays, migrants are around the 8% of Italian population, and they are concentrated in the Central and Northern regions and in urban areas. While economic migrations have been strong until the early 2000s, after the 2008 financial crisis and the following recession flows of migrants seeking jobs in Italy have gradually decreased, while family reunifications and asylum seeking have became more relevant (and even for many asylum seeker Italy is just a stage before their final destination); however, the percentage of foreigners in Italy is expected to keep on growing because of demographical features. Immigration has been relevant in Italian politics since the early 1990s, which was a period of political turmoil due to the collapse of the party system born after the Second world war. In this paper we consider the years , in which the Italian political system was characterised by the competition among two coalitions of parties, the so called centre-right and centre-left, which alternated to the national government. For what concerns immigration, the centre-right had a more restrictive approach, as it could be expected, but the differences on the issues were less dramatic than in othern European countries. There are several reasons: in both the coalitions there were Christian-democratic parties with strong links to Catholic associations, whose solidarian motions had therefore constant visibility regardless of which coalition was in charge; the main party in the centre-right coalition, Forza Italia, represented mainly the interests of small and medium businessmen that needed foreign workforce for their firms, so they were against too restrictive laws; and the actor with the most negative view of immigration was the Northern League, a regional party whose main goal during the 1990s was the indipendence of Northern regions from Italy, and in the early 2000s (when the party joined the centre-right coalition) the devolution of powers to local governments. However, after the mediocre results of their regionalist battles in , the 3

4 Northern League shifted to a more aggressive rethoric on immigration and security; in the same years, the conservative Christian-democratic Union of Centre became weaker and cut ties with the centre-right coalition, while the economic crisis led to a rise in unemployment and a littler request for foreigner workforce; this is why in the Italian general elections of 2008 and in following local elections immigration got more politicised and polarising than in previous competitions. Particularly in municipal elections, right-wing parties and candidates were often ables to capitalize the raising discontent among Italian citizens who are affected by the worsening of welfare services at the local level which the administrations have to provide, with increasing difficulties because of budget cuts decided by the national governments and ascribe it to the presence of foreigners, who are accused of competing with natives for services and jobs, other than being a threat for public safety. The right-wing electioneering on the issues used tones and slogans consistent with the subordination model for managing the migrant population; and sometimes the policymaking has been consistent with what had been said during the electoral campaigns. After 2008, many regions and municipalities administered by the Northern League, alone or within the centre-right coalition, issued decrees on public safety or urban decorum which on purpose had a negative impact on business ran by foreigners or on the access of migrant to housing and welfare service. But in the same years many municipalities have been governed by centre-left coalitions which, while they were able to keep the political agenda on less divisive issues, still had to deal with increasing migrant presence in their areas, and do that without angering or alienating their electors. In this context, we focus on the province of Pavia, in the Northern Italian region of Lumbardy. We think that, with reference to this paper s topic, this province is a valid case study because there is a strong migrant presence (foreigners are the 10,7% of the provincial population), and its main municipalities offer a wide range of political experiences which let us to observe how politically differentiated local governments deal with immigration in a homogeneous (from an administrative point of view) local unit. Historically, the province of Pavia has been an industrial area with a strong agricultural tradition; the leftist parties were very strong during the First Republic ( ), as in all the North-West of Italy. During the 1990s, however, the heirs of the Communist and Socialist parties became weaker, and the province began to lean towards right, although this shift in the political preference has not been equal in all the cities and towns. The political experiences of the five main municipalities of the province have been summarized in table 1. In the following paragraph we will describe the characteristic of local migration policies in these municipalities during the last decade. The data we used are from two different studies: a research conducted in for the author s PhD dissertation, and a research commissioned by the Provincial administration of Pavia on the activities for refugee in the area (Dal Zotto, Scotto 2014). In both the studies qualitative methods of research were used, and the main sources of informations were semi-structured in-depth interviews with local assessors, nonprofit workers, public officials who deal with migration-related issues. Municipality Population Foreign population Political experience 1994-today at 1/1/2016 at 1/1/2016 Pavia (13,5%) 1996: centre-left coalition. 2000: centre-left coalition 2005: centre-left coalition. 2009: centre-right coalition. 2014: Democratic Party and a civic list. 4

5 Vigevano (14,1%) 1996: centre-left coalition. 2000: centre-right coalition with Northern League. 2005: centre-right coalition with Northern League. 2010: Northern League and a civic list. 2015: Northern League in a right-wing coalition. Voghera (12,3%) 1996: centre-left coalition. 2000: centre-right coalition with Nothern League. 2005: centre-right coalition with Northern League. 2010: centre-right coalition with Northern League. 2015: centre-right coalition without Northern League. Mortara (14,7%) 1994: centre-right coalition without Northern League. 1998: centre-right coalition without Northern League. 2002: centre-right coalition with Northern League. 2007: Northern League. 2012: Northern League. Stradella (14,1%) 1995: centre-left civic list. 1999: centre-left civic list. 2004: centre-left civic list. 2009: centre-left civic list. 2014: centre-left civic list. Pavia The county seat of the province is today a tertiary pole where the main economic activities are linked to the local hospital and to the university (the oldest in Lumbardy). The city has a leftist tradition, and also after the end of the First Republic centre-left coalition have governed the city until 2009, when the centre-right won the municipal election. While in other Italian cities migration issues have been a key factor in shifts towards right, in Pavia the political change of 2009 has been caused mainly by conflicts within the centre-left coalition, which caused the early resignation of the previous administration, and by the economic impasse of the city. Although proposals about immigrations have been always present in the candidate and parties manifestos, the issue itself has never been the most relevant in the local elections in 2005, 2009 and That being so, it is not surprising that the political alternation between centre-left and centre-right did not cause a significant change in local migration policies. According to the nonprofit workers we have interviewed, there have not been relevant differences between left-wing and right-wind administration on migration policies; only an interviewee expressed a negative opinion on the centre-right administration, but it was not related to the attitude toward migrants: the criticism was aimed at the way the administration tried to promote competition for funding among the nonprofit organisations. While we do not have enough data to confirm this criticis, it is interesting to note that the previous centre-left administration adopted a network approach for migration policymaking: in the district social plan five migrants needs were identified, and for each of them some activities and project have been organized in concert with nonprofit organisation and public office. Not only the network approach is consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, but it is also a common way to de-politicise migration, by avoiding a too direct involvement of local governments. Vigevano Vigevano is the second largest city in the province of Pavia, and an industrial centre with a strong tradition in the shoe manifacture. A communist stronghold during the First Republic, Vigevano dramatically shifted to right in the late 1990s. In recent years immigration has been a relevant issues in the local agenda and during electoral campaigns, and it contributed to the success of the Northern League that, after participating to centre-right coalitions for a decade, was ble to elect the mayor 5

6 without alliances in 2010, and confirm it in 2015 in coalition with the right-wing party Fratelli d Italia and some civic lists. The centre-right coalition which governed Vigevano from 2000 to 2010 did not have a restrictive approach on migration, and it was willing to work together with nonprofit organisations to manage the foreign presence in the urban area: for example, a local association was granted the use of an office in the city hall to run an information and assistance desk for migrants, and in the and district social plan there were projects for the presence of cultural mediators in the hospital and for activities of multicultural integration of minors in the schools. Things changed after the Northern League s victory: not only did the attention for migrants in the programmation decrease significantly, but the new administration also considered immigration primarily as a security issue (the immigration office was constituted in the local police headquarters) and openly criticised the previously adopted approach, had a worse relationship with the nonprofit sector (the collaboration with the above-mentioned was terminated after ten years) and promoted decrees that more or less directly damaged the foreigners living in the city: e.g. the rules for the waiting lists for kindergartens were changed, and in the schools the children whose parents had not paid the fees were excluded from the school meals. These decisions received great local and national attentions, and sometimes were widely criticised, but the controversies did not harm the administration, which was confirmed in In Vigevano the Northern League was able to give great visibility to migration-related issues, put them at the centre of the local agenda, and it built its consents on them. It is important to note that this line of action has been followed not only while electioneering, but also (and mainly) during the five-year administration: the municipal migration policies in Vigevano are consistent with the previous propaganda, and are part of it at the national level, since Vigevano is almost a model for the current leader of the Northern League; these policies will also be the main legacy of Northern League s administration, given the great exposure they had on the media. Voghera Voghera is the third city in the province of Pavia. It experienced a shift toward right in the political preferences of its inhabitants too, but unlike Vigevano the Northern League was not able to win elections alone: from 2000 to 2015 the party participated to the centre-right coalition, and when it ran alone in the 2015 election it lost to its previous allies. While foreigners are more than 12% of the population, the percentage is lower than in the other municipalities, and in fact immigration played only a marginal role in local elections. The centreright coalition which has been governing the city since 2000 does not give great relevance to the issue, and was willing to collaborate with the nonprofit organizations to delegate them the activities for migrants: in the and social plans there were general considerations about granting health assistance also to irregular migrants and working for a better integration of thirdcountries foreigners, and for what concern the activities, they provided for an agreement with a local cooperative for the management of a service centre for migrants and for mediators in the hospital and in the schools that asked for them. Yet, there has been a conflict with another local association, which protested against a municipal decree that requested the migrants to prove they did not have any property in their home country in order to access welfare services. Apart from this, however, nonprofit workers who deal with migration said that there is a good relationship with the administration. Mortara 6

7 Mortara and Stradella are the main small municipalities in the province of Pavia, but their political experiences are clearly divergent. Moreover, Mortara is a peculiar case: like Vigevano, this previously communist town realigned in the 1990s, and after 13 years of centre-right administrations the Northern League was able to win elections and govern alone. But the Leaguist candidate who won in 2007 had been already mayor of Mortara in 1994 and 1999, and in those election it was the candidate of the centre-right and ran against the Northern League. Therefore, the first Leaguist administration was not in discontinuity with the previous ones; in 2012, the incumbent mayor decided to run again with its own civic list, but was defeated by the new candidate of the Northern League. Immigration was a relevant issue in the last municipal elections, and it was discussed mainly in terms of public safety; in fact the same assessor received the mandates to deal with immigration, social service and security issues. But the new administration adopted a different approach from the one used by the Northern League in Vigevano, where the intention of giving priorities to the interest of Italian citizens was quite explicit; in Mortara, instead, the attitude toward migrants is more pragmatic and based on the principle that foreigners should be treated like all the other residents. This means that there is no interest for social or cultural specificities, and specific actions on immigration are carried out only if necessary to ensure the compliance with laws or the good performance of institutions. So, according to the assessor we interviewed, the administration conducts a careful monitoring of the area in order to prevent activities against the law, e.g. prostitution; and in schools differentiated classes were tested to teach Italian and civic education to foreign children. The assessor claimed that these classes were the opposite of racism because they helped the children to be included in the society and that almost all the parents were enthusiast about them. We could say that the policies promoted by the Northern League in Mortara are nearer the model of absorption than the subordination one. They use a no-nonsense rethoric that allows them to take a tough stance on some migration-related issues and collaborate with nonprofit organisations at the same time. For example, in the district social plan the management of the existing assistance desk for migrants has been entrusted to the same association that was excluded from the administration in Vigevano. Conclusions In the municipalities where right-wing parties which promote strict migration policies govern alone, like the Northern League in Vigevano and Mortara, there are two different approaches to migration policymaking. In Vigevano the local government adopted a subordination approach: the municipal decisions are more or less explicitly designed in order to make it harder for foreign residents to access to some public services; this approach is consistent with the political manifesto of the Northern League, according to which the priority is to grant the interests of Italian citizens; therefore, the local policies are meant to strenghten the consensus for the local administration, aside from their actual effectiveness. Such a line of action, however, is incompatible with collaboration with the social private sector: although the nonprofit and voluntary organisations that deal with immigration do not necessarily share the same values and strategies (Scotto 2016), their commitment on the issue is obviously at odds with the Italians first approach; this is why municipal governments who implement subordination policies are less keen to work together with NPOs and adopt a network model for the definition of the policy contents. 7

8 The second possible approach is promoting (or claiming to promote) the absorption of migrants while giving priority to public safety; here the local government stresses its ability to manage with the foreign presence in a pragmatic way, and the scarcity or absence of specific policies for the integration of migrants is justified by claiming that foreigners are like the native citizens and therefore do not need special treatment; while this approach ignore the specific problems migrants have to deal with, it does not impede the collaboration with the nonprofit sector, but it sill requires that the municipal government acts directly on the issue and does not delegate all the activities to other actors. By contrast, delegation is the main option for municipalities that do not give much relevance to immigration. Where this happens, the definition and implementation of effective activities for the integration of migrants depend on the ability of the foreign communities and the NPOs to promote the migrants rights, and on the lack of hostility or resistance by political movements or other organizations in the area. Therefore, in these municipalities the implicitly adopted approach is similar to the corposatisation models, since the pre-existing separation among migrants and natives is not addressed by the government and changes are possible if communities and organizations act like interest and pressure groups. Finally, the municipal governments that want to grant the access of migrants to public services and to promote their integration without fostering negative reactions from the citizens usually want to adopt an intermediate model between the corporatisation and the coordination: while the segmented pluralism and the separation between migrants and natives are disapproved, forced absorption is rejected too; at the same time, the cooperation between the dominant majority and the minorities is not meant to create a new different culture, since such a purpose could cause the rejection of part of the population, thus undermining their acceptance of migrants, that is one of the necessary objectives of integration policies. Therefore, in these municipalities migration policies aim to grant basic integration (access to services, respect for the law) and mutual recognition and pacific cohabitation among different communities. In order to do so, the most common approach is to open the policymaking process to several actors, from public offices to NPOs organisations, comitees of citizens, in order to de-politicise the issue and share the responsibilities for the decisions. In this paper, we have not considered some factors that may significantly influence the policy choices of municipal governments dealing with immigration: the multi-level nature of migration governance, because of which the possible local policies are limited by decisions made at upper levels of government; and the possible effects of path dependance, that may make it harder for policymaker to adopt approaches significantly different from the ones used from past administrators. However, as we have shown in the observed cases, it is still possible for municipalities to modify their migration policies on the basis of political change so, while these factors have to be taken into account in the policy analysis, they do not disprove the nexus between the preferred models of pluralism and the actual lines of action of municipal policymakers. References Abella, M.I., Park, Y., Bohning, W.R Adjustments to Labour Shortages and Foreign Workers in the Republic of Korea, Genève, Ilo, International Migration Papers, 1. Ambrosini, M Sociologia delle migrazioni, Bologna, il Mulino. Dal Zotto, E., Scotto, A. 2014, Dall Emergenza alla Rete, Province of Pavia, report. 8

9 Downs, A., An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York, Harper. Martiniello, M Le società multietniche. Diritti e doveri uguali per tutti?, Bologna, il Mulino. Pollini, G Appartenenza e integrazione, in G. Scidà, G. Pollini, Stranieri in città, Milano, FrancoAngeli. Schain, M.A The extreme-right and immigration policy-making: Measuring direct and indirect effects, West European Politics 29(2): Doi: /