Applied Sociology

Este ARI examina los recientes cambios en la política de inmigración italiana llevados a cabo en 2008 por el gobierno conservador de Silvio Berlusconi. Las medidas contra la migración irregular aprobadas en 2008 han suscitado una oleada de críticas en toda la UE.

The Spanish citizenship regime is considered to be one of the most restrictive in Europe. In this paper, we argue that our understanding of Spanish legislation with respect to citizenship and its functioning requires a more nuanced approach. To this end, we focus on the exceptional rules that elude the usual naturalization requirements and allow fast-track naturalization for privileged nationals. Our primary goal is not simply to reconceptualise the Spanish citizenship regime but also to show how heritage-based rules, combined with intense migration flows, have prompted selection mechanisms that contradict the de-ethnicisation process allegedly underway in liberal states.

Clandestine migration, particularly along the Southern sea borders, dominates the debate on migration control in Europe. On the contrary, even if most irregular migrants are visa over-stayers, remarkably little is known about the management of the EU visa supply. This paper analyzes the role played by visa policy in the European immigration control system. It shows that visa policy has never been exclusively a tool of irregular migration prevention and that the overall trend of short-term visa supply highlights an asymmetric visa regime, increasingly open to Eastern European countries while remarkably rigid across the Mediterranean.

Abstract After more than two decades of policy inertia, since the late 1990s a new interest in labour migration arose across Europe and at the EU level. This translated into a new season of policy experimentation which expressed itself in very different forms across the continent. Such an uneven wave of policy change has not been interrupted by the crisis, which however has deeply altered its dynamics, propelling innovation in some countries and blocking it elsewhere. Based on in-depth fieldwork carried out in the framework of a comparative research project (www.labmiggov.eu) in six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom) and at EU level, this special issue aims at generating fresh empirical knowledge and new theoretical insights into the complexities of labour migration governance in Europe.In an attempt to go beyond a limited understanding of labour migration policies as admission of foreigners for working purposes, all the articles share a commo...

Visa policy is one of the most successful harmonized EU policy field. This report shows that European legislation regulates for which countries nationals, for how long, and for which reasons MSs can issue a short-stay visa. Besides this general framework, the analysis of national legislation shows that MSs retain certain capacity to shape visa policy beyond the existing European harmonized framework. The margin of appreciation granted allows establishing different national pattern of entry refusal that need to be analyzed in detail through an inventory of visa legislation in the selected country. The inventory shows that, although EU has succeeded in harmonizing a relevant immigration policy field such as short-stay visa, discretionary implementation and procedures at the state level cannot be neglected.  This report finally points out that the challenge of overstaying mainly remains a question of weak internal controls, rather than of efficient entry controls.

Chi acquisisce la cittadinanza di un determinato paese e perché? Nei paesi dell'Europa del Sud, dove ormai l'immigrazione è un fenomeno consolidato, politici e accademici dedicano sempre maggiore attenzione a queste domande. Allo stesso modo, i governi si mostrano sempre più interessati ai meccanismi che favoriscono l'integrazione degli stranieri residenti sul proprio territorio e si interrogano sul nesso fra cittadinanza e appartenenza.

La crisi economica ha dato nuova linfa al dibattito su un possibile e crescente uso strumentale delle naturalizzazioni degli immigrati. Il recente aumento delle concessioni di cittadinanza in numerosi paesi europei, per esempio, è stato interpretato come una strategia da parte dei migranti per stabilizzare la residenza e incrementare le proprie chances di mobilità in tempi di crisi 1. Gli immigrati naturalizzati godono, infatti, di una maggiore libertà di movimento, verso l'esterno del paese, rispetto a quelli che sono semplicemente residenti di lungo periodo. A questo proposito, è importante chiarire perché, nonostante la crescente attenzione riscontrata nel dibattito pubblico, determinare la reale dimensione di questo tipo di mobilità non sia affatto facile. La possibilità di stabilire se e come gli stranieri naturalizzati lascino il primo paese di residenza per cercare fortuna altrove dipende dalla loro iscrizione nei registri consolari nel nuovo paese di destinazione e dalla cancellazione nei registri dei municipi di residenza del paese d'origine.

Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain have in common two long episodes of strong emigration–during the first period of globalisation and after World War II–and they now share comparable types of foreign immigration. During the first period of globalisation, in the second half of the nineteenth century and before World War I, these countries made an important contribution to intra-European migration and to settlement migration in North America and South America. After World War II, they were among the main suppliers of the ...

The aim of this article is to contribute to the current debate on integration during economic downturn by analysing to what extent citizenship regimes may offer opportunities for instrumental uses of naturalisation in times of economic crisis. Its main goal is to provide a more nuanced view of citizenship acquisition, its implications and its alleged instrumental uses to stabilise legal status and improve mobility chances. For this purpose, our analysis focuses on the nexus between citizenship regimes and naturalisations trends in Italy and Spain as two major Southern European immigration countries that have similar migration histories, but rather different citizenship regimes. The first part of the article provides an overview of the scholarly debate on the concept of instrumental citizenship and elaborates a typology of the possible instrumental uses by states and migrants. The second part examines the citizenship regimes and analyses the opportunity structures opened up by citizenship acquisition channels in Italy and Spain. Finally, the article analyses naturalisation trends to show that instrumental uses of citizenship acquisition are closely connected to the different opportunity structures offered by the Italian and Spanish citizenship regimes.

The aim of this article is to contribute to the current debate on integration during economic downturn by analysing to what extent citizenship regimes may offer opportunities for instrumental uses of naturalisation in times of economic crisis. Its main goal is to provide a more nuanced view of citizenship acquisition, its implications and its alleged instrumental uses to stabilise legal status and improve mobility chances. For this purpose, our analysis focuses on the nexus between citizenship regimes and naturalisations trends in Italy and Spain as two major Southern European immigration countries that have similar migration histories, but rather different citizenship regimes. The first part of the article provides an overview of the scholarly debate on the concept of instrumental citizenship and elaborates a typology of the possible instrumental uses by states and migrants. The second part examines the citizenship regimes and analyses the opportunity structures opened up by citizenship acquisition channels in Italy and Spain. Finally, the article analyses naturalisation trends to show that instrumental uses of citizenship acquisition are closely connected to the different opportunity structures offered by the Italian and Spanish citizenship regimes.

Southern European countries have traditionally been perceived as weak immigration countries with inefficient legal entry avenues for foreign workers, high irregular migration rates and poor integration policies. In recent years, however, the adoption of more efficient control policies, new recruitment strategies and embryonic integration plans throughout the region has led to a change of paradigm in the governance of migration. And yet policy reforms do not seem to have produced the same results everywhere. The aim of this article is to enquire into possible explanations for the divergent paths of labour migration governance in Southern Europe, using Italy and Spain as comparative cases. As it will emerge, policy efficacy in the field of labour migration relates not only to the quality and consistency of policy design and implementation but also to factors that escape direct political control.

Is the economIc crIsIs In southern europe turnIng Into a mIgrant IntegratIon crIsIs? • Southern Europe has been severely hit by the current economic crisis with negative consequences in many areas. In this article the authors try to understand whether migrant integration has also been negatively affected and, if so, to what extent by analysing empirical data. Integration is, in fact, a complex matter, including several aspects which are connected but not automatically related, and thus are potentially different in their reactions to the economic crisis. First breaking down the concept of integration, the authors then compare Italy, Spain, and Portugal, paying special attention to the labour market, migrants' legal status, and public perceptions about immigration and immigrants. Finally the integration aspects which are more resilient and more sensitive to the crisis are noted, and possible implications for integration patterns of migrants to southern European are pointed out.