And so we arrive to talk about the actual laws that govern immigration, the infamous Bossi-Fini laws from 2002. “This law is, in a way, the expression of the racism that exists in Italy,” says Cristina. “I think there’s nothing worse than creating a law in our republic that expresses in fact this type of racism, because we creat a sort of bureaucracy, a labirynth in which by definition you often get lost. And we’ve done it precisely for that purpose, it’s clear, and now we even risk being copied by other European countries”. I ask her what, in her opinion, the cruelest points of the law are, those that need most urgently to be modified, and what kind of changes should be made. In the appendices to the book, Artoni compiles a brief history of Italy’s immigration laws, but admits that ‘I’m not a specialist, so I’d turn obviously towards the legal experts, and lawyers who work in the area of immigration in general. The thing that worries me the most is the repressive apparatus that’s been put in place to achieve what are, in reality, poor results. a result that is costly both economically and in terms of human life. So, in my opinion, there’s a lot to re-examine, there’s a need to re-examine the use of public monies and to put them towards the initial reception of immigrants. Amongst the different points I’d highlight, one is the possibility of access [reserved solely] for those who already have a job. I think that it’s poorly thought out measure that obliges lots of people to lie, from the employer, to the immigrant, to the police responsible for public security. In practice in Italy access is reserved for those who already have a job, but what do you do if you don’t have a job and know nobody? So in reality the trick plays out like this: you arrive illegally, find a job, and then return to your home country, to be recalled by your employer, through the embassy, and this process can take between 6-8 months. So, it’s a huge waste of time and money, and encourages falsity. I think we need to give foreigners the possibility of a period of time to enter in Italy, to give them the chance to search for work without feeling hunted. The other most important aspect I’d say is the existence of the CPT centres, which in reality are special, illegal prisons where one finds the complete suspension of legal rights for those who end up inside; as I show in the book, it’s not just people who have a criminal record and need to be deported who end up in these centres, but also people whose papers aren’t in order or who are missing a document”. For example, the case of Lilli detailed in the book, a young woman from the economically devestated Ukraine who, having entered Italy with a valid tourist visa, started working as the primary carer for an elderly Italian woman.The family for whom she worked did everything they could to get her papers in order, but two years after her arrival she was rounded up a periodic crackdown by the police. She was detained in prison-like conditions in a CPT, without access to her employers (who tried in vain to get her released) or legal advice, before being deported to the Ukraine.

“I think these centres should be closed as soon as possible,” she continues, “and transformed into reception centres, but real ones though because there are already centres with that title but inreality they’re anything but – in reality they’re prisons – and the management should be transferred to N.G.O’s or voluntary associations, but above all away from the forces of law and order. The forces of law and order as we know are trained to intervene in situations of public disorder, not in these types of situations.”

Acting as the Devil’s advocate I suggest that one of the most common objections, particularly from people who perhaps have little dealings with the subject, is that by lightening the restrictions on entry into Italy, one makes it easier for possible terrorists and criminals to enter, against whom some sort of filter is necessary. “There are, and always will be controls. For example, even with the quotas established it’s not a given that they can check every person who enters into Italy. I think that giving the possibility to people to enter Italy is simply a way to allow people to stay within the limits of the law, to not become clandestine or to have to choose a situation of illegality. There are always controls, so it’s not useful to push people into fraud, into deception, because apart from anything that way we create huge networks that profit on the backs of the immigrants.”

Something that is missing from the book, perhaps intentionally, is the viewpoint of those who designed or called for this legislation on immgration, and also that of those who have to enforce it in the field, the forces of law and order. “It was a choice, because in reality space obliges you to choose. It was also a political choice, up to a certain point, because I wanted to give voice to the people on ‘the other side’, no? The people who framed these laws have all the structures, all the media on their side, and we see that even left-wing newspapers, like Repubblica, tend to discuss immigration in terms of ‘problems’, of an ’emergency’. We have to then try to point out that these are above all people, and after that foreigners, that they have a cultural baggage that we can put to use, we have to see them with different eyes. In the end I didn’t want to talk in terms of those who are trying to escape extremely difficult social and economic conditions, but rather in terms of those who come to Italy with an interest, be it work, or love, who are in a sense linked to ‘the other'”.

The presentation of immigrants, then, is also part of the problem. The type of articles, the type of news stories that get carried by the newspapers, the tv and radio news help to form public opinion. For example, according to research carried out by Censis, in television newsreports in 78% of the cases where imigrants are mentioned, they are portrayed in a negative light and in 56% of the cases the stories concern criminality or illegality. Artoni agrees “Imigrants are always treated as if they are all clandestine, they all seem as if they’ve come to steal our jobs, they’re all like criminals, no? I think it’s extremely important, in the sense that we have to open our eyes to a reality that Italy must face; we’re in a period of globalisation, which doesn’t just signify the free movement of capital and ideas, but also the movement of people. We have to find away to open these borders with intelligence if possible, and not treat everybody like invaders. We’re not at risk of invasion! There’s a cultural heritage on our doorstep that deserves to be valued”.

One case that particularly interested me was that of Helena, born in Florence to Egyptian parents, who, on turning 18, as a result of the Bossi-Fini laws, found herself deprived of her right to Italian citizenship, as her father, unemployed since 2002, was unable to renew his permit to stay (“Children, according to the law, have the same judicial status as the parent, so if the parent is regular so are the children”, Artoni explains in the book). In practice this girl, perfectly integrated in her society and school, without even knowing and without warning, other than being the daughter of someone whose papers are no longer in order, found herself from one day to the next as a clandestine that the majority of public opinion erroneously and unfairly associates with subterfuge, unbecoming conduct, illegality, and even with criminality and international terrorism.

How are these children of imigrants treated in other European countries? Sadly the situation isn’t much rosier in multicultural France: Judith Revel, philosophy teacher in a school on the periphery of Paris told L’Espresso in 2006 that ” a part from the sans papiers, who in effect are not French and will, sooner or later, have problems when they become adults, they’re all French’ […] In September, they took one, who was put in a cpt at Roissy airport, awaiting a flight for Cameroon. […] I know of about ten sans papiers in the school. But how many are there who haven’t been told? How many people work outside the system to survive? How many of them can’t count on the health system?” Considering the explosion of violence that we saw in France in 2005, and last year in the French peripheries, there’s little to congratulate ourselves here about the efficiency of a law that sooner or later will create an army of kids who, after eighteen years of being ‘Italian’, risk finding themselves as sans papiers, forcing them to queue endlessly to request a piece of paper that allows them to continue living and socialising in the country in which they were born and raised.