Autorin: Camilla Valerio, BA
Narratives on Migration by the Italian Minister of the Interior between 2017 and 2018: The Normalization of Far-Right Populism
Masterarbeit
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades
Master of Arts
in der Studienrichtung Global Studies
Eingereicht an der
Umwelt-, Regional- und Bildungswissenschaftlichen Fakultät
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Gutachter: Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. David Florian Bieber Institut: Zentrum für Südosteuropastudien
2021
Table of contents
1. Introduction 11
2. Problematization 13 2.1 Anti-immigration measures, rhetoric and sentiments in Europe 13 2.2 Anti-immigration measures, rhetoric and sentiments in Italy 16 2.3. The shift during the Gentiloni government 18 2.4. Research question 20 2.4. (H1) Contagion effect 21
3. Methodology and main concepts 25 3.1. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) 25 3.2. The main concepts 26
4. Theorization 30 4.1. The main trends in analyzing normalization processes 31 4.2. DHA and normalization through discourse 32
5. Contextualization 40 5.2. The historical context: The public and political discourse on immigration in Italy 41 5.2. The sociopolitical context: The refugee crisis and its main related dynamics 47 5.3. The immediate context 54
6. Analysis 62 6.1. Categorization of legitimization strategies 62 6.2. The legitimization strategies used by Marco Minniti 67 6.2.1 Why the MoU? 67 6.2.2 Why the code of conduct? 83 6.2.3 Why the Minniti-Orlando law? 86
7. Discussion and conclusion 88
8. Literature 91
9. Acknowledgments 101
10 1. Introduction
The starting point of this work draws upon the observation that during the center-left Gentiloni government in Italy, which lasted from December 2016 until March 2018 and overlapped with the so-called European refugee “crisis”, immigration-related policies became increasingly restrictive while immigration-related issues became subject to a harsh politicization. This shift was marked by a number of anti-immigration measures, among which the Memorandum of Understanding with Libya stands out as most apprehensive. By preventing migrants from entering the Italian territories, it has facilitated systematic and repetitive violations of migrants’ human rights since the beginning of 2017.
This shift is representative of a European as well as a global phenomenon in which mainstream parties move towards the right of the political spectrum. Wodak (2020) describes these global dynamics as the normalization of far-right populism which is visible in the policies as well as in discourses and in rhetoric, especially (but not only) when it comes to immigration-related issues. At the same time that contemporary spread of anti-immigration measures, ideologies and positions labeled as radical and unacceptable became normal (i.e. socially accepted). In 2019, for example, a survey found out that 45% of Italians justified racism (Krzyzanowski, 2020a, 1).
This thesis seeks to explore the normalization of far-right populism in the context of Italy’s anti-immigration politics by looking at the “discursive shifts which facilitate and indicate this transformation” (Wodak, 2020, xii; italics added by the author). The thesis assumes that the Gentiloni government played an important role in providing a breeding ground for the electoral success of the League (which is the main Italian far-right populist party) in the 2018 national election and for the intensification of anti-immigration sentiments among Italians (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a).
By means of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), this study wants to analyze the discourse of the former Italian Minister of the Interior1 Marco Minniti2 to show how he legitimized and eventually normalized the introduction of anti-immigration measures. The
1 Until 1991, the competences of managing immigration and its legislation were assigned to the executive power, in particular to the Minister of the Interior who today is the main political actor in this field (Quassoli, 2013). 2 The main supporter and petitioner of anti-immigration measures between December 2016 and March 2018
11 analysis seeks to show a discursive shift (i.e. a move towards the right) in the way a representative of a center-left mainstream party speaks about immigration. For this purpose, legitimization strategies used by Marco Minniti will be examined, particularly those that indicate the normalization of far-right populism. According to different studies, the Democratic Party (hereinafter DP, the main Italian center-left mainstream party) should in fact be “rhetorically opposed to the intolerance and prejudices fomented by the populist right” (Newell, 2019, 356). The DHA will therefore form the methodological framework of this work whereby attention is being paid to the context in which the speeches were delivered. Historically, the discourse on immigration will be considered in terms of its right vs. left dimension, whereas the European refugee “crisis” will be considered as the main sociopolitical context along with the immediate context of the rise of the League (the main far-right populist party) as well as the anti-immigration measures introduced.
The work is divided into five main sections. First, the research problem (i.e. the shift in the restriction when dealing with immigration-related issues in Italy) is outlined by embedding it into a wider European context. Furthermore, this section will present the research question and the hypothesis, namely the main debate which informs this thesis. The second section focuses on the DHA and the main concepts applied in this thesis such as discourse, context, ideology and power. The third section mainly focuses on the theorization of the normalization process, as conceptualized and developed by the DHA. The fourth section, also called “contextualization” section, will provide an insight into the social and political dynamics in which the speeches are embedded. Finally, the results of the empirical analysis will be presented and discussed.
12 2. Problematization
2.1 Anti-immigration measures, rhetoric and sentiments in Europe
Looking at the EU project, the respect of human rights as well as peace were the core values. In the last years and particularly in the context of the so-called European refugee “crisis”, however, agreements signed in relation to migration have been providing tangible evidence of substantial changes within this political environment.
As claimed by Pai (2020), “the refugee ‘crisis’ showed Europe’s worst side to the world”. The European setting has in fact provided diverse examples on inhumane treatment of immigrants. Notably, even long-standing, developed democracies such as Italy, France, Great Britain and Germany have been found to engage in such behavior. Since 2015, rejected people at Europe’s borders where political and material walls have been built as well as those (often children) who died in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach a dream called “Europe” have been among the most shocking and symbolic images of the consequences of anti-immigration measures.
Despite the efforts made by the EU Commission, a coherent governance based on cooperation and solidarity has been profoundly weakened. The political consolidation of far-right anti- immigration populist parties in Hungary, Poland, Italy and Austria, just to name a few, has eroded humanitarian and pro-immigration stands within the EU. At the same time, mainstream parties were not able to counterbalance such forces and fell back on measures mainly based on stability compromises or assimilation which in turn reinforced repressive positions against migrants (Wodak, 2020). To halt immigration and to repatriate migrants seem to have become the main goals of the European Union’s migration and asylum policies (Spinelli, 2020).
As pointed out by Grzymala-Busse (2019), mainstream parties3 were not able to “address immigration and other issues” and this definitely “helps to drive populist support” (ibid., 45). Particularly the center-left parties failed in representing the working class and in standing on the side of the most vulnerable (Grzymala-Busse, 2019) such as the migrants. This resulted in the fact that nowadays in Europe, migration issues are mostly tackled with emergence-driven and restrictive measures that principally aim at closing borders and harming the integration
3 With “mainstream parties”, Grzymala-Busse intends exclusively “the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats who dominated politics in twentieth-century Europe” (Gryzmala-Busse, 2019, 40). With regard to the Italian case, this thesis considers the center-left Democratic Party and the center-right Forward Italy as the main mainstream parties.
13 capacity of national states as well as migrants’ rights. Solidarity as a driving value has been lost in favor of opportunism and choices based on mere electoral calculations.
Without claiming to be complete in the analysis, it is important to name a few measures that are emblematic of the afore mentioned trends of the anti-immigration politics of the EU. Generally, one of the main strategies used by the EU to tackle the European refugee “crisis” and to stop migration inflows was the outsourcing (or externalization) of asylum policies (Liguori, 2019). This refers to “the range of processes whereby European actors and member states complement policies to control migration across their territorial boundaries with initiatives that realize such control extra-territorially and through other countries and organs rather than their own” (Moreno-Lax and Lemberg-Pedersen, 2019). According to Spinelli (2020), European actors or member states exercise a significant amount of pressure on countries of transit or origin, such as Libya, Turkey or Nigeria, to withhold migrants and prevent them from entering Europe, basically introducing an asymmetrical power relation in their partnerships with these countries.
Along with the Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding (see below), the “refugee deal” of March 2016 between the EU and Turkey to manage the European refugee “crisis” is the second important example that is emblematic of these dynamics. The agreement between the EU and Turkey stipulates in fact that any person caught entering the EU illegally (in this case arriving at the coast of the Greek islands) is forced to return to Turkey, while EU member states are obliged to receive Syrians with legal refugee status from Turkey for every Syrian returning from the Greek islands (Liguori, 2019). So far, in financial terms, Europe has allocated 6 billion euros to improve the situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The main issue with this agreement concerns the resulting human rights issues due to the conditions of the detention of migrants in Turkey and the risk of refoulement4 (Ambrosini, 2018). The fire in the Moira refugee camp in 2020 is the dramatic result of these kinds of repressive and anti-immigration measures, especially of the lack of solidarity among member states in the European Union and of the negative consequences of the externalization of asylum policies. On September 20, 2020, the camp Moira burned down and approximately 7,500 people, including a significant number of children, found themselves on the streets without any assistance. The response of the EU to
4 This is a fundamental principle stipulated by the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees which entails that “no one shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee against his or her will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears threats to life or freedom” (UNHCR, 2010). This principle is part of the customary international law.
14 these events was more shocking. Apart from some sporadic solidarity actions, it decided to cope with the problem by constructing another camp instead of welcoming thousands of people in need. To date, these people live in precarious conditions while no sustainable solution has been found yet. The latest offspring of the trend of anti-immigration policies of the EU is the “New European Pact on Migration and Asylum”, proposed by the EU Commission on September 23, 2020. Despite being presented as a “fresh start” (which refers to being a measure of radical reform and of discontinuity with the past), it reintroduces and reinforces the logic of the Dublin Regulation5, the hotspots strategies, while it is underpinned by the principle of externalization of responsibility to third countries regardless of their human rights situation (GREI, 2020).
The core problem of the EU managing the refugee “crisis” is that many refugees find themselves in hotspots or detention centers out or inside European countries which are not safe and therefore cannot guarantee them full rights (IDOS, 2019, 132). Thus, the negative trend towards immigration in Europe becomes particularly visible through the political measures taken by the EU institutions and through the loss of solidarity, cooperation and humanity when tackling migration issues.
Anti-immigration positions are also documented in the political and media discourses as well as among people’s attitudes. Radicalization and normalization of discriminatory opinions count as key features of the mainstream European discourse on immigration and especially in countries such as Italy with a long-lasting and politicized discourse on immigration (Krzyzanowski, 2020a). The fuel for “immigration-related moral panics” is among the main strategies used to create “a web of (often untrue) information around specific social actors and groups which, by means of their re-contextualization between media and political discourse, becomes widely spread as negative opinions and as more or less core, albeit stereotypical, elements of common sense” (ibid., 4). Consequently, certain social groups such as migrants, refugees or minorities were targeted and negatively described as criminals or invaders (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018) and, at the time of Covid-19, as plague spreader (Camilli, 2020). With regard to this type of political and media communication, Wodak (2020) indicates that we are now living in an “era of shamelessness” (ibid., xii) where lies, racism, discrimination and
5 The “Dublin system” refers to all those rules that regulate the management of people who arrive in Europe illegally, for example through landings, and establishes which state is responsible for evaluating the asylum request of the migrant. These rules have been accused of managing migration processes in an asymmetrical manner since they tend to overburden the countries of first arrival such as Italy, Spain and Greece.
15 radicalization have become normalized when speaking about immigration.
Assuming that the political elite exercises a strong influence on the hegemonic public and media discourse and eventually on the public opinion and on people’s sentiments towards immigration and other ethnic groups (Colombo, 2013), it is clear that all these transformations and developments strongly correlate with the attitudes of Europeans of the member states. According to Krzyzanowski, for example, “the wider regular public now increasingly accepts racism as both justified and acceptable social attitude” (Krzyzanowski, 2020). Looking specifically at the view and the sentiments of Europeans towards immigration and immigrants, the data show that Europe is divided among those who see this phenomenon as an enrichment or as a problem. The Eurobarometer shows, for example, that in 2018, the Europeans’ views towards migrants were positive especially in countries with a significant number of foreigners and in the urban centers (Eurobarometer, 2018). Conversely, rural areas and countries such as Hungary and Bulgaria with a low rate of immigrants are mostly hostile towards people with migration background (ibid.). The same result was recorded by the Pew Research Center in the analysis of the positive or negative views about immigrants and religious minorities in Western Europe. Italy, a country that scores a low rate of immigrants in relation to their inhabitants, recorded the highest score, whereas Sweden reached the lowest (Pew Research Center, 2018).
2.2 Anti-immigration measures, rhetoric and sentiments in Italy
The evolution of Italy’s anti-immigration measures mirrors the recent development at EU level. So much of what has been unfolding at EU level in relation to anti-immigration measures in the past few years is not out of line with developments in Italy. Partially, this stems from the political responses to the fact that Italy was strongly affected by the European refugee “crisis”. Since 2015, notwithstanding the dramatic and urgent need for inclusive and human rights-based responses, Italian governments have failed to distinguish themselves in positive terms by doing everything in their power to stop immigration.
The initial Italian response to the European refugee “crisis” was solidarity based and humanitarian driven. After the drowning of approximately 400 people near Lampedusa on October 3, 2013 and of 268 only eight days after that (Ambrosini, 2018), the Letta government6 proposed and activated the so-called Mare Nostrum operation by which the Italian Coast Guard
6 In charge from April 2013 to February 2014
16 took responsibility for sea search and rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean Sea. According to Pugliese (2019), the operation “represented a progressive and supportive innovation in a European policy framework for migrants and refugees of increasing closure and control” (ibid., 62). However, until today, the political action towards immigration has deeply changed in favor of a “securitization-based, repressive as well as cruel approach” (ibid., 65) as it can be seen in the measures that have been taken since then. Indeed, since 2015, each recent Italian governing affiliation (i.e. the turning point in the European anti-immigration policies and narratives) has increasingly emphasized the link between migration and security. The Mare Nostrum operation was interrupted, for example.
The highly controversial Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which was signed in 2017 and recently renewed, foresees that those migrants who escape Libyan coasts are captured by the Libyan Coast Guard that is financially supported by the Italian state. Once returned to the Libyan detention centers, migrants are found to be subject to physical and sexual violence and torture. With reference to these outcomes, the MoU is strongly criticized as it makes Italy guilty of sending people back to countries where they risk human rights violations. Indeed, at Libyan detention centers, people live in “inhumane conditions, undernourished, without medical care, or enough space” (Amnesty International, 2019). According to his motto “Italians first” and his aspiration to create order and discipline, Matteo Salvini and his League, with the complicity of the other party in the governing coalition, the Five Star Movement7 introduced the “security decrees”. They consist of several restrictive measures aimed at the exclusion and marginalization of the migrant population such as the abolishment of the humanitarian protection of migrants, the strong weakening of the Italian reception system and the closing of the Italian ports to ships transporting migrants.
As one can easily infer from the measures explained above, immigration is depicted as a burden (Padovani, 2018). Italian politicians treat it as a “significant and highly problematic phenomenon” (ISMU, 2019, 31) that has to be solved rather than a “distinctive feature of human history” (ibid., 5) that needs to be addressed by sustainable and future-oriented approaches. As of late, this “securitization obsession” (Amnesty International, 2019b, 7) has been pursued by public policies on two levels in Italy. First, as in the case of the MoU, “increasingly articulated selection and filtering devices related to external borders” (ibid.) were introduced. Second, and this particularly concerns the security decrees, “control and standardization measures” were
7 The governing coalition between the League and the Five Star Movement was in charge from June 2018 until September 2019.
17 applied “on internal territories” (ibid.). This way, restrictions and limitations became the cornerstones of immigration policies.
As expressed by Colucci (2018, 192), Italy has experienced “an intense and widespread strengthening of anti-immigrant positions” over the last 20 years. Currently, however, the actual problem is the “securitization, repressive and cruel” trait (Pugliese, 2019, 65) that anti- immigration measures assume. In this case, “cruel” is used to indicate a “useless fury aimed at creating suffering for immigrants and refugees” (Pugliese, 2019, 65). The success of this approach culminated in the 2018 electoral victory of the League, which is a populist, openly anti-immigration and exclusionist party, and the Five Star Movement, an anti-establishment party that introduced the security decrees along with an increasingly xenophobic and racist political rhetoric.
Although the power alliance changed in 2019 and the right-wing populist party, the League, was forced into the opposition, the situation has not really changed. The agreements signed in the field of immigration remain “inhumane” (Newell, 2019, 356) and the attempts to stop “the advance of xenophobia and right-wing populism” seem to fail (ibid.). Furthermore, as already shown in the European context, anti-immigration measures and discourses also have implications on the population where anti-immigration and racist positions are increasingly accepted and tolerated as normal. The Pew Research Center noted that Italy is the first country in Western Europe for the negative views about immigrants and religious minorities (Pew Research Center, 2018). In 2019, the SWG, an Italian research and analysis center, showed that racist acts are increasingly accepted by the majority of the population (Melissari, 2019).
2.3. The shift during the Gentiloni government
The inhumane and restrictive drift that the Italian immigration policy has embraced – particularly through the security decrees introduced by the former Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini – also resulted from previous developments, as reported in the following commentary of Pugliese (2019, 65, my translation):
18 “What is observed today8 has been absolutely favored by what was produced by the immigration policies of previous governments and in particular by those conducted in the last period of the Gentiloni government under the guidance of minister Minniti.”
The period between December 2016 and the national elections on March 4, 2018, when Marco Minniti was Minister of the Interior, might indeed be described as a turning point with respect to the restrictiveness of the agreements signed in the field of immigration. The spirit of the approach endorsed by Minniti is perfectly described and framed by Pugliese (2019, 65, my translation):
“This9 can be seen in the case of the agreement between the previous minister Minniti and one of the Libyan potentates which was the seat of all prevarication and violence.10 There was a more sophisticated and complex management of cruelty11: it was not flaunted, not taken into consideration and not seen. And the public applauded, forgetting that it was a matter of putting people in the hands of murderous thieves and rapists. Of the cruelty of this operation, we only know why international organizations condemned the Italian operation.12”
According to Castelli Gattinara (2017a, 2017b, 2018) and as shown by the measures explained above, the Gentiloni government marked a shift towards an “increasingly harsh stance on immigration” (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 9), characterized by highly repressive measures. The goal, namely “to put a halt to immigration” (ibid., 11), was pursued in three ways: first, by stipulating agreements with authoritarian and politically as well as socially instable countries like Libya in order to combat illegal immigration, then by criminalizing the role of NGO ships which saved migrants’ lives in the Mediterranean Sea and, finally, by speeding up the international protection proceedings (Gargiulo, 2018). Overall, in line with Pugliese’s views (2018), there were no substantial differences in the field of immigration between Marco Minniti, Minister of the Interior during the center-left Gentiloni government, and his successor and leader of the far-right populist League party, Matteo Salvini. This means that, as this work proposes, it is the development of a repressive and securitization-based approach by Minniti
8 The paper was written in 2018 when Matteo Salvini was Minister of the Interior. 9 The cruelty 10 The author refers to the Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding. 11 Here the comparison is made with the following Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini who instead sensationalized and emphasized the cruelty of his anti-immigration measures, particularly through the use of Facebook and Twitter. 12 Particularly Amnesty International uncovered human rights violation and degradation to which migrants are subject in Libya.
19 which helped naturalize anti-immigration measures and create a fertile ground for the election of Salvini, who, in turn, produced a “leap forward” (ibid., 65) within this pattern.
2.4. Research question
The shift during the Gentiloni government accounts for both a European and global problem, which is the mainstream parties’ move towards the right of the political spectrum. Wodak (2020) describes this trend as global dynamics called the normalization of far-right populism which is visible in the policy as well as in the discourse and on the level of rhetoric, especially (but not only) when it comes to immigration related issues. As thoroughly described and investigated by Wodak (2020), until today, all mainstream parties in Europe and Italy have moved to the right of the political spectrum, including the center-left parties such as the Italian DP. In Italy, this pattern is reproduced by the attempt of the DP “to endorse anti-immigration positions of the far right in order to keep it electoral from voting for the right” (Wodak, 2020 and Mudde, 2019). The 2018 national election indicated that this attempt did not pay off, but, as this thesis assumes, it contributed to creating a breeding ground for the rise to power of the League in the 2018 national election (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a). Indeed, Krause et al. (2019) showed that the use of an “accommodative strategy” in order to undermine the success of far- right parties is often counterproductive in terms of electoral results. In line with Mudde (2019) as well as Rheindorf and Wodak (2018), Krause et al. (2019) demonstrate that “accommodative strategies by mainstream parties increase voter transitions between mainstream and radical right parties. While some of these transitions cancel each other out in aggregation, the radical right, if anything, is the net beneficiary of this exchange” (Krause et al., 2019, 15) like in the 2018 Italian election where the center-left party scored the worst election result since its birth (18%) and the League reached a peak of electoral approval of 17% (+ 15% compared to previous elections).
This thesis wants to inform the debate about the dynamics of the normalization of far-right populism from an argumentative point of view by building on Fairclough’s (1992) and the CDA’s main premise. This assumes that, historically, sociopolitical transformations strongly correlate with discursive changes (Wodak, 2020, 57, Krzyzanowski, 2010, 69). As already manifested by Wodak (2020), it is important to analyze “which discursive shifts realize, facilitate and indicate this transformation”. It would in fact be highly relevant to understand how repressiveness pursued by a center-left party that historically and ideologically endorsed a
20 humanitarian and inclusive rhetoric on immigration (Urso, 2018) is justified and legitimized and eventually normalized in the political discourse and how this was done by Marco Minniti, the main supporter of these measures, and the then Italian Minister of the Interior. The way he communicated and implemented his political choices in the field of immigration is indeed defined as original (Gargiulo, 2018, 151). With respect to this, it can be argued that the political communication in linguistically framing and constructing immigration-related phenomena played a key role even to the point of suggesting that the introduction of the measures explained above would have been needed and are eventually “normal”.
Immigration is indeed a highly politicized issue that has been inflaming the public debate since the mid-90s (Urso, 2018) and particularly since the European refugee “crisis” (Newell, 2019). In this sense, the narratives that have been developed may be decisive in normalizing and justifying restrictive and exclusionary measures. Therefore, this work is interested in investigating what ideas and beliefs underpin the linguistical strategies that served to justify these measures. Put differently, this thesis would like to investigate what “arguments or argumentations schemes, linguistic structures and rhetorical devices” were utilized by the Minister of the Interior Minniti to “justify, legitimize and naturalize the exclusion, discrimination or demonization of others” (Wodak, 2001, 73), in this case immigrants, and thereby legitimize the move rightwards approaching immigration. Accordingly, this thesis has developed the following research question:
(RQ) How did Marco Minniti, a former Italian Minister of the Interior and representative of the center-left Italian Democratic Party, legitimize anti- immigration measures during his mandate that lasted from December 2016 to March 2018?
2.4. (H1) Contagion effect
This work builds on the premise that, historically, “political actors’ positions towards migration appear to be anchored to the old left vs. right dimension of the political conflict” (Urso, 2018, 1). What Urso (2018) showed in her analysis of political claims about immigration between 1995 and 2011, and what will be shown in the next sections, is that the left and center-left parties framed immigration in an inclusive way by using arguments related to moral principle and human rights such as solidarity, individual freedom, women’s equality and tolerance. By contrast, right and center-right political actors tended to use exclusive framings based on
21 securitization and national identity-related arguments. Urso (2018) generally observed that political actors forming the incumbent government tend to be softer in the way they frame immigration and adopt more instrumental arguments such as economics, social security or pragmatic justifications.
However, in the context of the European refugee “crisis” and the rise of success of populist parties, different studies show that in Italy as well as in Europe “national governments have followed rather than opposed anti-immigration public opinion and populist propaganda” in recent years by “endorsing emergency narratives” (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 11).
Di Mauro and Verzichelli (2019) dealt with the dynamics of the contagion effect by carrying out a longitudinal analysis of the effect of the refugee “crisis” on the positions of the parties in the field of immigration. Confronting the changing of positions on immigration of several parties within the whole left-right continuum between 2013 and 2016, their findings show “an unexpected contagion effect of extreme right elites” (Di Mauro and Verzichelli, 2019, 10) on center-left parties such as the DP. They indeed explain that “as a consequence of the leading position acquired by the right-wing (especially the extreme right) parties on the immigration issue, center-left parties shifted their positions towards negative views on immigration’s effects as well, at least as far as national economy is concerned” (Di Mauro and Verzichelli, 2019, 5). Finally, the authors interpret the attempt of the Gentiloni government to react to the refugee crisis by dismissing a human rights-based approach as “a sign of a sort of contagion effect” (Di Mauro and Verzichelli, 2019, 10).
In the same vein, Schwörer (2018), by addressing the question if mainstream parties became more populist in Italy between 2008 and 2018, tries to develop a methodological procedure to delineate “a most-likely scenario for a populistization of mainstream parties’ communication” (ibid., 2). When analyzing election manifestos and political statements from the websites of the parties between 2008 and 2018 in Italy, he drew some interesting conclusions about how much left- and right-wing populism affected the communication of the mainstream parties in this country. By calculating the “populist score” in the manifestos and political statements of the mainstream parties, he took into account the main features of the core aspects of populism such as anti-elitism, people-centrism and demands for popular sovereignty. He also considered the use of left- and right-wing populist communication strategies, including an adverse judgement on economic actors in the case of left-wing populism or on immigrants and people from different religious as well as ethnical groups in the case of right-wing populism. Furthermore, he created a second analytical category to directly approach one of the core features of far-right
22 populism, namely “anti-immigration claims and stances”. The result of his content analysis shows that Italian mainstream parties were just partially influenced by populist rhetoric, only absorbing features that can be labeled as a “soft populism”. The main threat, however, is posed by the fact that “the presence of right-wing populists first and foremost seems to lead to an increase of anti-immigration claims” (ibid., 19). There are different features identified by Schröder (ibid.) to measure the anti-immigration elements in the communication of the Italian right-wing populist parties. First, the negative evaluation of the phenomenon which is labeled as an invasion and therefore as a risk. Second, the describing of the negative consequences of immigration through fictitious negative future scenarios. Third, the claims for limiting the reception of immigrants and fourthly, the claims for deportations (Schröder, 2018, 21).
In view of the studies explained above, it can be thus expected that Minniti legitimized anti- immigration measures through ideas that are typical for right-wing populist ideologies, particularly in relation to the conceptualization of the migratory phenomena (Hypothesis 1).
Put differently, the hypothesis sustains that during his mandate, the Minister of the Interior Marco Minniti legitimized anti-immigration measures by normalizing ideas and beliefs about immigration such as the threat it poses and the security concerns it raises, which are typical of the far-right populist rhetoric. Accordingly, this analysis would like to demonstrate that the “contagion effect” of far-right populist ideas and beliefs manifested rhetorically since the Minister of the Interior Marco Minniti made extended use of argumentations aiming at naturalizing exclusions, which contradicts the traditional ideological visions he was expected to endorse as a member of the main center-left Italian political party. Therefore, the discursive shift which endorses the contagion effect explained above will be analyzed in respect of the historical perspective on the studies about the immigration debate in Italy from a left vs. right dimension as well as in respect of the shift within Minniti’s discourse itself. On the one hand, the analysis wants to shed light on how Minniti changed the rhetoric on immigration by legitimizing far-right positions on immigration in comparison with the tradition of his center- left party. On the other hand, the phase of the normalizing process will be analyzed within the timeframe when Minniti was Minister of the Interior.
The choice to analyze the discourse of the former Minister of the Interior Marco Minniti lies in the fact that he is the author and main supporter of one of the most inhumane agreements in the field of immigration (i.e. the Memorandum of Understanding with Libya whose dramatic consequences related to the violation of refugees’ and migrants’ human rights revealed the
23 Italian anti-immigration drift). Despite the fact that in the Italian public debate there is often talk of an alleged loss of values by the left and center-left political forces when approaching immigration, this argumentation lacks analytical data and research, especially from a linguistic and argumentative point of view. Accordingly, this thesis wants to address the research gap represented by a lack of analysis of the process of normalization of far-right populism in Italy by a mainstream party that allowed “the incorporation of fringe ideologies into the mainstream” (Wodak, 2020, 59), such as the idea that immigration, as a dangerous phenomenon, must be stopped even at the cost of migrants' lives.
24 3. Methodology and main concepts
3.1. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA)
Discursive strategies of legitimization in Minniti’s political discourses will be analyzed with the help of the DHA, a problem-oriented current which belongs to the broader research field known as the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Principally, the CDA as well as the DHA see discourses as a social practice embedded in a social and political context through which social structures are legitimized, reproduced or challenged, and the main interest lies in understanding how meaning, which is not inherent to text but rather linked to the context in which it is used, “is negotiated between members of a discourse community” (Angermuller, Maingueneau and Wodak, 2014, 3). The final aim of the CDA is not the mere linguistic analysis but rather the study of the society which is communicatively and linguistically constructed. Put differently, the CDA focuses primarily on the analysis of the discursive and linguistic aspects of social phenomena and problems, such as racism, discrimination, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrations attitudes and so on. The CDA is based on an epistemological approach which is known as “relative constructivism” (Reisigl, 2007, cited in Krzyzanowski, 2010, 72). As already stated by Crawford (2004), the CDA wants “to understand the underlying logic of the social and political organization of a particular arena” and recognizes “that this arrangement and the structures of power and meaning underpinning it are not natural, but socially constructed” (ibid., 22). This means that the CDA wants to question the taken-for-grantedness of language and to enable explorations of how politicians, in the context of this thesis, represent the world in a particular way according to their interests and the contexts. Furthermore, the CDA refuses the possibility of a “value-neutral research” by claiming to be “anti-objectivist” (Krzyzanowski, 2010, 72).
The Discourse-Historical Approach is one of the main versions of the CDA (Reisigl, 2018, 44) and, as suggested by its name, the historical research is central to its analysis, although not a dictate (ibid.). The main focus of the DHA lies on “the relationships between discourse and politics” (ibid., 47) as it makes extended use of argumentation theory, and it is interested in the analysis of “the content of argumentation schemes” (Reisigl, 2018, 49). Hence, the motivation underpinning the choice to use the DHA when analyzing Minniti’s speech and the Italian anti- immigration drift is due to the assumption that this methodology allows a qualitative, interpretative, critical and constructive analysis of the discourses (Hardy et al., 2004).
25
Given the centrality of the concept of discourse for the CDA as well as the DHA, it is important to give a comprehensive and clear definition of it through the words of its leading scholars:
“CDA sees discourse – language in speech and writing as a form of ‘social practice’. Describing discourse as a social practice implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s) which frame it: The discursive event is shaped by them, but it also shapes them. That is discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned – it constitutes situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the social status-quo and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it” (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997, 258, cited in Krzyzanowski, 2010, 67).
3.2. The main concepts
The concept of critique In order to make the invisible visible, the DHA wants “to mark a difference from an allegedly descriptive discourse analysis” (Reisigl, 2018, 50). In this context, the concept of critique refers to a “political critique” (ibid.) in the sense that the status quo and what is taken for granted should be subverted in the “struggle for emancipation” (Wodak, 2001, 10). In the DHA, critique is included in all the stages of the research. According to Reisigl (2018), in the first stage, through the “discourse immanent critique”, the researcher carries out an assessment of “conflicts, contradictions and inconsistencies in text-internal or discourse- internal structures” (ibid., 50). The second stage, “the socio-diagnostic critique”, is an analysis of “manipulation in and by discourse” in order to reveal “ethically problematic aspects of discursive practices” (ibid., 51), as for example exclusionist, discriminatory and repressive strategies. The last stage entails a future- and “application-oriented” approach and is called “prospective critique” as it aims at “improving communication within public institutions by elaborating proposals and guidelines on the basis of careful fieldwork” (ibid.). This work will include the first two stages.
DHA and power Given its emancipatory and critical goal, the DHA pays particular attention to the concept of power which, in the tradition of Foucault and Weber, is understood to “creat[e] and sustain inequality between different social groups and individual members of society”
26 (Krzyzanowski, 2010, 73). This, according to the DHA, also happens through discourse and the hegemony over it. The dominance over a discourse or narratives is related to “the use powerful people make of it” (Wodak, 2001, 10). In the political context and in the context of this thesis, politicians often employ their power by means of language to “make use of inclusionary and exclusionary strategies” (Filardo-Llamas and Boyd, 2018, 315) as well as to “legitimize or delegitimize viewpoints or ideological positionings” (Reyes, 2011, 783). Therefore, “language indexes power, expresses power and is involved where there is contention over and a challenge to power” (Wodak, 2001, 11). The role of the DHA is precisely to analyze and uncover the discursive strategies used to express and manipulate power (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009, cited in Krzyzanowski, 2010, 73). Furthermore, the DHA sees power as embedded in and outside of discourses. In the first case, “social practices of power and dominance, but also of identity-construction, are perceived as residing in discourse (viz. text-internally, in particular texts and genres)” (Krzyzanowski, 2010, 73). In the second case, power is sustained and held by particular groups through “the ways particular texts and genres appear in social reality according to various motivations” (ibid.).
DHA and ideology The DHA assumes that ideology is discursively articulated and put into practice as “an (often) one-sided perspective or world view” (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009, 88). The relevance of investigating ideology for the DHA is given by the fact that it is “an important aspect of establishing and maintaining unequal power relations” (Wodak, 2001, 9), and demystifying/deconstructing discourses also means to decipher ideologies (ibid.). In the strictest sense, when politicians try to legitimize, they often try to justify “ideological positions on a specific issue” (Reyes, 2011, 783). In my research, the analysis of Minniti’s discourses will show the underpinning ideology used to legitimize his political actions as Minister of the Interior.
The concept of the context The DHA as well as the main approaches related to the critical study of language and discourse give particular attention to the context by carrying out “a very detailed and systematic study of the social context” and by “differentiating between different types (or levels) of context which must be taken into consideration in such systematic analysis” (Krzyzanowski, 2010, 67). The interpretation of discourse as “text in context” (Reisigl, 2018, 53) is central to the DHA to the point that the context has become an “analytical notion” (Krzyzanowski, 2010, 78). This means
27 that the analysis of the texts and discourses is also subjected to the consideration of where they are produced and how they shape or are shaped by the context. Most importantly, the DHA delineates a four-stage interpretation of the context. The micro-dimension is represented by the first two stages which are related to the linguistic analysis as well as to the textual, intertextual and interdiscursive dimensions. The second two stages take the immediate, the sociopolitical as well as the historical dimension of the analysis into account. Hereafter follow the stages as described by Wodak (2011, 67):
1. the immediate language- or text-internal co-text 2. the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between utterances, texts, genres and discourses 3. the extralinguistic social/sociological variables and institutional frames of a specific “context of situation” (…) 4. the broader sociopolitical and historical contexts, which the discursive practices are embedded in and related to.
DHA, discursive change and discursive shift As explained before, this thesis draws on Fairclough’s idea that, historically, sociopolitical transformations strongly correlate with discursive change, given the dialectical relationships between discourse practice and the events in which they are embedded. What Fairclough labeled as “discursive changes” (Fairclough, 1992) and Krzyzanowski (2020, 6) described as “various macro-level, transnational frames of imagining society” such as populism, neoliberalism, radicalization and securitization (ibid.) are “dialectically related and interdependent” (Wodak, 2020) with sociopolitical events and changes such as the financial crisis, the terrorist attack of 9/11 or the refugee crisis. To the concept of discursive changes, which operate at a macro-level and often are global or transnational in their dimension, Krzyzanowski (2013) introduced the idea of an operationalization of these changes through “discursive shifts” (i.e. “micro-level appropriations of discursive changes”) (Krzyzanowski et al., 2018, 3) which are “actor-specific responses to social, political and economic macro-level transformations” (ibid.). Furthermore, according to Krzyzanowski et al. (2018), these shifts are “nonsimultaneous, contextual, and field dependent” (ibid., 3). Among the main examples, the authors mention the move towards Islamophobia and anti-multiculturalism (ibid.). In the context of the European refugee crisis where securitization and radicalization patterns were reinforced, “a variety of context-dependent shifts (of smaller/larger scale)” (ibid.) were
28 observed, one of the most relevant being the gradual endorsement by many governments and mainstream political parties of anti-immigration rhetoric and of harsh stances towards refugees (ibid., 7).
DHA and the abductive approach In relation to the context, it is also important to highlight that the DHA applies an abductive approach (i.e. a constant moving between theory and empirical data is necessary) (Krzyzanowski, 2010). That is, a constant mediation between the theoretical framework and the context-related data and how that gets corrected by what stands in the empirical material is needed.
29 4. Theorization
The conceptual framework delivered by the DHA needs to be expanded by some theoretical elaborations. As explained in the previous sections, the Gentiloni government and its restrictive stance on immigration is considered as a key shift in dynamics called “the normalization of far- right populism” (Wodak, 2020) – or more precisely “the shameless normalization of discriminatory policies” (ibid., xi) – which culminated in the 2018 national election and the coming to power of the League in Italy. Put differently, positions on immigration including the violation of refugees’ human rights which have been considered as being radical and socially unacceptable until recently, became the normality alongside the introduction of different legal acts such as the Memorandum of Understanding and the security decrees. Particularly, what happened during the Gentiloni government accounts for a sort of “contagion effect” which amounts to the shifting of positions of a mainstream party towards the right of the political spectrum. This may be seen as the consequence of different factors along which those considered in this thesis such as the rising success of the League, a far-right populist party, which is based on the election and opinion polls, and the European refugee “crisis”. According to different authors, emphasizing the most prominent arguments of far-right populist parties and the move towards their positions (especially in the field of immigration through restrictive approaches) is indeed often strategically promoted by mainstream parties. They are indeed convinced that applying a so-called “accommodative strategy” (Meguid, 2005) would be successful in undermining far-right electoral success (Wodak, 2020, Mudde, 2004, 2019, Krause et al., 201913).
13 The benefit of this strategy is widely accepted in the academic and political debates. However, Krause et al. (2019) showed that the use of an “accommodative strategy” in order to undermine the success of far-right parties is often counterproductive in terms of electoral results. In line with Mudde (2019, Guardian) as well as Rheindorf and Wodak (2018), Krause et al. (2019) demonstrate that “accommodative strategies by mainstream parties increase voter transitions between mainstream and radical right parties. While some of these transitions cancel each other out in aggregation, the radical right, if anything, is the net beneficiary of this exchange” (Krause et al., 2019, 15). This work argues that the Italian scenario is a case in point as the accommodative strategy applied by the DP was found to be counterproductive since the center-left party scored the worst election result since its birth (18%) and the League reached a peak of electoral approval of 17% (+ 15% compared to previous elections) in the 2018 national election.
30 This section will delineate the concept of normalization as related to its discursive aspects. In particular, this work will embrace the interpretation delivered by Wodak and other DHA scholars.
4.1. The main trends in analyzing normalization processes
One of the main theoretical sources for this work is the issue number four of the Journal “Social Semiotics” of 2020. It is entirely dedicated to the theorization and analysis of normalization processes from a discursive and linguistic perspective and through the DHA, as the title suggests: “Strategies of Normalization in Public Discourse: Paradoxes of Populism, Neoliberalism and the Politics of Exclusion”. In the introductory paper of this issue, Krzyzanowski (2020b) explains that normalization as a theoretical concept has been widely used in social sciences and it is interpreted as a process through which new norms about public conduct or expression (what is socially acceptable and what is not) are introduced and norms, ideologies and modes of social and political actions are mainstreamed or legitimized. Moreover, according to Krzyzanowski (2020b), there are two main approaches to the issue which actually may often overlap but differ principally along the interpretation about what direction they follow.
The normalization concept draws on Foucault’s theory and his idea that the normalization process is principally used to legitimize violence and specific ideologies in a top-down way. Thereby, it entails a form of imposition from who holds the hegemonic power and discursively exercises it. Put differently and as described in Krzyzanowski’s words (2020, 437), normalization is seen by Foucault “as the key strategy of wider social, including public, discourses, which, through their hegemonic power, regulate the social reality and impose – via the introduction and legitimization of norms – the conduct of various social groups and/or individuals” (ibid.). In this way, normalization is a tactic of social controlling through power. According to Foucault, the discursive strategies utilized to normalize are stigmatization or over- highlighting of social actors (such as migrants or the Italians), processes (such as globalization or migration) and issues (such as the increasing of migration inflows) (ibid.). Finally, as reiterated by Wodak (2020, 65), the normalization process also includes the punishment or the reward for those who accommodate or do not conform.
31 According to Krzyanowski (2020b), the second trend of scientific approaches to normalization derives from Diane Vaughan’s studies and her idea of the “normalization of deviance”. According to her, normalization follows a more horizontal movement in the sense that it may be perpetuated by different actors and at different levels as well as fields. In contrast to Foucault’s approach, normalization is seen as the introduction of new norms, such as the process of legitimizing “deviant positions as normal rather than to reveal their inherently abnormal character in relation to (pre-) existent norms” (Krzyzanowski, 2020b, 438). To frame it in the Italian context of the Gentiloni government: discriminatory and restrictive immigration policies (deviant positions) have become accepted by being legitimized as normal (in an extraordinary period such as that characterized by the threat posed by the so-called European refugee “crisis”) through different discursive strategies rather than as abnormal in respect to the fact that they entail the violation of different fundamental rights established by the Italian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, inter alia. Finally, another important take from Vaughan’s interpretation of the normalization process is its “progressive and incremental” character (ibid.). It indeed does not happen overnight but subsequently as “new deviations that were slight deviations from the normal course of events, gradually became the norm, providing a basis for accepting additional deviance” (Vaughan, 1996, cited in Krzyzanowski, 2020, 438). In Vaughan’s idea, the gradual course of the normalization process is determined by the enactment of a discourse which first aims at the undermining of the norm and eventually at the changing of the norm (ibid.). Put differently, normalization processes in Vaughan’s interpretation are a step-by-step movement towards deviant positions in relation to pre-existing norms.
4.2. DHA and normalization through discourse
Norman Fairclough and the naturalization process Since the theoretical framework draws on the broad field of the Discourse Studies (DS), and in particularly within the DHA, it is necessary to foreground the empirical studies and the approaches developed within this field and mostly concentrate on the semiotic and argumentative aspects of the normalization process and the role of the context. DHA empirical studies principally draw on the Fairclough concept of naturalization as a process which enables the acceptance of ideologies as “non-ideological common sense” (Fairclough, 1985, 739). That is, through naturalization, ideologies are not seen as such anymore but rather as being part of our “background knowledge” (ibid.). This happens when certain “ideological-discursive
32 formations (IDF)” (ibid.) become dominant – in the sense that they “dominate the public mindset” (Krzyzanowski, 2020b, 439) over others, which Fairclough correspondingly described as “dominated” (Fairclough, 1985). In this way, the absence of counter-discourses that question dominant discourses permits that the underpinned ideologies become natural and eventually are taken for granted. Or put differently, this naturalization of ideologies permits them to be accepted as common sense. Fairclough puts it this way (1985, 781):
“It is when the dominance of an IDF is unchallenged to all intents and purposes (i.e. when whatever challenges there are do not constitute any threat), that the norms of the IDF will become most naturalized, and most opaque, and may come to be seen as the norms of the institution itself.”
The role of power is decisive in making a discourse dominant. According to the DHA, power and dominance as well as the constructions of dominant ideologies have a clear linguistic and discursive nature as they are “exercised and negotiated in discourse” (Wodak, 1996). Public discourse is the place where the fight for dominance, power and also the shaping of certain ideologies between different social groups or institutions take place (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009, 89).
In this scenario, as argued by Fairclough, it is important to highlight the relevance of a critical approach in order to “denaturalize” these dominant ideologies by “showing how social structures determine properties of discourse, and how discourse in turn determines social structures” (Fairclough, 1985, 739). The dialectical relationship between linguistic practices and the context is indeed one of the conceptual cornerstones of the DHA. This means that the situational, institutional as well as political and social context not only shape but also are shaped by the discursive practices as well as the other way around. “Discursive changes” (Fairclough, 1992) such as populism, neoliberalism, radicalization and securitization (ibid.) are thus “dialectically related and interdependent” (Wodak, 2020) with sociopolitical events and changes such as the financial crisis, the terrorist attack of 9/11 or the refugee crisis. The normalization of far-right populism in Italy by the then Minister of the Interior Marco Minniti may be seen as a “discursive shift” within this macro-scenario. This means that Minniti’s speeches are shaped by the development of the European refugee “crisis” and the increasing success of the League. In the same way, these developments are reinforced, legitimized or de- legitimized as well as discursively constructed by the speeches of the Minister of the Interior.
33 The normalization of far-right populism in the DHA Among the main DHA scholars interested in investigating the discursive construction of normalization is Ruth Wodak who sees the normalization principally as a “discursive move from acceptable to unacceptable positions” (Wodak, 2015, 2018). To her, this move signifies a “move to the right” of the political spectrum (Wodak, 2018, 333, cited by Krzyzanowski, 2020b, 441). On the one hand, she pays particular attention to the rhetoric and linguistic aspects underpinning this move such as “what discursive shifts realize, facilitate and indicate” (Wodak, 2020, xii) the normalization of far-right populism. On the other hand, she focuses on the main context-related factors which play an important role in this transformation. In her book “The Politics of Fear – the shameless normalization of far-right discourse” she provides a whole range of emblematic examples related to the normalization process. Here, the idea is that the normalization of far-right populism is a process which “encompass[es] the incorporation of fringe ideologies into the mainstream” (Wodak, 2020, 59). According to Wodak, this happens across different fields, ranging from politics to culture and law, and different genres through what she calls “recontextualization and resemiotizations” (Wodak, 2020, 59). With regard to this, the paper of Rheindorf and Wodak (2019) is also informative as it delineates the process of how the right-wing extremist ideologies of the FPÖ14 have been recontextualized into the mainstream in the Austrian politics, especially by the main Austrian center-right party, the ÖVP15 (Wodak, 2018). Interestingly, the paper shows that it is exactly the act of coding as well as using “euphemistic reformulations across different policy fields, unofficial and official party programs, pamphlets [and] election campaigns” (Wodak, 2018, 330, my translation) that enable far-right content to become acceptable to other parties as well as to the voters of the parties. By using the DHA and a multilevel analysis, Rheindorf and Wodak (2019) can uncover recontextualizations and resemiotizations as well as an “intertextual connection between party politics and other social spheres” (Wodak, 2018, my translation) and thereby show the complexity and the width of normalization processes.
Normalization processes are not linear in the way they occur but rather tend to require different steps and shifts “in terms of argumentation and legitimation strategies, which always have to accommodate the routinely sayable and unsayable in a specific context” (Wodak, 2020, 59). Furthermore, the process happens within different genres and social fields. With the intent of
14 The “Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs“ (Freedom Party of Austria) is a far-right populist and national- conservative party. 15 The “Österreichische Volkspartei” (Austrian People's Party) is a conservative and Christian- democratic political party.
34 making the concept of normalization expressed by Wodak, which substantially informs this work, even clearer, the following description provided by the author could be very helpful:
“Right-wing populist positions have arrived in the so-called ‘center’ of society. [...] Normalization does not function via individual words or metaphors, but rather through ‘entire semantic complexes including their practical references’16 shift. Connotations of terms change, from more positive to more negative meanings, and vice versa; terms are redefined and recontextualized. However, political demands initially put forward by marginalized groups can also be taken up and implemented by mainstream parties. This is a quite common process that often occurs in struggles for hegemonic signifying power. Normalities thus change and are then accepted” (Wodak, 2018, 330, my translation).
The importance of investigating this phenomenon is given by what Wodak (2020) calls “the new normal” which indicates the consequence of the normalization processes entailing de facto the radicalization of dangerous long-lasting developments such as the tendency to endorse nativists, identity-centric thinking as well as the tendency to authoritarianism. One of the main consequences indicated by Wodak (2020) is the promotion and implementation of exclusionary policies, as in the case of center-left parties such as the Social Democrats who now openly support anti-immigration measures as shown in this work dealing with the Italian case. What is basically at stake here is the democratic stability of many countries and the respect of human rights. From a discursive point of view, we are now witnessing the proliferation of an “offensive and abusive language” (Krzyzanowski, 2020b, 431) characterized by radicalization, uncivility as well as stigmatization and criminalization of social groups such as migrants (ibid.). Sexism, racism and discrimination seem to have become acceptable and even normal in public discourse. In this context, this work assumes that investigating Minniti’s political discourse may be a contribution to understand what the underpinning discursive shifts are that enabled this “new normal” in Italy.
According to Wodak (2020, 261), the mainstreaming of far-right populism manifests in a direct and indirect way. The first scenario sees far-right populists in government, as in the Italian case after the 2018 national election. The second entails an “accommodative strategy” (van Spanje, 2010) in the political actions and rhetoric of mainstream parties, as in the case of the Gentiloni government. As already explained, in this case, mainstream parties generally adapt to the agenda of the far-right populists as strategy “to win back votes or to prevent losing even more
16 Link, J. (2013). Versuch über den Normalismus: wie Normalität produziert wird, 3. Aufl., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
35 votes to the far-right” (Wodak, 2020, see also Mudde, 2004, 2019, van Spanje, 2010, Odmalm and Bale, 2014). With regard to the accommodative strategy employed by mainstream parties, it is important to draw attention to the analysis by Rheindorf and Wodak (2018) as it has a lot of similarities with the Italian case. According to Rheindorf and Wodak (2018), the so-called refugee crisis was decisive in creating a “discursive struggle over meanings in politics” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018, 15). According to the authors, the refugee crisis exacerbated the contestation over meanings particularly associated with the term “border”. In 2015, when the alleged crisis broke out, the center-left (SPÖ) and center-right party (ÖVP) were governing in a coalition. Under the pressure of the rising success of the far-right populist party FPÖ, according to opinion polls, the coalition decided to negotiate on a position of the increasing inflow of migrants and to put a halt to it. The main “terminological conflicts” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018, 16) concerned the decision of reinforcing the national borders by building a wall/a fence and setting a maximum limit on incoming refugees. What the analysis thoroughly shows is that a shift towards far-right positions occurred in Austria; in the authors’ words, “the process of normalization of right-wing ideologies can be observed in actu” (ibid., 31). More precisely, it can be recorded that the ÖVP “quickly jumped on the FPÖ’s bandwagon” (ibid., 33) and this was discursively justified through rational legitimization and the economization of the discourse which follows the idea that a fence has to be built and a maximum limit to refugee entry has to be set because the economic conditions require it (ibid.). The SPÖ17, on the other hand, after a first attempt to defend an inclusive approach through human right-based arguments, “gradually compromised this stance […] to the point of reversing it [and] legitimizing its policy change by arguments of necessity and burden” (ibid.). This article is relevant for this work because it shows how normalization processes accompanying a clear shift in position about how to manage the migratory pressure may happen rapidly within one year. Indeed, according to the authors, the process began in April 2015 and came to a “preliminary close” (ibid., 24) when the building of a border fence and the setting of a maximum limit were enacted. Moreover, by approaching the context as conceptualized by the DHA, which means dialectically related to the discourse and having four dimensions, the authors could perfectly show in the analysis how some events had an immense impact on the struggle over border- related terminologies. In the analysis of the immediate context, it can be observed the relevance of the 13/11 terrorist attacks in Paris and the 2015/2016 New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany. According to the analysis, the first tragic event promoted the strengthening
17 The “Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs” (“Social Democratic Party of Austria”) is a social- democratic, pro-European political party.
36 of the “Europeanization of discourses on refugees” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018). This means that the EU has been increasingly blamed to be unable to find a solution for the security issues such as terrorism or migration, and this emerged as a solid justification for restrictive measures at national level. The Cologne events served to shift the debate from a welcoming approach to a restrictive one which is grounded in the following argument: “We need to protect our women from illegal migrants” (ibid., 20). As related to the broader sociopolitical context, the European refugee “crisis” had a significant impact on legitimizing restrictive argumentation used by Austrian political representatives.
In one of her book, Wodak (2020) provides another example on how, in the Austrian context, the center-left mainstream party “die Grünen18”, in the governing coalition with the national- conservative party (ÖVP), have clearly moved to the right by accepting and integrating far- right policies in the new coalition program, such as the ban on headscarves for girls under the age of 14, the renaming of “reception centers” to “departure centers” and the preventive detention for potentially dangerous migrants. Wodak (2020, 62) interestingly indicates legitimization through rationalization as the main discursive strategy utilized by the Greens to normalize and render acceptable far-right populist measures. First, they argue that this was the only way, which means the only compromise to fight the climate crisis and it is not a case that the coalition program is labeled “Protecting Borders and Climate”. Second, they use the argument “there is no alternative to this government” (TINA) and, third, the Greens employ the “‘proportionate weight’ argument” (ibid.) which follows the idea that the Greens are the minority in the government and must therefore be subject to the will of the stronger party, the ÖVP. This way, however, the Greens betrayed their liberal ideals concerning human rights and normalized very discriminatory and exclusionary policies.
In another context but based on the same conceptual and theoretical tools, Reyes (2020) perfectly explains how a center-left mainstream newspaper such as “El Pais” legitimized and eventually normalized the use of police force by the Spanish government to prevent people from voting in the Catalan independence referendum of 2017. This paper is very important as it shows, first, the centrality of power exercised by “El Pais” and also by politicians who used the newspaper as a platform to discursively legitimize their positions as well as to normalize extreme positions and actions such as the “beating and dissolving unarmed citizens who aim to express their opinions by voting into an agenda of acceptable socio-political norm” (Reyes, 2020, 1). Second, it sheds light on the dramatic consequences of the normalization of extreme
18 The Greens
37 positions and the relevance of uncovering it as a way to exercise an emancipatory “political critique”. The fact that in Spain the normalization process was indeed perpetuated by powerful institutions and was not opposed left violence unpunished. From an analytical point of view, the paper gives interesting insights into the discursive and gradual dynamics driving the normalization process. The author indeed describes the following four as the main steps: “legitimizing views, ideologies and positions that consider the political positioning of the Catalan’s government unacceptable, (2) excluding therefore an option for dialogue and (3) propagating anti-pluralist discourses favoring ‘us’ above ‘them’ and consequentially (4) normalizing police intervention (on 1 October 2017) as a political measure endorsed by the article 155 of the Spanish constitution” (Reyes, 2020, 3). Finally, Reyes (2020) highlights the difference between legitimization and normalization which lies in the fact that the first is clearly a strategy to enable the latter, but legitimization does not always reach normalization. In other words, normalization is a successful legitimization attempt.
Krzyzanowski is one of the best-known DHA scholars who has dealt with the concept of normalization. In his recent studies, his starting research problem draws on the observation that racism and a general radicalization of similar ideas and ideologies have been normalized in Europe (2020a, 2020b). In the analysis of the reason behind this transformation, the author indicates the rise and the success of far-right populist parties which, in turn, “resulted in a wider overspill of xenophobia and, in particular, anti-immigration views onto wider societies and public spheres” (Krzyzanowski, 2020a, 2), which is also assumed in this work. In other words, racism, xenophobia, anti-immigration positions as well as other related ideologies are not confined to the extreme of the political spectrum but are central and largely widespread in Europe. Similarly to Wodak, he tried to understand how it all got to this point and sees normalization processes as a “discursive shift” by which the “discursive change” (explained above) at the macro-level is recontextualized “in actor- and context-specific discourses” (Krzyzanowski, 2020a, 6). Krzyzanowski interprets the normalization process through discourse as mainly negatively featured, meaning it “as a set of simultaneous or subsequent discursive strategies which gradually introduce and/or perpetuate in public discourse some new – and in most cases often uncivil or untrue – patterns of representing social actors, processes and issues” (Krzyzanowski, 2020b, 432). Following Vaughan’s theory (see above), Krzyzanowski takes up the idea of normalization as a gradual process and as perpetuated through the introduction of deviant (uncivil and untrue) norms (Krzyzanowski, 2020a). In addition, the author indicates that the normalization process is mainly a consciously and opportunistically orchestrated and well-designed strategy by power-holding actors which, in
38 Krzyzanowski’s words, amounts to “a parcel of pronounced right-wing populist strategies” (ibid., 443).
His study on the mediated political discourse in Poland that developed after 2015 is a case in point which the author describes as crucial turning point. At this time, PiS19 opportunistically used the refugee crisis as a means to “re-inventing itself as an ethno-nationalist party” (Krzyzanowski, 2020a, 10). Based on extensive data and a comprehensive and systematic analysis, he details the discursive shift and the strategies involved that have brought about a radicalization of the political discourse where racism seems to have by now been mainstreamed, meaning to have become the norm in the political mainstream. Krzyzanowski’s main contribution lies in the development of a normalization model characterized by three different steps, which are labeled by him as discursive shift and entail: (1) Enactment, (2) Gradation/Perpetuation and (3) Normalization. This means that normalization is just the final and successful result of other strategies. In Krzyzanowski’s view, signs of the normalization of racism are given by the existence of what is labeled as “borderline discourse” (Krzyzanowski and Ledin, 2017) (i.e. the indicator of “a modified value system”) (Krzyzanowski, 2020a, 17). In this way, unacceptable views are re-framed in an acceptable, legitimate and politically correct way principally through strategies of rationalization and pre-legitimization. Finally, the normalization of racism, very dangerously, entails changes concerning the way how a society perceives and classifies (namely as subordinate) other groups such as migrants (Krzyzanowski, 2020b).
39 5. Contextualization
The aim of this section is to provide an insight into the context in which the already stated research problem is embedded in order to highlight the relevance of the research within the Italian social and political landscape. At first it is important to outline the events that will be considered and how they relate to the four-stage structure of the context provided by the DHA. While the first two levels concern the language and text-related context, the third one takes into account “the language external social/sociological variables and institutional frames” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018, 16). This stage will provide a detailed analysis of the immediate context (i.e. of the events that influenced and are influenced by the speeches such as the introduction of different anti-immigration measures, the development of the events in relation to the European refugee “crisis” and the pressure exercised by the far-right and the anti-refugee movements as well as the different terrorist attacks in Europe). In the fourth stage, the focus lies on the broader sociopolitical and historical context in which the discursive practices are embedded and to which they are related. Specifically, from an historical perspective, the historical development of the immigration discourse in Italy from a right vs. left perspective will be included, whereas the main sociopolitical context is represented by the so-called European refugee “crisis” and its main connected dynamics concerning the shifts in the public and political discourse. When analyzing the context in which legitimization strategies indicating the normalization of far-right populism take place, the factors that may trigger this shift of position of mainstream parties are several. Accordingly, to outline the whole underlying casual and context-related pattern would be impossible. With regard to this, Schröder (2019) indicates that when analyzing “populistization” dynamics only as a reaction to the establishment or the success of a (new) populist party, several other important factors – which may also trigger a shift in the communication of mainstream parties such as “the development of the financial crisis, inner-party conflicts and changes, events on the European level, the factor of the party being in opposition or in government, as well as many others” (Schröder, 2018, 2) – are left behind. Similarly, Mazzoleni (2008) even argues that the adoption of populist rhetoric and themes by mainstream parties does not only occur when there are strong populist parties. There are examples where mainstream parties adopted populist rhetoric without any populist party playing a decisive role (ibid., 57). As already underlined by Krzyzanowski (2018) when
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19 The governing Polish party “Prawo i Sprawiedliwość” (“Law and Justice”)
40 investigating shifts in the politicization of Sweden’s mainstream Social Democratic Party discourse on immigration during the European refugee “crisis”, it is important “to avoid making simplifying, casual mechanism” but “it is contextually vital to foreground the increasing role or radical right-wing and populist politics and discourse” (ibid., 99). Similarly, Odmalm and Bale (2014) recognized that the far-right populist parties along with the migratory pressure, such as that experienced during the European refugee “crisis”, are “relevant” when explaining the reaction of mainstream parties. However, other factors such as the “conflicting ideological strains” (ibid., 6) may contribute within the political parties.20 In wondering if the success of the far-right populist parties is “a by-product [of] or a causal factor” for the shift towards right of mainstream parties, Abou-Chadi and Krause (2018, 15) argue for the second stating. However, also other contextual factors deserve further research attention. In respect to this, this work is aware that explaining the whole “casual mechanism” (Schröder, 2018, 2) underlying the normalization of far-right populism would be impossible and thus considers, as other studies before, the European refugee “crisis” and the increasing success of the far-right as two main context-related triggers, but they are certainly not the only ones.
5.2. The historical context: The public and political discourse on immigration in Italy
This part of the thesis will provide a historical overview of the Italian political discourse on immigration, especially as it developed from a left to a right dimension of the political spectrum in order to provide a historical contextualization of the discourse of Marco Minniti, as an important member of the main Italian center-left party and, historically, of the former Italian Communist Party21. As already explained, starting from different analyses, this thesis
20 Odmalm and Bale (2014) argue that the increasing salience of immigration issues may raise ideological conflicts within mainstream parties. Concerning the right-wing mainstream parties, “the traditional emphasis on ‘less state’ in the economy is counterpointed by a pull towards ‘more state’ influence on individual lifestyle choices and the preservation of national identity while the left’s traditional concern to limit the role of the market, through extensive state action, provides a contrast with ideas of localized democracy, international solidarity and increased personal freedom that arguably call for less state influence” (ibid., 4). 21 The fact that Marco Minniti was part of the Italian Communist Party is historically very relevant. Indeed, during his term of office, Minniti often stressed the importance of his ideological placement along with left-wing values, and as summarized by Gargiulo (2018), "feeling and defining himself as a leftist is an integral part of how he exercises his role as minister” (ibid., 153). However, the appreciation of right-wing journalists and politicians towards his anti-immigration decisions have often brought him bitter criticism from the more intransigent left and even an accusation of betrayal of the true moral values once represented by the PCI.
41 wants to demonstrate that, with respect to the past, center-left stances on immigration have changed in favor of a negative evaluation of the migration phenomena.
As a country of immigration, Italy developed only in the 80s. Historically, the Italian peninsula “experienced massive emigration” (Hermanin, 2017, 9) when between 1860 and 1985 around 30 million people left the country to seek their fortune elsewhere (Baldi and Cagiano de Azevedo, 1999), particularly in Northern and Central Europe and in the United States. The so- called “economic boom” of the 50s and 60s partially changed this trend. However, it is only since the 80s that the net migration rate has been positive22 (i.e. inflows exceed outflows) (Gianfreda, 2017), and only in the so-called Second Republic (after 1994) the question of immigration became prominent and thoroughly debated (IDOS, 2019, Urso, 2018). Previously, the attention paid to immigration issues was minored and “mainly related to the protection of foreigners from exploitation” (Cima and Ricolfi, 2015, 24). Today, Italy is one of the main countries of immigration in Europe as the percentage of the foreign population has consistently grown (Colombo, 2013) and “immigration is now fairly well consolidated and immigration patterns are at an advanced stage, as shown by the presence of a large and growing share of second generation migrants” (ibid., 160). In 1998, the foreign population only represented 4%, whereas in 2015, during the so-called European refugee “crisis”, it reached 14.5% (ISMU, 2019). As a result of the restrictions, the foreign population of Italy decreased to 12.5% in 2019 (ibid.).
The rise in foreign population during the 90s brought about radical changes, whereas racism, intolerance and xenophobia entered the public and political debate (Cima and Ricolfi, 2015, 26). Generally speaking, since the mid-90s, there has been a visible rise in the proliferation of the politicization of migration-related issues such as its management and the problem of the irregulars23 (Cima and Ricolfi, 2015, 26). Simultaneously, anti-status quo parties such as the
22 Nevertheless, data show that Italy is still experiencing a preoccupying emigration – especially due to an unfavorable economic situation. In 2018, a still high rate of people, namely 117,000 and mainly young Italians, left the country (ISMU, 2019, 7). 23 The problem of the irregulars is a huge issue in Italy, whose dynamics go beyond the scope of this thesis. Most of them work in the underground economy, especially in the field of agriculture, care work and in the building sector without rights and safeguards. The proliferation of irregulars on the Italian territory is a systemic problem often caused by the lack of a legal channel for non-EU citizens to enter Italy and the prohibitionist approach to immigration which makes the legal status of migrants often fragile and precarious. Furthermore, repatriations of people that do not have the right to stay are limited, expensive and often unfeasible given the lack of diplomatic agreements with the countries of origin of migrants.
42 Northern League and an “increasing issue conflict among the political parties” emerged on the political landscape (Urso, 2018, 2). Since the 90s, the rise of the Northern League, a far-right anti-immigration party, has been decisive not only in relation to the framings but also in the policy-making field by “strongly influenc[ing] three center-right coalitions (1994-95, 2001-06, 2008-11), by passing the Bossi-Fini Law in 2002 and the security packages in 2008 and 2009, which criminalized illegal entry and stay, restricted access to social rights and made deportation easier” (Perlmutter, 2015, 1341, cited by Gianfreda, 2018, 7).
Hence, the main dynamics in the political and public debate about immigration in Italy are its politicization. Since the mid-90s, immigration and the legislation in Italy have become highly debated and politicized issues with symbolic significance (ISMU, 2019, Massetti, 2014). With regard to this, this thesis endorses the explanation given by Colombo (2013) who highlights the fact that the politicization of the immigration discourse has to be understood in a broader European context and that it entails “the steady rise in importance of the immigration question, until it becomes a central part of the political agenda” (ibid., 170) in which the far-right populist party Northern League plays a crucial role. This party indeed succeeded by putting immigration in the center of the debate by using populist slogans based on an ethno-pluralist24 as well as a welfare-chauvinist25 doctrine. Furthermore, in Colombo’s view (ibid.), the politicization of migration-related issues becomes visible not only on the level of the debates but also in the increasing interest for legal and security-related aspects of immigration. In this way, other dynamics are intertwined with the politicization, such as criminalization and securitization. Generally speaking, it can indeed be argued that the public and political debate about immigration in Italy is characterized by a strong immigration-security nexus and by the alleged myth of invasion coming from the Sea (Colombo, 2013, 2017, Quassoli, 2013, Buccini, 2020). Accordingly, immigration is described as a “threat” (to law and order) or as an “invading and besieging army” (Colombo, 2013, 2017) and the decisions on the political level “directly and indirectly evoke dangers and threats to the security of citizens” (Quassoli, 2013, 204). Checchi (2011) describes the Italian political and public debate as “dominated by a total obsession about the link between immigration and crime” (ibid., 36) to the point that other social and economic
24 The ethno-pluralist doctrine frames immigration as a threat to the national identity and as the major cause of criminality and social unrest and insecurity. In this way, parties supporting this doctrine are against multiculturalism. (Quassoli, 2013) 25 The welfare-chauvinist doctrine sees the immigration as putting the economic and social resources of a country in danger by exploiting the welfare state and the immigrants as bringing about unemployment. Immigration is therefore to stop. (Quassoli, 2013)
43 problems very relevant for the Italian society, such as corruption, are often silenced and hardly discussed (ibid.).
For what concerns the immigrants, they are often put in contrast to the Italians through strategies of “othering” (Wodak, 2020) and are in a generalized and therefore incorrect way labeled as “clandestine”. This is a “symbolic figure” (Quassoli, 2013, 204) as well as a “cornerstone of the public discourse on immigration in Italy” (ibid.) which helps emphasizing “a linkage between immigration and criminality” (ibid., 206). Indeed, as perfectly summarized by Quassoli (2013), a set of adjectives is ascribed to the clandestine such as “secret”, “hidden”, “furtive”, “illegal” or “illicit” (ibid., 206) as well as a pre-determined path characterized by “the struggle to integrate into Italian life, the rapid degeneration of his living conditions, and his descent into criminal activities, which led to a predictable stint in an Italian prison” (ibid., 208). To sum up, the life of a clandestine is unavoidably impacted by social hardship, occupational insecurity, economic marginality, social deviation and an inevitable mixture with crime (ibid.). Consequently, as thoroughly analyzed by Buccini (2020) in his book on the main political, social and economic dynamics connected to immigration in Italy, fear is the main element that has driven the political agenda and the public opinion, whereas the sources of this sentiment have changed over the years, from the Albanians landing on the Apulian coasts to the Romanians and lately Africans or Muslims. According to Buccini (ibid.), the criminalization and the securitization of the public debate is often induced by the fragility of the legislative system which the author describes as “disastrous” (ibid., 124, my translation). In fact, this system often tried to put a patch on phenomena that were predictable, such as the European refugee “crisis”, and failed to create the ideal conditions for the integration of immigrants26. The lack of a vision and the emergency-driven approach are among the crucial elements of the problem whereby the laws often aimed at “precarizing the foreigner, weakening his legal and social protection and making his life difficult by pushing him to leave” (ibid., my translation). Moreover, the role of immigrants in the labor market has often been underrepresented and understated in public as well as in the political debate.
Another aspect defining the Italian political debate about immigration is the fact that it has
26 In the analysis carried out by the Italian organization InMigrazione, the majority (281 out of 333) of the people working in the reception centers report different weaknesses in the system such as “overcrowding and decay of the structure; lack of specialization of the staff; inadequate staff compared to the number of guests; physical isolation in the placement of the center and a lack of public transport to population centers; difficulty of access to local services” (InMigrazione, cited in Buccini, 2020, my translation).
44 developed along the line of an “old left vs. right dimension” (Urso, 2018, 1). This was also stated by Di Mauro and Verzichelli (2019) who, by carrying out an analysis of “whether party positioning on the immigration issue (especially along the continuum acceptance/rejection) is better explained by the transnational cleavage27 than by the left-right positioning” (ibid., 4), demonstrated that the left-right spectrum in Italy expresses “the main ideological dimension” (ibid., 3) when approaching immigration, especially when it comes to the willingness to accept migrants. More precisely, the move to the right “increases the likelihood of perceiving immigrants as disadvantageous for the national economy” (ibid., 9). With regard to this, a different analysis has to be included in order to better delineate these dynamics. The main work is represented by the paper of Urso (2018), “The politicization of immigration in Italy, who frames the issue when and how”. The relevance of this paper is given by the broad scope of the used data: Urso indeed realized a “political-claim analysis” (ibid., 1) of two of the main national daily Italian newspaper (i.e. La Repubblica (center-left oriented) and Il Giornale (center-right oriented)) within a large timeframe (i.e. between 1995 and 2011). By examining the newspaper articles, the author wanted to answer the following two research questions: “To what extent is the framing of immigration associated with the traditional left vs. right spectrum? Do incumbent political parties tend to adopt different positions towards immigration rather than opposition parties?” (ibid.). Interestingly, what the study reveals is a constant confrontation between left stands whose argumentation mainly favor “humanitarian over social security” (ibid., 3) and the right-wing positions that historically emphasize “security and defense of the national identity” (ibid., 4). Accordingly, the center-left governments were more open and inclusive when it comes to immigration policy-making, whereas the center-right governments strongly focused on restrictions. However, according to her analysis of the evolution of the debate about immigration issues in Italy, Urso (2018) claims that being with the government was decisive when it comes to softening pro- or anti-immigration positions within the already explained left- right dichotomy.
As always in relation to complex issues such as immigration, it is important to avoid oversimplifications and generalizations. In line with Urso’s analysis, different authors, by recognizing this dichotomy, also reveal some degree of convergence between left and right stances. Massetti (2014), for example, recognizes that the studies in this field often highlighted
27 With transnational cleavage, Di Mauro and Verzichelli (2019) imply the GAL-TAN cleavage (i.e. the contraposition between the Green-Alternative-Liberitarian (GAL) and the Traditional-Authoritarian- Nationalist (TAN) stands). This cleavage has mainly developed among cultural and economic dimensions and in the context of globalization.
45 that the difference between right and left when dealing with immigration are more apparent at the level of “proclaimed strategies and values” (i.e. the rhetoric) than when it comes to legislation, which instead shows a certain degree of continuity. Using Massetti’s words (2014), “in spite of turnovers in office, policy continuity trumps policy change” (ibid., 8). By investigating the way the Democratici di Sinistra (DS)28 framed immigration-related issues when they were with the government between 1996 and 2001, Andall (2007) distinguishes between issues about immigration control and those about integration. In the first case, the left vs. right positions seem to converge as both sides of the political spectrum tended to strengthen immigration control, whereas concerning integration, the differences seem to “[remain] largely at the rhetorical level” (ibid., 152). With regard to immigration control, Colombo (2013) underlines that center-right and center-left historically agreed in fighting illegal immigration and in developing measures to do it. The analysis of the parliamentary debates within two timeframes (i.e. 1996-200129 and 2001-200630) carried out by Riva et al. (2008) demonstrates that the difference between the right and the left parties are visible as the first concentrated on “emphasizing the ingroup-outgroup polarization and represents the ‘Other‘ as a ‘threat‘” (ibid., 996), whereas the second “stresses the necessity for a more tolerant law focusing on the need for immigrants to increase the economic growth of Italian companies” (ibid.). Finally, Bigot and Fella (2008) perfectly summarize this dichotomy by stressing the fact that the main far- right and right parties, such as the League and the AN31, “have taken a mixture of repressive- legalitarian (stressing the need to combat illegal immigration and strictly control legal immigration) and identitarian positions (expressing concern about the threat to national and cultural identity posed by immigration)” (ibid., 306) while the center-left “have tended to reflect a solidarist position, stressing the need to respect the human dignity of immigrants, provide welfare services and promote their social integration” (ibid.). Except for the League, the convergence among the different political forces happened, according to Bigot and Fella (ibid.), through functionalist argumentations whereby the major political actors see migration as “necessary in terms of labor market shortages” (ibid., 306).
28 It was a center-left Italian political party between 1998 and 2007. On October 14, it joined the Democratic Party (DP). 29 The time when the Turco-Napolitano law, the first Italian comprehensive immigration legislation, was discussed and enacted. It is also called “Testo Unico sull’Immigrazione”. 30 The time when the Bossi-Fini law was discussed and enacted. It was introduced by the center-right coalition together with the northern League and is very restrictive. 31 “Alleanza Nazionale” (“National Alliance”). A conservative right-wing party established in 1994 and dissolved in 2009. Its main leader was Gianfranco Fini.
46 In order to better understand the public and political debate about immigration in Italy, it is important to highlight another historical cleavage when framing and dealing with immigration within center-left parties, characterized by humanitarian stances which clash with accommodative strategies concerning anti-immigration positionings. These dynamics are perfectly highlighted by Buccini (2020) who delineates two currents labeled as pragmatic- governmental and maximalist-idealist, and their features are described as follows (ibid., 150, my translation):
“Those who want to curb uncontrolled flows fear that these flows can change the orientation of the public opinion and shift the preferences of the moderate electorate to the right. Those who consider these stakes a betrayal and a concession to the right believe that there are higher principles to which one cannot abdicate under any circumstances, even if they know they will be defeated in the polls. The first left considers the second one to be unrealistic to the limits of suicide, the second one considers the first one to be compromised beyond the limits of betrayal”.
5.2. The sociopolitical context: The refugee crisis and its main related dynamics
The numbers The so-called European refugee “crisis” is intended to be a political and humanitarian crisis that broke out as a consequence of the increasing number of people arriving in the European Union across the Mediterranean Sea or overland via Southeast Europe. Since 2014 (which may be interpreted as the year when the “crisis” began32), the ways people reached Europe have often changed as different migration routes have developed. According to Frontex33, there are five different routes: three involve the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea (the Western Mediterranean route, the Central Mediterranean route and the Eastern Mediterranean route) and the other two concern land routes in the Eastern Europe (the Western Balkan route and the eastern land route). In 2018, a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Marten and Volkenborn, 2019), traced the arrivals via these routes and showed that they decreased by
32 As every complex sociopolitical event, the European refugee “crisis” is the product of different connected developments. Lately, Italy has often been subjected to migration inflows from the Sea due to the geographic position. Indeed, as remembered by Castelli Gattinara (2017a), the phenomenon related to the increase in migration inflows via the different Mediterranean routes has for a long time been predicted by experts “as a result of population growth, low incomes and structural unemployment in various parts of the world” (ibid.). 33 See: https://frontex.europa.eu/along-eu-borders/migratory-map/
47 95% between 2015 and 2018 and that the Central Mediterranean route, which links North Africa, especially Libya with Italy, was the most crossed migratory route. The decrease in arrivals was certainly due to the political choices taken at European level (see for example the EU-Turkey deal), principally based on the externalization of the asylum policies and the reinforcement of the European borders through the construction of what is defined the “Fortress Europe”. The peak of arrivals occurred in 2015 when more than one million people reached Europe (European Parliament, 2020a) and the political and media debate started speaking about an emergency and then shifted to the term “crisis” with a lot of correlated implications (Colombo, 2017, 4). For Italy, the three-year period from 2015 to 2017 was characterized by a high rate of arrivals by sea. In 2017, the year in which most of the measures taken by Minniti were introduced, around 120,000 people arrived in Italy, which represents 70% of all arrivals in Europe by sea in that year (ISMU, cited by Vita, 2018). Generally, 2017 is marked by a high rate of arrivals (i.e. 85,000 people) in the first six months of the year, which stands for an increase of 10% compared to the same timeframe in 2016 (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 5). Within one weekend in June (i.e. in only 36 hours) 13,500 people landed in Italy, which was interpreted in the Italian political discourse as the peak of the migration emergency which Minniti even defined as a “democratic emergency” (Buccini, 2020, 234). The repressive answer to this “emergency” through the Memorandum of Understanding (see below) and other measures brought about an intense decrease in the incomings in the following months34. This becomes clear when comparing the first months of 2017 with those of 201835 when the decrease in landings was 77% (Buccini, 2020, 235).
The underpinning reasons behind the European refugee “crisis” To answer the question about the reasons why the European refugee “crisis” happened is definitely not easy since it is important to avoid generalizations by creating overly simplistic cause-and-effect explanations when dealing with such a complex phenomenon. The European Parliament (2020a), for instance, includes wars, conflicts and government persecutions among the main push factors. Indeed, the political instability in the Middle East and in North Africa correlated with the so-called Arab Springs which exploded on wars and conflicts are among the decisive events that triggered the increasing migration inflows in Europe (Ambrosini, 2018). With regard to this, the civic war in Syria is the most emblematic example since it has so far
34 Source: The site of the Ministry of the Interior. See: http://www.libertaciviliimmigrazione.dlci.interno.gov.it/it/documentazione/statistica/cruscotto- statistico-giornaliero 35 Minniti was still Minister of the Interior.
48 caused 384,000 deaths, six million of internal displaced people and even 5.5 million of refugees (Del Re, 2020). Other conflicts that generated a lot of refugees are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea. In 2019, people from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq made up one quarter of the 295,800 asylum seekers that were granted protection status in the EU (European Parliament, 2020b). The arrivals of people migrating from sub-Saharan regions are, however, principally due to the collapse of dictatorial regimes, such as that in Libya under the rule of Gaddafi36, and, consequently, of the system of alliances through which Europe was used to regulate and practically stop migration inflows (Ambrosini, 2018). With regard to this, the push factors may be different and mostly correlate to economic inequalities, demographic change, environmental disasters and degradation due to the climate change (European Parliament, 2020a) as well as to the role of the Western countries exploiting the resources of these regions (Colombo, 2017). However, in the narratives of the crisis these factors are often misrepresented so that migrants are often opportunistically labeled as simple “economic migrants” and “illegal” without the right to seek a better future in Europe. The fact that they do not escape wars is often used as a legitimization to discriminate and exclude them (Colombo, 2017, Castelli Gattinara, 2018).
Once in Europe, usually in Italy, Greece or Spain, the majority of the migrating people want to continue their journey to Germany, Sweden or France; places where they already have friends or some family ties (Buccini, 2020, Hermanin, 2017). Due to the complicated and dysfunctional EU migration and asylum system (i.e. the Dublin system), the asylum seekers mostly find themselves trapped in countries of first arrival which, in turn, are overtaxed with the situation and often unable to provide healthy and dignified living conditions for these people (Hermanin, 2017). The European refugee “crisis” is therefore the scenario in which EU member states tried to escape their responsibilities by shifting the blame on each other. As perfectly summarized by Buccini (2020), the northern countries accuse the border countries of “being smart” (ibid., my translation) and of not applying the established norms, maybe “forgetting to photograph and identify the landed migrants” (ibid., my translation) in order to “leave them free to reach their final destinations and be identified” (ibid., my translation) while Italy, in particular, accuses the member states of feeling abandoned. However, this is in contrast to the political reality where in 2015, the then Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi signed an agreement with the EU providing that all ships intercepted in the Mediterranean would be managed by the
36 With regard to this, it is important to remember that the Berlusconi government stipulated an agreement with the dictator Gadaffi, who ruled in Libya until 2011, to prevent migrants from leaving the African continent for Europe.
49 Italian authorities in exchange for more flexibility on public accounts (Mackinson, 2018).37 The European refugee “crisis” definitely showed “Europe’s worst side to the world” (Pai, 2020) as some countries, such as France and Austria, even went so far as to suspend the Schengen Agreement about the free movement of people within the European community, closing the borders to Italy (European Parliament, 2019). Moreover, as already shown in this thesis, the measures taken at EU level only worsened the conditions of migrants through the externalization of the borders and the construction of walls and fences. In 2019, the EU Commission declared the crisis over although the underpinning structural dynamics having caused it are absolutely not solved (Rankin, 2019).
The impact of the European refugee “crisis” on the public and political debate When analyzing the European refugee “crisis” as the main sociopolitical event in which Minniti’s speeches are embedded, it is important to foreground its main consequences for the political realm and debate. It is widely recognized that it brought about the rise of far-right populist parties and contributed to their electoral success. When periodizing the rise of far-right populist parties in Europe, Wodak (2020) recognizes the European refugee “crisis” as one of the “major socio-political tipping points” (ibid., 63) which had a huge influence on the political agenda and rhetoric all around the continent (Colombo, 2017). Different narratives evolved around this phenomenon, from the humanitarian approach, which mainly highlights the urgency to meet the needs of the asylum seekers and the respect of their human rights, to the securitization and protectionist stances (Krzyzanowski et al., 2018, 1). They evolved around the idea that the national values and borders have to be protected from the security and cultural threat posed by migration (Gianfreda, 2017). With regard to this, the rise of the far-right and its use of exclusionary rhetoric and the politics of fear (Wodak, 2020) hugely contributed to the shift in the hegemonic political agenda and its connected discourses (Krzyzanowski at all., 2018). Notwithstanding the presence of humanitarian stances, most authors agree that the European refugee “crisis” and the connected rise of far-right populist parties contributed to the major shift of attitudes and narratives of immigration and immigrants also among European mainstream parties (Wodak, 2020, Krzyzanowski et al., 2018, Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 2017b, 2018). Hostility and reservation towards the new incomers became normal in the context of the
37 While it is true that European countries often refused to collaborate in the redistribution of migrants arriving in European border countries, Italy's accusation towards these countries is in fact at odds with the concrete actions that the government carried out and served to justify its organizational and managerial inability to deal with the situation. In this case, reference is made to the agreement that Matteo Renzi stipulated with Europe in 2015 in which, assuming enormous responsibility for the rescue and reception of migrants, he asked for flexibility concerning the returning of the Italian public debt.
50 “crisis” (Wodak, 2020, 77). According to Castelli Gattinara (2017a), the European refugee “crisis” was the biggest factor for eluding “the dismissive tactics that mainstream parties often opt to pursue with respect to debates on complex policy issues” (ibid., 2), whereas, according to van Spanje (2010), the dismissive strategy is the reaction of mainstream parties to entering the political party system or the rise of success of parties with clear anti-immigration positions and entails “not taking any stance at all” (ibid., 566). Consequently, the European refugee “crisis” played a crucial role in forcing mainstream parties taking a position and discussing complex issues such as “how societies should be organized in term of who is to be included and who, instead, is to be excluded” (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 3). With regard to this, Mudde (2019) observes that the refugee crisis caused “a qualitative shift” (ibid., 32) in the way mainstream parties, especially those on the center-right, speak about immigration and multiculturalism by portraying them as a threat to national identity and security. However, other authors point out that this discursive shift is also present among center and center-left political and media discourses (Colombo, 2017) as well as among governments (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 2017b and 2018). Another salient point was the politically opportunistic use of the state of emergency and the description of the phenomenon as a “crisis” which has served the function of legitimizing often discriminatory and restrictive special measures (Krzyzanowski et al., 2018). The alarmistic tone brought about anxiety and fear among the public opinion and the population. For this reason, the definition “crisis” for this phenomenon is critically addressed in this work because, as perfectly explained by Krzyzanowski et al. (ibid.), “it is viewed as an ideologically charged notion developed in the media and political discourse” (ibid., 2) with a “specifically political function” (ibid., 3).
The European refugee “crisis” and Italy Although Italy was harshly affected by this phenomenon, there are only a few analyses of and studies on the consequences of the European refugee “crisis” for the Italian political and social scenario, especially those about the effect on party positioning (Di Mauro and Verzichelli, 2019). This section will try to give an overview of the dynamics concerning the framings and the approaches taken by the different parties of the political spectrum, particularly by the DP as the main center-left Italian party, and by the government at the time the “crisis” broke out as well as by the far-right parties as decisive players in influencing the political debate.38 In the
38 Of course, these are not the only important actors in the Italian political scene. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement also played a crucial role in attacking the government and in fighting the NGOs saving lives in the Mediterranean. Luigi Di Maio, one of the leading exponents of the movement and
51 first years of the “crisis” (2014-2015), the DP and thus the government showed humanitarian commitment and supported the idea that a solution is only possible through a functioning European system of redistributions and shared responsibilities (Buccini, 2020, 160). With regard to this, the already cited Mare Nostrum operation is a clear example of an active and humanitarian role played by a government in the field of immigration, prioritizing the safeguard of human lives (ibid., 162). Having started in 2013, after the tragic drownings of numerous people trying to reach Europe between October 2013 and October 2014, it permitted assistance to 156,362 people, 439 rescues, the arrest of 366 smugglers and the interception and medical checking of 99% of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean (ibid., 185). The operation, notwithstanding being a humanitarian success and having “saved the honor of the country for a short time” (ibid., 183), was politically strongly criticized to be too costly (nine million per months) and to strongly attract those who decided to leave the African coasts. The opposition came from the EU and also from the opposing political forces, especially from the League who, following the slogan “Stop invasion!”, accused the government of “being the only country that pays to be invaded” (La Stampa, 2014, cited by Buccini, 2020, 184). The crusade against the NGOs is not limited to the political and media clash (in a television network they even talked about “take away refugees”). It also arrived in the courtrooms through the defamatory campaign of the prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro who is convinced of the illegality of the rescue action of the NGOs and of their involvement with smugglers in the Mediterranean. However, evidence that he was never able to demonstrate. Anyway, the defamatory machine was activated and the practical and political consequences were substantial.
Accordingly, in 2015, the Mare Nostrum got substituted by a Frontex-managed operation called Triton and eventually by the activities of the NGOs.39 The suspension of the Mare Nostrum operation may be read as reversal in the government approach to immigration flows. In line with the European trend regarding the answer of the mainstream parties to the European refugee “crisis”, the Italian government took an increasing stance on immigration by foregrounding security concerns (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 2017b, 2018). Under the well-set blows of a verbally violent and accusatory political opposition, the government gradually retreated into far-right populist positions, especially with regard to the debate about NGOs and how to deal
now Italian foreign minister called them “taxi” and repeatedly accused them of being partners of smugglers (Rizzuti, 2018). 39 The role of the NGOs in the search and rescue operations (SAR) has expanded due to the termination of the Mare Nostrum operation and the gradual disengagement of the Italian Navy and Coast Guard.
52 with migration flows. Different examples may support these observations: the government, with the DP as the majority party, took an antagonistic position on the role of the NGOs that save lives in the Mediterranean Sea and that refuse to cooperate with the Libyan Coast Guard bringing the rescued people back to the so-called Libyan hell made of abuses and violations of human rights. This became visible through Minniti’s code of conduct for NGOs involved in rescue operations of migrants at sea, which, according to Castelli Gattinara (2017a), represents de facto the endorsement of “one of the most widespread and xenophobic contemporary conspiracy theories in Italy” (ibid., 10). In the same vein, in 2017, Matteo Renzi – the Italian president of the council between 2014 and 2016 and chairman of the DP until 2018 – published a book in which he reframed the approach of the party to immigration by endorsing the motto “Let's help them in their homes!” and stating that “we can't take them all in”, otherwise, “if this were to happen, it would be an ethical, political, social, and eventually economic disaster” (Democratica, 2017). In this way, Renzi reworked words – which were previously heard and pronounced mainly by the Northern League (Paudice, 2017) – in a pragmatic key as if there were no other solutions on the table.
The shift in the way the center-left approached the crisis happened in a very peculiar environment. The collaboration and solidarity among member states failed wretchedly: in July 2017, only 41,000 refuges out of 160,000 were redistributed (Castelli Gattinara, 2017b) and at the same time, the anti-immigration sentiments among the population raised rapidly, whereas the correlation between the rise in the incoming inflows and the rise in popularity of far-right parties in Italy was assessed (ibid.). Furthermore, the government was repeatedly accused of being unable to deal with the other European countries and, even worse, of enriching themselves through arrivals by sea and the business of reception. Another important feature in the political and social Italian realm was the anti-refugee mobilization that developed in Italy in the context of the European refugee “crisis” and targeted the government, the NGOs and the solidarity movements that want to help the migrants. In this context, as shown, the Italian government opted for an accommodative strategy (van Spanje, 2010) (i.e. reacting by copying the anti-immigration stances). In addition to all of this, the period between 2015 and 2017 is tragically characterized by the violent action of the Islamic State and the terrorist attacks in Europe which emphasize and legitimize the relevance of immigration control and the securitization approaches in all policy fields.
53 5.3. The immediate context
The regulatory framework on immigration implemented by Marco Minniti The political action of Marco Minniti is to be embedded within the already mentioned pragmatic-governmental current which is typical for a part of the Italian center-left. Of this approach to immigration, however, it brings its positions to extremes, both “on a material and symbolic level” (Gargiulo, 2018, 152), adding a trait of “cruelty” (Pugliese, 2018) that was previously absent. As Italian Minister of the Interior, in addition to the framework of the European refugee “crisis”, Marco Minniti moved within a legislative system (the one that manages immigration in Italy) which is complex and inefficient. To briefly outline the development of regulatory measures in the field of immigration during the last 25 years, it is important to underline that they are mainly characterized by an emergency-driven approach. This means that interventions were only made “after the events had taken place by adopting a short-term ‘corrective’ approach, rather than long-term “management” strategy” (ISMU, 2019, 13). A vision of the role of immigration within the Italian social context was missing as the measures taken were “oriented to manage migration processes in a structural and medium to long-term perspective” (Gargiulo, 2018, 155, my translation). For example, as reported by Gargiulo (2018), the three-year planning documents foreseen by the Turco-Napolitano law have not been developed since 2005 and the measures in this field were quite always introduced through emergency devices such as law decrees. Furthermore, the legal entry to Italy for work has rarely been permitted lately so that legal ways to enter the Italian territory are very limited. Minniti’s pattern of restrictiveness was clear from the beginning of his mandate as evidenced by his very first decision which aimed at intensifying the expulsions of irregular immigrants40 through the increase of the numbers of dedicated centers (Gargiulo, 2018). Generally, his political action rotates around the agreement with the Libyan authorities’ immigration and the self-proclaimed Libyan Coast Guard to combat illegal immigration, the criminalization of the NGOs saving lives in the Mediterranean and the speeding up of the international protection proceedings. The next sections will provide more information on all these points.
The Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)41
40 The document is called “Activities aimed at the repatriation of foreigners” and is available here: http://www.regioni.it/news/2017/02/10/comunicato-stampa-del-consiglio-dei-ministri-n-12-499047/ 41 Here the link to the document translated into English: https://eumigrationlawblog.eu/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/MEMORANDUM_translation_finalversion.doc.pdf
54 The Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding (hereafter memorandum or MoU) was signed on February 2, 2017 by the then Italian Prime Minister Gentiloni and Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the Libyan Government of National Accord and is recognized and backed by the United Nations. The memorandum is a three-year agreement and a three-pages-long document containing eight articles. On February 2 of this year (2020), the MoU was renewed for another three years bringing about a wave of harsh critic, particularly from the non-governmental organization Amnesty International Italia that claimed that the “renewal of migration deal confirms Italy’s complicity in torture of migrants and refugees” (Amnesty International, 2020a).
Already by reading its title, the content of the document becomes perfectly clear. It says: “Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the fields of development, the fight against illegal immigration, human trafficking and fuel smuggling and on reinforcing the security of borders between the State of Libya and the Italian Republic”. The memorandum was implemented to counteract the European refugee “crisis” which started in 2015 when many refugees, asylum seekers and migrants arrived in the European Union from across the Mediterranean Sea or overland via Southeast Europe. Due to its geographical position, Italy, as often the first EU entry state, was particularly involved in this process. Between 2014 and the beginning of 2017, when the memorandum was signed, 505,378 people arrived in Italy across the Mediterranean Sea, especially from Libya (UNCHR, 2020). During the same time, 10,584 people died or went missing while trying to reach the Italian peninsula (ibid.). As one of the consequences of the enormous emotional and social impact of this crisis, “the control of migration flows in the Central Mediterranean Sea have become the main political goal of Italy” (Pascale, 2019, 38). The aim of the memorandum is therefore to increase “the presence and the intervention of the Libyan Coast Guard in the Mediterranean in order to decrease the arrivals in Italy of people arriving in Libya from countries south of the Sahara” (ISMU, 2019, 11). The agreement is based on a trade-off between the two signatory states. The Libyan authorities act as gatekeepers carrying out “effective exit control and halt new arrivals” in Europe (Giuffré, 2017, 5). Italy, instead, financially supports the creation of reception centers in Libya “where migrants and refugees wait for their voluntary or forced return to their home countries” (ibid., 4) and “provides support as well as financing to development programs in the regions affected by the illegal immigration phenomenon” (Article 1, section B of the MoU). One of these programs foresees “technical and technological support to the Libyan institutions in charge of the fight against illegal immigration such as the border guard and the coast guard of the Ministry of Defense and by competent bodies and departments of the Ministry of Home Affairs” (Article
55 1, Section C of the MoU). The financing is mainly covered by the Italian Fund for Africa. Put differently, those migrants who escape Libyan coasts are captured by the Libyan Coast Guard and taken back to the Libyan detention centers where they undergo all sort of atrocities such as physical and sexual violence and torture (IDOS, 2019). Amnesty International (2020a) recently reported that this had been the fate of at least 40,000 people, including children, in the last three years.
The memorandum is therefore an attempt to externalize European borders and migration management to “a country representing a crucial access gate to Europe” (Palm, 2019, 3). From a pragmatic point of view, the deal succeeded “in terms of stemming the inflow of migrants in the short term” (Hermanin, 2017, 1). According to the data provided by the Ministry of the Interior42, arrivals in 2019 (11,471) represent a decrease of 90,39% compared to 2017 (119,369 total landings) and 50,92% compared to 2018 (23,370 total landings). In 2018, only 62% of the people landed on the Italian coast came from Libya. In the same period in 2017, they were 95% (IDOS, 2019, 133). Consequently, other migrant routes developed, showing that people will continue to migrate, regardless of the difficulties and the walls. Of course, it would be incorrect to think that the memorandum is the only underpinning factor for the reduction of arrivals. Indeed, migration is a human phenomenon influenced by a whole range of national and global factors that stand on different analytical levels. The crucial point is that the MoU presents substantial flaws related to its humanitarian consequences. If it is true that arrivals have decreased, partly due to the memorandum, it is also important to highlight that deaths in the Mediterranean have, in proportion to departures, substantially increased, making the central Mediterranean one of the deadliest routes (Amnesty International, 2019c). Particularly in 2018, fewer people crossed the Mediterranean Sea but proportionally many more lost their lives in doing so (ibid.). As reported in the 2019 Statistical Dossier on Immigration (IDOS, 2019, 133), according to the UNHCR, 1,137 people out of 2,095 that died in the Mediterranean Sea started from Libya in 2018. In this context, the Libyan Coast Guard has repeatedly been accused of having “failed to respond to distress calls, left people still alive at sea or intervened in violence against the shipwrecked people or even caused fatal accidents” (Amnesty International, 2019a). This was recently verified by a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Italian public broadcaster Rai News and the Domani newspaper which shows that “Italian authorities knew that Libyan authorities were either unwilling or incapable of looking after migrant boats at sea, even as Italy launched investigations into the role of non-governmental organization boats at
42 Data about migration in Italy are provided by the Ministry of the Interior at the following website: http://www.libertaciviliimmigrazione.dlci.interno.gov.it/it/documentazione/statistica
56 sea that prevented NGOs from carrying out private rescue operations” (The Guardian, 2021). Therefore, the reduction of search and rescue capabilities (IDOS, 2019, 133) is certainly related to the memorandum but also to the criminalization of NGO actions of saving lives in the Mediterranean which will be considered in the next section.
In the light of these events, the accusation of failing human rights obligations remains open for debate (Hermanin, 2017, 1). It is evident that Italy has a moral implication and a complicity in letting people drown at sea as well as in sending them back to countries where they risk human and international rights violations. Indeed, at the time the MoU was signed, “we knew who we were relying on” (Buccini, 2020, 237, my translation), given that in December 2016, a dramatic report on the human rights abuses of migrants in Libya entitled “Detained and Dehumanised” was published by the UNHCR. In Libyan detention centers, where the Italian government wants migrants and refugees to stay, people live in “inhumane conditions” (Amnesty International, 2019) due to overcrowding and a lack of food, water and medical care. Atrocities as well as a systematic violation of human rights within the Libyan detention centers have often been reported by different actors such as journalists, non-governmental organization, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as the International Organization for Migration (IOM). People who were in Libya and succeeded in reaching Europe reported horrible conditions and they claimed that they would rather die at sea than going back to Libya.
In this sense, the legality of this agreement is highly controversial. It may indeed represent the violation of the Article 80 of the European Convention on Human Rights. According to the professor of constitutional law, Paolo Bonetti, “Italy cannot eliminate the obligations that entail a ban on inhumane and degrading treatment and a ban on sending migrants to states where they would suffer inhumane and degrading treatment” (Camilli, 2017). On the other hand, as denounced by the attorney Azza Magur, the agreement would violate European asylum law. It actually allows the rejection of refugees in a country which does not recognize the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees (ibid.) and which – as stated by the UNCHR – cannot be regarded as safe because of the “well-documented inadequacy of its response to flow migrants and asylum seekers” (Giuffré, 2017, 6). The ongoing military confrontation and the political instability make the situation even worse.
Finally, the linguistic choices for the MoU – described as “unacceptable” by Liguori (2019) – are also a sign of a generalization when addressing the legal status of migrants and of a lack of commitment to human and refugee rights. The differences between the legal status of migrants departing from Libya are actually missing as all these people are referred to as “clandestine” or
57 “illegal” so that their rejection seems legitimized as they do not have the right to enter the EU (Palm, 2019).43 Words such as “refugee”, “legal migration” or “access channels” are not present in the memorandum (ibid., 3) “even though it is well known that migration flows from Libya are mixed” (Liguori, 2019, 15). IDOS (2019, 137) reports about 50,000 refugees and asylum seekers as well as 800,000 migrants that find themselves in Libya.
The code of conduct for NGOs involved in rescue operations of migrants at sea This measure aims at limiting the role of NGOs in the Mediterranean and is the result of a long- lasting defamatory campaign promoted by the far-right but also by the Five Star Movement based on the accusation that NGOs work “in tandem with smugglers” and make “a profit out of migration” (Gargiulo, 2018). Put differently, according to this perspective, migration is a business, specifically the “business of hospitality”44 through which NGOs, the center-left government, private companies and cooperatives make profit. The far-right argumentations go even further by suggesting that “the business of hosting migrants is part of a conspiracy aimed at destroying Europe and its culture and that refugee aid organizations are not interested in the humanitarian aspects of the crisis, but only in making a profit out of European tenders” (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 10). This conspiracy theory is also called “Kalergi Plan” and is shared by most of the far-right parties in the world. By giving voice to this theory, the far-right succeeded in “collapsing […] the government, the progressive left-wing parties, the transnational human rights associations, as well as anti-racist networks” (ibid., 9) “into a single category” (ibid.) and accusing them altogether of profiting from the crisis that they intentionally created. This was then further argued by saying that the refugees landing in Italy are fake as they are only irregular economic migrants.
The reaction of the government and the DP to this defamatory campaign has long been described as accommodative in the sense that, through the introduction of this code, “the government endorsed the tenets of one of the most widespread and xenophobic contemporary conspiracy theories in Italy” (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 10). However, recent investigations demonstrate that the government played a decisive role in starting the defamatory campaign and undermining the credibility of NGOs. Indeed, a few days after Minniti had taken up his
43 In Italy, the term “clandestine” was officially eliminated as it entails “an aprioristic negative judgement on the intentions of the migrants” (Giuffré, 2017, 4). Furthermore, since 1975, the General Assembly of the United Nations has recommended to substitute the terms “clandestine” and “illegal” with “undocumented” and “irregular” migrants (Liguori, 2019, 15). 44 Scandals did happen but not in relation to the NGOs saving lives in the Mediterranean.
58 office, the Ministry of the Interior sent a document entitled "Migration flows in Italy" to prosecutors and police headquarters that were investigating the role of NGOs’ rescues in the Mediterranean. This document contains the foundations of the theory that are the basis of the criminalization of NGOs - namely that the increase in arrivals of migrants by sea is related to “the massive presence of naval assets, belonging to or managed by NGOs patrolling in the southern Mediterranean” (Fierro, 2021). Put differently, the NGOs represent a pull factor that fuels human trafficking. Although, by having consulted the Defense Committee of the Italian Senate, all the accusations addressed to the NGOs were rejected, the Minister of the Interior Marco Minniti, under the advice of the afore mentioned committee, still decided to introduce a code aimed at imposing clear rules for the sea operations in the Mediterranean (Camilli, 2017). This decision was also sustained by the EU Commission as well as by all the Ministers of the Interior of the EU member states.
The code aims at limiting the actions of the NGOs (Gargiulo, 2018) by imposing the presence of the Italian army on the ships in rescue mission, if necessary, (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a) and by prohibiting to enter Libyan waters, to transship and to turn on lights to signal presence at sea. Moreover, the code obliges the NGOs to organize every operation in agreement with the naval operations center in Rome (Camilli, 2017), which already happened before the introduction of this code. Even if the code has certainly led to a decrease in arrivals by sea, as the objectives envisaged, the numbers are still disastrous since the risk for those crossing the Mediterranean as well as the number of people trapped in the Libyan detention centers has enormously increased. As a consequence of the code of conduct and in general of the criminalization of the activities of the NGOs, the Mediterranean Sea has been left unguarded as some NGOs decided to withdraw their ships and many of them were repeatedly stopped for administrative checks. Furthermore, the ship Iuventa was seized. Accordingly, instead of being saved by the NGOs and brought to the nearest safe place, many people are caught by the Libyan Coast Guard and taken back to the tremendous scenario described above or they die in the general indifference and without receiving any help.
The Minniti-Orlando law The Minniti-Orlando law entails two law decrees; one was introduced on February 17, 2017 and one on February 20, 2017. They are entitled “Urgent provisions for the acceleration of proceedings regarding international protection as well as for the fight against illegal immigration” and “Urgent provisions on urban security”. For this thesis, the first law decree is relevant, which specifically concerns immigration matters and aims at “speeding up the
59 procedures for the recognition of international protection, identifying more effectively foreigners rescued at sea or found in the territory in an irregular position, increasing the effectiveness of expulsion and removal measures” (Panzera, 2017). Furthermore, the text supports “any initiative useful for the implementation of the employment of asylum seekers, on a voluntary basis, in socially useful activities in favor of local communities”, which means that asylum seekers are allowed to work on a voluntary basis in order to “promote occasions of ‘encounter’ between the local population and immigrants, as the beginning of a desirable path of integration” (Panzera, 2017, 621). This is generally accepted as a positive step towards integration even though it conceals a form of exploitation since migrants are used to work without in fact being paid (Caiffa, 2017). The text was only approved by the confidence vote and was harshly criticized by the human rights associations and associations of lawyers for the rights of refugees and immigrants for its “unacceptably discriminatory” (Caiffa, 2017) and emergency-driven approach that it replicates. This aspect was perfectly summarized by Savio (2017):
“The parliamentary process was very quick: after a joint examination by the Constitutional Affairs and Justice Committees of the Senate, at the end of which a number of modifications were made, implemented by a single amendment by the Government, the text was approved by the Parliament with a vote of confidence, thus converting the decree into Law no. 46 on April 13.”
Despite the fact that Minister Minniti has repeatedly sustained during his mandate that, in order to win over the populist rhetoric, it was necessary to “remove the word ‘emergency’ from the issue of migration flows” (Rubino, 2018), the use of legislative methods such as decree-laws goes de facto against this position. Indeed, the logic pursued by him follows the idea that migration is “an emergency phenomenon that must be repressed” (Castelli Gattinara, 2017a, 9). According to Castelli Gattinara (ibid.), this law, along with anti-terrorism measures in France and the securitization of the southern borders of the EU (through the EU-Turkey deal, for example), can be seen “as the building blocks of the European politics of fear” characterized by an “increasingly militarized, law-enforcing and authoritarian fashion” (ibid., 11). In the same vein, Filippo Miraglia from the Italian association “Arci” declared that “the text is inadmissible and aims at going after right-wingers about securitization issues for a purely electoral purpose” (Margheri, 2017, my translation). Concretely, through this law, the then Minister of the Interior Minniti and the Minister of Justice Orlando introduced 24 specialized tribunals made up by magistrates showing knowledge in the field of immigration and in the English and French languages. As far as the speeding up of the procedures for the recognition of the refugee
60 status is concerned, a list of safe countries of origin and transit was introduced instead, which means that if a migrating person comes from or goes through a country declared “safe”, it is very unlikely that he or she will obtain international protection. In these cases, indeed, the procedures are speeding up (Caiffa, 2017). In the same vein, other measures directly concern the legal process and foresee the abolition of one level of judgement in the processes for the recognition of international protection and “the replacement of the summary procedure of cognition with the chamber procedure” (Panzera, 2017, 622, my translation). The latter entails that the public hearing during the trial is no longer compulsory unless the judge deems it necessary. The hearing is replaced by a video recording of the applicant and a written contradictory statement. Thus, it is possible to have a legal process in which the judge does not have any interactions with the asylum seeker. The former instead is the most criticized measure as it has “considerable repercussions on the exercise of the right to judicial protection of the interested party” (Panzera, 2017, 621, my translation). In other words, if there are three levels of judgement for all others in Italy, with this law it is decided that only asylum seekers will be deprived of the second level of judgement in case the first instance was rejected. In this case, in fact, they only have the possibility of appealing to the Supreme Court. The last measure involves the extension of the network of detention centers for irregular migrants, namely those centers where people wait to be repatriated. The law actually provides for the construction of 16 new centers (from four to 20), so as to establish one per Italian region.
Criticism came from different organizations and actors such as lawyers and human rights associations as well as left-oriented politicians and politicians of the same party (i.e. the DP, as the signatories of this law). For this reason, the law was indeed put under the confidence law so that the parliament could not do any substantial changes. With the aim of accelerating the procedures for determining international protection, which in recent years have increased exponentially creating bureaucratic slowness, the ministers, however, put in place a structure in which the weakest, the asylum seekers, are deprived of important means to assert their rights.
61 6. Analysis
6.1. Categorization of legitimization strategies
Based on the already explained DHA conceptual tools and within the context pointed out in the previous section, the purpose of the analysis is to detect legitimization strategies developed by Minniti between December 2016 and March 2018 which – by justifying anti- immigration measures – indicate the normalization of far-right populism. This means that the analysis will investigate legitimization strategies as a process in which a politician justifies, by giving different arguments, “a type of social behavior” that is related to a specific goal, in this case the introduction and implementation of anti-immigration measures. The final aim of the speaker is to gain “interlocutor’s support and approval” (Reyes, 2011). The analysis will proceed by considering different existing categorizations conceived by other authors and by eventually trying to further develop it through an abductive approach. The categorizations taken into account were elaborated and applied in different contexts by van Leeuwen (2007, 2008) and van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) as well as by Reyes (2011).
Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) analyzed and developed a categorization of different legitimization strategies used by Austrian immigration authorities when rejecting family reunion applications by outlining four different scenarios:
1. Legitimization through reference to an authority (authorization) 2. Legitimization through the reference to the utility of the social practice or to the facts of life (rationalization) 3. Legitimization through moral evaluation (moralization) 4. Legitimization through the telling of stories (“mythopoesis”)
According to van Leeuwen (2007), the so-called “authorization” is carried out by referring to different types of authority. In other words, the answer to the questions “Why?” or “Why should we do this?” as well as “Why we should do this way?” is “Because I say so” or “Because so-and-so says so”. “I” and “so-and-so” is someone or something vested in a certain authority (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999, 194; van Leeuwen, 2007, 94). The authority may be personal, impersonal (i.e. originating from the laws, the policies, the rules, the guidelines etc.) as well as an expert (i.e. academic, scientific or other type of expertise) and a role model such as opinion leaders or people with a certain popularity and accountability. Linguistically, this is mostly realized by a “verbal process clause in which
62 the ‘projected clause’, the authority’s utterance, contains some form of obligation modality” (Halliday, 1985, 129, cited by van Leeuwen, 2007, 94). The authority may also be vested in the custom (i.e. the tradition and the conformity). The authority of tradition is vested when the answer to the “why” question is “Because this is what we always do” or “Because this is what we have always done”, assuming that “this will, by itself, carry enough weight to go unchallenged” (van Leeuwen, 2007, 96). The implicit message transmitted through the authority of conformity is that things are done this way since “everybody else is doing it, and so should you” or “most people are doing it, and so should you” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2020). Linguistically, this is realized by a “high frequency modality” such as “the majority of”, “most” and “many” followed by the related social groups or individuals as well as through adverbs such as “normally” or “usually” (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999, 105, van Leeuwen, 2007, 97).
According to van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999), the legitimization through rationalization has to be differentiated between instrumental and theoretical rationalization. The instrumental rationalization is realized by the reference to “the utility of the social practice” (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999, 105) (i.e. “the purpose or the function this social practice serves, the needs it fills or the positive effects it will have”) (ibid.). Accordingly, this legitimization may be goal, mean or outcome oriented. However, according to van Leeuwen (2007, 102), not all purposes are legitimizations but only those that entail a moralization.
The theoretical rationalization “is founded in some kind of truth, it is part of our social knowledge and refers to the way things are” (Reyes, 2011, 798). Put differently, the answer to the “why” question is either “Because that is the way things are” or “Because doing things this way is appropriate to the nature of these actors” in relation to the actors involved in the activities or social practices referred to (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999, 107, van Leeuwen, 2007). The theoretical rationalization may have three forms: evaluation, explanation and prediction. Evaluation entails the “characterizing of activities in terms of an already moralized practice” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2020, 123). Explanation refers to the actors engaged in the practice whose behavior is appropriate to their own nature (van Leeuwen, 2007, 104, Rheindorf and Wodak, 2020, 123). Finally, the prediction is carried out by “foreseeing outcomes based on some form of expertise” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2020, 123).
The moralization is the “least explicit form of legitimization” as it is often expressed as a common sense which is only “the tip of a submerged iceberg of moral values” (van Leeuwen, 2007, 87). It occurs in different ways such as the abstraction, the evaluation and the analogy.
63 Abstraction occurs when “an activity is referred to by means of an expression that distils from it a quality which links it to discourse of values (which moralize it)” (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999, 108). A very appropriate example is provided by van Leeuwen (2007) with reference to the education: instead of saying that “the child goes to school for the first time”, we might say “the child takes up independence”, so that the practice of schooling is legitimized in terms of a discourse of ‘independence’” (ibid., 99). Evaluation is the “legitimization of positions and practices via evaluative adjectives” (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2020, 123) such as “good”, “bad” but also “healthy”, “normal”, “natural”, “useful” etc. (van Leeuwen, 2007, 97). Indeed, according to van Leeuwen (2007) “naturalization” is a specific way to carry out a moral evaluation by de facto “denying morality and replacing moral and cultural orders with the ‘natural order’” (ibid., 99, italics added by the author). Finally, analogy is the legitimization based on comparisons or contrast, whereas the answer to the “why” question is “Because it is like another activity which is associated with positive values” (or, in the case of negative comparison, ‘Because it is not like another activity which is associated with negative values’)” (van Leeuwen, 2007, 99).
The last legitimization strategy is the mythopoesis and occurs when an actor tries to legitimize an action by narrating moral or cautionary tales. Moral tales narrate that social actors are rewarded when they carry out “legitimate social practices” or restore “the legitimate order” which culminate in a classic happy ending. Cautionary tales, instead, warn the audience that “non-conformist practices” bring about “unhappy-endings”. (van Leeuwen, 2007, 106, Rheindorf and Wodak, 2020, 123).
Reyes (2011) identifies the categorization of the legitimization strategies by analyzing speeches of the former President George W. Bush and the former President Barack Obama between 2007 and 2009 “where they announced the decision to increase troops to aid in the conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan” (ibid., 784). Put differently, in this case, public speeches serve a specific goal (i.e. the legitimization of military intervention in the so-called “war on terror”). For the purpose of his work, he categorized five different strategies:
1. The legitimization through emotions 2. The legitimization trough a hypothetical future 3. The legitimization through rationality 4. The legitimization through voices of expertise 5 The legitimization through altruism
64 The first strategy entails the evoking of a specific emotion in the audience which may then justify the action-taking process planned by the speaker. In other words, politicians often exploit, for instance, fear as an emotion in order to “condition and prepare audience to receive proposals and courses of actions” (Reyes, 2011, 790). In the US scenario, the evoking of the 9/11 tragedy has often been aimed at triggering emotions such as fear, sadness, insecurity and revenge which in turn “legitimize political actions based on the effects of those emotions” (Reyes, 2011, 789) such as military interventions. According to Reyes (2011), fear is “the most effective emotion to trigger a response from the interlocutors” (ibid., 790) and is evoked by means of different linguistic strategies which are mostly based on the creation of “us vs. them” dynamics, whereas “them” are the enemies which have to be demonized (ibid.). The main strategies are: referential strategies and nomination strategies (through which in-groups and out-groups are constructed by describing the enemies as extremists or murders) as well as argumentative strategies (through which the justification for military intervention is given by characterizing the enemies by what they do, such as killing innocent people) and predicative strategies (through which enemies are labeled “negatively and deprecatorily” by means of “stereotypical, evaluative attributions of negative traits”) (Wodak, 2001, 73, Reyes, 2011).
The act of legitimizing through a hypothetical future occurs when politicians display a fearful scenario where the causes occurred in the past and which only may be prevented by an action that has to be taken in the present. Accordingly, the politician displays two different scenarios. The first scenario would occur if we did not intervene the way the speaker proposes and it is a fearful scenario marked by negative attributions and imaging situations rather than “actual facts” (Reyes, 2011, 794). The second scenario would only occur if we proceeded as the speaker suggests. According to Reyes (2011), in positively characterizing this bright scenario, the politician carries out what van Leeuwen (2007) describes as moralization or moral evaluation, namely the reference to a system of values such as freedom, liberty and happiness. The aim of this strategy is to exploit “this hypothetical association of cause-consequences” (Reyes, 2011, 794) – between the fearful scenario (consequences) and “the problem caused by others in the past” (ibid., 793) – “so that the decision stands as natural, necessary and often the only way to proceed” (ibid., 794).
Rationalization in the understanding given by Reyes (2011) is very similar to the theoretical rationalization by van Leeuwen (2007) and entails the description of the decision-making and action-taking process as “a heeded evaluated, and thoughtful procedure” (Reyes, 2011,
65 786). Put differently, the politician describes his choices as rational, which means “something that makes sense for the community and constitutes the right thing to do” (Reyes, 2011, 797). It is often carried out through clauses such as “after consultations with our allies” or verbs such as “explore” and “consult” which indicate “mental and verbal processes” (Reyes, 2011, 786).
The legitimization through voices of expertise – similar to the authorization by van Leeuwen (2007) – is used “to show the audience that experts in a specific field are backing the politician’s proposal with their knowledgeable statements” (Reyes, 2011, 786). Furthermore, according to Reyes, exact numbers are also “part of the authority of those voices” (Reyes, 2011, 787). Linguistically, this is mostly realized by quoting the authority’s statement or by reporting it through verbs such as “say” or “report” (ibid.).
The legitimization through altruism is utilized by politicians in order to “make sure their proposals do not appear driven only by personal interest” and to show their commitment to the “common good” (Reyes, 2011, 787). It is very similar to the moralization proposed by van Leeuwen (2007) in the sense that a politician legitimizes by distilling from her/his actions a quality which links it to a discourse of values, in this case in terms of being helpful to other people. The people that benefit from these altruistic actions are, according to Reyes (2011), mainly poor people “or people without democracy, equality, freedom of expression etc.” (Reyes, 2011, 802). In other words, the legitimization is made by assuming values and needs based on a western-centric perspective.
Database For the purpose of this thesis, a series of thematically linked discourse fragments and utterances were collected and are available in the appendix. They all belong to the political genre and principally entail political speeches given in official situations such as press conferences or public appearances. The reason why speeches or interviews delivered in unofficial settings were not analyzed is perfectly explained by Gargiulo (2018) who observes that “there are no substantial differences between the two different contexts, both because, in several cases, newspapers report excerpts from press conferences, thus giving rise to overlaps between the different sources, and because the content and tone of the speeches are very homogeneous” (ibid., 154). More precisely, Minniti’s discourse is based on a set of contents which were continuously repeated during his mandate’s timeframe on every occasion and in different settings. The social media are not taken into account as the minister did not make use of this medium.
66 6.2. The legitimization strategies used by Marco Minniti
The analysis will proceed by looking at the three cornerstones of Minniti’s political activities: the stipulating of agreements between authoritarian and politically as well as socially instable countries like Libya, aiming at combating illegal immigration; the criminalizing of the role of NGO ships that saved migrants’ lives in the Mediterranean Sea; and the speeding up of the international protection proceedings through the so-called Minniti-Orlando law.
6.2.1 Why the MoU?
In the same vein as van Leeuwen (2007), this work interprets the legitimization process carried out by a politician as a way to “answer to the spoken or unspoken why question” (ibid., 94). With regard to Minniti’s political action, this specific question mostly has to be expressed in the past form as – according to his modus operandi – he tended to expose his choices when they had already been carried out and put into practice. Accordingly, apart from some sporadic interviews, his first public speech was released in mid-March 2017 (i.e. after the main measures had already been introduced as well as the relations and the activities in the Mediterranean area had been configured). This type of approach was perfectly explicated by Minniti in one of his last public appearances as minister by proudly stating: “I tried never to conjugate verbs to the future tense. If anyone remembers, I tried never to make statements to say ‘we will’, I always came to tell what I had already tried to do”45. Actually, in the first months of his mandate, Minniti gave life to an intense diplomatic activity with different political and social actors in the areas of North Africa and the Sahel to the point that he was accused of substituting himself for the foreign minister. Particularly, he had meetings with Al Sarraj (head of the Libyan government recognized by the United Nations and signatory to the MoU), Haftar46, the Libyan desert tribes who de facto control the southern borders of the state, and the majors of various strategical Libyan cities. Furthermore, Minniti created a contact croup on the migration route of the central Mediterranean in which Germany, France, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya participated and which aimed at alleviating the causes of immigration, combating human trafficking and improving border controls. Finally, he maintained relations with countries such as Chad, Mali and Niger (i.e. those countries crossed by the migratory route that leads to Libya and affected by human trafficking). In this scenario,
45 These words were spoken on December 7, 2017during an interview. 46 Commander of the Libyan National Army who, at that time, controlled the eastern part of Libya.
67 Minniti made extended use of different legitimization strategies in order to justify actions that provoked diverse types of reaction of the public opinion in the opposition parties as well as within his own party. On one hand, the MoU and its activities aiming at “governing the migration inflows” was majorly welcomed as positive, especially from July 2017 when the arrivals by sea on the central Mediterranean migration route started to drastically decrease. Compliments and praise were mainly made by those who positively evaluated the work of the minister on the basis of a single objective: the reduction of arrivals and the end of the emergency. On the other hand, harsh critics were mainly directed at the dramatic violation of human rights in Libya and the criminalization of the activities of the NGOs in the Mediterranean Sea. With respect to this, it is important to foreground that at the time the Gentiloni government signed the MoU, an alarming report – which defined migrants in Libya as “detained and dehumanized” (Buccini, 2020, 237) – had already been released, whereas different investigations of the condition of the detention centers and the instability of the Libyan authority came out during Minniti’s term of office.
Legitimization through authority In order to make his positions stronger (Reyes, 2011), Minniti displayed his actions as baked and supported by different types of authority. First, the authority is vested in the EU which very rapidly endorsed the MoU and thus showed that Italy was doing good:
(1) Abbiamo firmato l’accordo, l’abbiamo firmato il due febbraio, il tre febbraio si faceva il vertice europeo a Malta e l’Unione Europea dimostrando appunto che l’Italia sapeva fare, ha fatto proprio quell’ accordo. [We signed the agreement, we signed it on February 2. On February 3, the European summit was held in Malta and the European Union, showing that Italy knew how to do it, adopted that agreement]. (23/09/2017)
Second, the UNHCR47 and the IOM48 as humanitarian organizations engaged in Libya were often named by Minniti to legitimize the good functioning of the MoU, as the following fragments testify:
(2) C’è stata l’intervista del direttore del UNHCR che ha detto “grazie Italia, grazie all’Italia noi possiamo oggi operare in Libia, grazie all’Italia noi oggi possiamo fare quello che non si è mai fatto in Libia e cioè incominciare a selezionare in Libia persone che hanno
47 The UN Refugee Agency 48 International Organization for Migration
68 diritto alla protezione internazionale e portarle, non con i trafficanti, ma portarli con gli stati nei paesi terzi”. [There was the interview of the director of UNHCR who said, “Thanks Italy, thanks to Italy we can today operate in Libya, thanks to Italy we can today do what has never been done in Libya and that is to begin to select people in Libya who are entitled to international protection and bring them, not with traffickers, but bring them with states to third countries”.] (7/12/2017)
(3) Ad un certo punto ha preso la parola il responsabile italiano del UNHCR […] non è italiano e quindi nessuno può pensare che abbiamo potuto influenzarlo, anzi per essere più precisi è colombiano. Il rappresentante dell’UNHCR ha preso la parola in quel contesto e ha detto una cosa, ha detto “io ringrazio l’Italia per quello che sta facendo in Libia”. [At a certain point, the Italian head of the UNHCR took the floor. […] He is not Italian and therefore nobody can think that we could influence him. To be more precise, he is Colombian. The representative of the UNHCR spoke in that context and said one thing, he said, “I thank Italy for what it is doing in Libya”.] (12/02/2018)
The use of direct speech – which is defined by Reyes (2011, 801) as a “powerful strategy” – has to be emphasized as politicians often present the voices of other authorities through “verbatim quotes” in order to increase the listeners’ “level of confidence in the person reporting” (Garretson and Adel, 2008, 187, cited by Reyes, 2011, 801). In the fragments reported above, the increasing of the level of confidence is determined not only by the direct speech but also by the type of authority: the Italian head of the UNHCR perfectly embeds the humanitarian values which Minniti has repeatedly been accused of betraying.
The IOM is cited by Minniti especially with reference to the data provided by this organization which outline the positive and humanitarian aspects of the agreement with Libya:
(4) Sapete qual è il punto cruciale, è che l’organizzazione mondiale per l’immigrazione non Minniti, che è il Ministro dell'Interno italiano ci ha detto una cosa semplicissima nelle scorse settimane e cioè che la Guardia costiera libica ha salvato, negli ultimi due mesi, diecimila persone, alcune salvando dalla morte sicura. [Do you know what the crucial point is? It is that the world organization for immigration, not Minniti who is the Italian Minister of the Interior, has told us something very simple in the last few weeks and that is that the Libyan Coast Guard has saved, in the last two months, ten thousand people, some of them saved from certain death.] (8/8/2017)
(5) Guardiamo i dati perché i dati sono la cosa più limpida di questo mondo: dall’inizio di quest’anno con dati dell’Organizzazione mondiale per l’immigrazione la Guardia costiera
69 ha salvato e riportato il Libia 16.500 persone. 16.500 persone, non mi sembra una cosa da poco conto. [Let’s look at the data because data are the clearest thing in this world. Since the beginning of this year, with data from the International Organization for Migration, the Coast Guard has rescued and returned 16,500 people to Libya. 16,500 people, it does not seem a small thing to me.] (23/09/2017)
In the fragments 4 and 5, Minniti makes use of the topos of numbers to show the following “conclusion rule” (Wodak, 2001, 76): if the numbers confirm a particular argumentation that serves the MoU to save human lives, “a specific action should be performed” (ibid.) (i.e. to continue to support the Libyan Coast Guard) “or not be carried out” (ibid.) – in this case, to implement a different kind of immigration policy based on humanitarian values as suggested by those who criticized Minniti's work. Clearly, what Minniti does not say voluntarily is that, at the moment, the Libyan Coast Guard “rescues” migrants at sea, it simultaneously condemns them to return to the terrible situation of detention centers (see contextualization) and thus to everything from which they wanted to escape. In this case, Minniti applies a precise strategy, namely the use of a euphemism that is typical of the politics of exclusion (Wodak, 2021, 67). Indeed, to say that the Libyan Coast Guard “rescues” migrants is a “sophisticated way of talking about terrible events and distressing actions in mitigated, soft language” (ibid.).
Furthermore, Minniti proudly reported that when the four biggest European countries – Spain, Germany, France and Italy – had met in Paris in August, they had agreed on and implemented what Italy had proposed about Libya:
(6) Il 28 agosto si riuniscono a Parigi i quattro grandi paesi europei Spagna Germania Francia e Italia per discutere dell’immigrazione. Se lei guarda il documento conclusivo di quella conferenza ci sono scritte le cose di cui noi stiamo parlando oggi, non era così scontato. [On August 28, the four big European countries Spain, Germany, France and Italy met in Paris to discuss immigration. If you look at the concluding document of that conference, the things we are talking about today are written in it, it was not so obvious.] (22/10/2017)
Finally, when Minniti pressed on with the issue of living conditions in detention centers in Libya and with the instable situation in the country in general, he often used the strategy of legitimization through authority of the tradition. Minniti's proposed reasoning can be summarized as follows: the living conditions and respect for human rights and refugees in Libya have been terrible for many years (given that this country has never even signed the 1951
70 Geneva Convention) but Italy has always made deals with Libya anyway (tradition). He often adds to this that he has at least done his best to return the two main organizations that protect refugees, the UNHCR and the IOM, to Libyan soil. Put differently, it is accepted that Italy makes agreements with Libya and lets migrants perish in detention centers there because this is what Italy always does or has already done:
(7) Il tema è delle condizioni di vita in Libia nei centri di accoglienza. Faccio presente una piccola cosa, non è una questione di questi mesi. I centri d’accoglienza e le condizioni di vita in Libia erano [un tema] già negli anni passati. [The topic is living conditions in Libya in reception centers. I point out a small thing, it is not an issue of these months. Reception centers and living conditions in Libya were [an issue] even in the past years.] (17/09/2017)
Considered what this thesis reported about the situation in Libya and the centers where migrants are held (see contextualization), it is clear that the expression “reception center” connected to a positive value (such as that of a welcoming based on kindness and understanding of the needs of those who are welcomed) is a euphemism.
Legitimization through rationalization On different occasions, Minniti framed the MoU and the Italian engagement in Libya as a way to pursue the national interest:
(8) L’accordo con la Libia è un interesse nazionale del nostro paese. [The agreement with Libya is a national interest of our country.] (10/05/2017)
(9) Di fronte a una questione di questo tipo l’Italia doveva muoversi sulla base di una forte agenda nazionale. Cioè mettere in campo un suo punto di vista, mettere in campo una sua esigenza, mettere in campo una sua necessità, […] mettere in campo un suo interesse nazionale, perché io penso che governare i flussi migratori per la democrazia italiana sia un grande interesse nazionale. [Faced with such an issue, Italy had to move on the basis of a strong national agenda, that is to say to put forward its own point of view, to put forward a need, […] to put forward a national interest because I think that governing migration flows is a great national interest for the Italian democracy.] (26/09/2017)
These fragments show that the instrumental rationalization carried out by Minniti is “means oriented” as the agreement with the Libyan authorities is a means to an end which is represented
71 by national interest. This concept (i.e. the national interest) is a recurring theme in Minniti’s narrative and the goal towards which all his actions are oriented.
Furthermore, Minniti also utilized the legitimization through theoretical rationalization particularly through what van Leeuwen (2007) defines as “explanation.” On several occasions – and often in an attempt to defend himself from attacks by those who judge his actions as too right-wing or as a betrayal of typically left-wing values such as the acceptance of the poor and respect for human rights – he tried to legitimize his actions by saying that they are appropriate to the nature of his role as Minister of the Interior:
(10) Il ministro dell’interno e il ministero dell’Interno devono essere, dentro una compagine che politicamente è caratterizzata, se possibile, sempre più terzi, non per venire meno alle loro convinzioni ma per rappresentare un ancoraggio di certezza sulle questioni delle regole. [The Minister of the Interior and the Ministry of the Interior must be, within a structure that is politically characterized, if possible, more and more third parties, not to give up their convictions but to represent an anchor of certainty on the issues of rules.] (22/10/2017)
Legitimization through a fearful scenario One way through which Minniti tried to legitimize the MoU and all the activities aimed at limiting or stopping immigration was by presenting different fearful scenarios related to the hypothesis of an “ungoverned immigration” (i.e. the way he described the status quo when he became minister in 2016. In this year, Italy recorded 181,283 landings of migrants). Put differently, Minniti sustained that the origin of the problem was the “ungoverned immigration” (i.e. the high rate of arrivals of immigrants by sea) and that Italy was faced with two future scenarios: the first one would be very likely to occur if nothing were done to change the status quo (option A), whereas the second one would manifest if Italy proceeded with the so-called (by Minniti) “government of the migration inflows49” (option B).
Option A – the consequences of the prosecution of the status quo – is not based on actual facts but rather on hypothetical risks delivered by the personal interpretation of the speaker. In the first scenario, Minniti sees Italian democracy at risk:
(11) Tuttavia è risultato evidente in quel momento che o si riusciva ad andare avanti sul terreno del governo dei flussi, oppure se noi avessimo avuto quella intensità degli arrivi in
49 Description delivered by Minniti in order to summarize all the activities aimed at reducing the sea arrivals of migrants.
72 Italia, noi a un certo punto avremmo corso il rischio di rottura del tessuto sociale e democratico del nostro Paese… [At that moment, however, it became evident that either we would have been able to move forward in the field of the “government of the flows”, or if we had had that intensity of arrivals in Italy, we would have run the risk of breaking the social and democratic structure of our country at a certain point…] (8/8/2017)
(12) Perché io penso che flussi migratori non governati minacciano la tenuta sociale e democratica dell'Italia. [because I think that ungoverned migratory flows threaten the social and democratic stability of Italy.] (15/08/2017)
Immigration is a threat also with regard to another fearful scenario which is represented by the hypothetical situation where human smugglers would obtain the keys to Italian and European democracy:
(13) Devo governarli perché c’è una ragione che è fondamentale: Io non posso lasciare le chiavi delle democrazie italiane ed europee ai trafficanti di esseri umani, è chiaro? [I have to govern them50 because there is a reason that is fundamental: I cannot leave the keys of Italian and European democracies to human traffickers, is that clear?] (17/09/2017)
In another scenario, the consequences of immigration are social tensions:
(14) Se un Paese insegue e subisce i flussi migratori alla fine finisce per tra virgolette introdurre un principio di tensione che magari mal si adatta con gli equilibri sociali… [If it is a country that pursues and suffers from migratory flows, it will finally end up introducing a principle of tension that perhaps does not fit well with social balances...] (3/9/2017)
The greatest risk on the political level is that the status quo would help the populists to win the next election:
(15) Io per evitare di regalare il paese ai populisti devo dimostrare che io che sono attento ai valori dei diritti umani, che governo l’illegalità, che sconfiggo i trafficanti di esseri umani, che affronto l’altra parte51.
50 Migratory flows 51 With the expression “the other side”, Minniti means all the actions that involve Libya and the African continent in general.
73 [In order to avoid giving the country to the populists, I must demonstrate that I am attentive to the values of human rights, that I govern illegality, that I defeat human traffickers, that I confront the other side.] (8/8/2017)
(16) È chiaro qual è la sfida che abbiamo di fronte? Altrimenti il rischio è di non parlare ad una parte grande della democrazia europea e mondiale e lasciare la democrazia europea italiana e mondiale nelle mani degli apprendisti stregoni. [Is it clear what the challenge is that we are facing? Otherwise, the risk is not to speak to a large part of the European and world democracy and to leave the European, Italian and world democracy in the hands of sorcerer’s apprentices.] (17/09/2017)
In this sense, as already explained in this work, Minniti presents his way of proceeding as the solution to counter the populist surge in Italy which the surveys indicated. With respect to this, the nomination strategy adopted by Minniti is very interesting as he describes the populists as “sorcerer’s apprentices” (i.e. those that promise to solve the problem with magical solutions). According to the former Minister of the Interior, there is indeed no magic to be done in the management of migratory flows but concrete actions to be implemented with pragmatism and rationality.
Another fear related to immigration is linked to the Islamic State, the terrorist organization whose members, especially the so-called “foreign fighters”, could return via the central Mediterranean route and destabilize Europe:
(17) Nel momento in cui Islamic State viene sconfitta militarmente a Mosul […] o in Siria, […] è chiaro che tu avrai il problema del cosiddetto ritorno dei Foreign Fighters, cioè i combattenti stranieri e cioè quelli che sconfitti sul campo tenteranno di tornare indietro. Il punto della sfida è oggi questo, cioè fare sì che tu abbia un controllo dei confini che consenta di evitare che questo ritorno possa diventare destabilizzante per l’Europea. [The moment the Islamic State is militarily defeated in Mosul [...] or in Syria, [...] it is clear that you will have the problem of the so-called return of the foreign fighters, that is the foreign fighters and those defeated on the field will try to come back. That’s the point of the challenge today which is to make sure that you have a border control that allows you to avoid that this return can become destabilizing for Europe.] (10/05/2017)
(18) Il confine con il Chad attraverso il quale passano i trafficanti di esseri umani e passano i convogli in alcuni casi veri e propri che trasportano queste persone. Da lì domani possono anche passare i terroristi che scappano da Islamic State. il controllo del confine meridionale della Libia è un punto cruciale.
74 [The border with Chad that human traffickers pass and convoys pass in some cases real ones carrying these people. From there, tomorrow can also pass terrorists fleeing from the Islamic State. The control of the southern border of Libya is a crucial point.] (09/07/2017)
Very interestingly, although this argument is very present in his speeches to legitimize both the importance of stopping departures and the controlling of the border south of Libya, it has strongly contributed to evaluating immigration as a threat. In a recent interview, Minniti practically debunked this theory by saying that “terrorist organizations care about their militants” and he does not think they “willingly put them on a boat” (Griseri, 2021).
In Minniti's narrative, there is another argument that considers the scenario of the terrorist threat (i.e. the one that correlates to too much reception, lack of integration and terrorism). What Minniti argues is that if Italy welcomed too many migrants (through the policy of non-government of flows), it would not be able to integrate them and this would provoke acts of terrorism (such as those that occurred in Europe during his time as minister). Wanting to avoid a simple link between immigration and terrorism often proposed by right-wing populism, he adds a passage, namely the lack of integration which, however, is implicitly determined by the receiving of too many migrants. Put differently, what Minniti wants to implicitly convey is the following: a country can integrate migrants and thus protect itself from the threat of terrorism if it welcomes few and thus decrease migration flows. The fearful scenario is created through a series of cause-effect relationships that de facto establish a correlation between immigration and terrorism:
(19) Le politiche di accoglienza hanno un limite oggettivo che è la capacità di integrazione. Una società che accoglie e una società che nel contempo non sa integrare, è una società che non è attenta al suo presente e non è attenta al suo futuro. […] Io non credo e non penso che ci sia un’equazione molto semplice tra immigrazione e terrorismo, chi dice questo è un cattivo maestro e tuttavia se guardo a quello che è avvenuto in giro per l’Europa in questi ultimi due anni, c’è invece un nesso tra terrorismo e mancata integrazione. Quelli che hanno fatto gli attentati in giro per l’Europa da Parigi a Bruxelles, fino ad arrivare a Stoccolma e a Londra, non vengono dalla Siria o dall’Iraq, ma sono figli di una mancata integrazione. [Reception policies have an objective limitation, which is the capacity to integrate. A society that welcomes and a society that at the same time does not know how to integrate is a society that is not attentive to its present and not attentive to its future. [...] I do not believe and I do not think that there is a very simple equation between immigration and terrorism. Whoever says this is a bad teacher but if I look at what has happened around
75 Europe in the last two years, there is a link between terrorism and the lack of integration. Those who made the attacks around Europe from Paris to Brussels, up to Stockholm and London, do not come from Syria or Iraq but are the sons of a lack of integration.] (8/8/2017)
This argument also has a moralizing element in which the activity of welcoming indiscriminately, without a filtering system that clearly divides refugees with the right to international protection from so-called economic migrants, is connected to a negative moral evaluation which is that of being “not very careful or thoughtful about the future of Italy”. Those who accept this fearful scenario are therefore negatively evaluated.
According to the fragments presented above, there are two different ways through which Minniti linguistically expresses the hypothetical fearful future scenario. In fragment number 11, he makes use of a conditional structure which is formed by a protasis (if + past perfect) followed by an apodosis (would have + infinitive). As highlighted by Reyes (2011), by means of this linguistic form, politicians “speculate about a disastrous future, imagine scenarios instead of mentioning actual facts” (ibid., 794). In most cases, however, Minniti presents the fearful scenarios without conditional expressions so that what is foreseen sounds as a fact (Reyes, 2011, 796). The argumentation scheme followed by Minniti seems to be perfectly summarized by what Wodak (2001) describes as the topos of danger and threat which entails the following reasoning based on “conditionals” (ibid., 75): if the “political action” of welcoming numerous migrants “bears specific dangerous, threatening consequences” – such as social tensions, the risk for the social and democratic structure of the country, incoming terrorists and terrorist attacks as well as the populist surge – “one should not perform or do it” (ibid.).
Option B, instead, is described very positively and sometimes as the only way to proceed. As already noted by Reyes (2011), in representing the scenario/option B (i.e. the one which will occur if we act according to the speaker’s proposal), politicians often carry out a (positive) moral evaluation of this hypothetical future. In the case under analysis, the speaker (i.e. Minniti) “distills” from the MoU and generally from his activities as minister – and the positive effect these will produce – “a quality which links [them] to a discourse of values” (van Leeuwen, 2007, 99) such as democracy, altruism, humanity, security and legality.
Democracy After outlining his program on how to govern migratory flows and, de facto, to exclude access to Italy for all those who are not refugees, Minniti declares that this is:
76 (20) l’unico modo per tenere insieme un contratto sociale ed avere una prospettiva forte e credibile per la democrazia italiana. [the only way to hold together a social contract and have a strong and credible perspective for Italian democracy.] (10/05/2017)
The moralization presented in the discourse on democracy and the fact that Minniti's actions are aimed at reinforcing it and making it more credible should be interpreted within a broader historical framework delivered by the minister himself. In his narrative, in fact, Minniti repeatedly positions himself and his historic party of belonging, the Italian Communist Party, as those who saved democracy. In a very clear way, he declares that “if today we can talk about Italian democracy as we are talking about it, it is also because that party at a certain point in the challenge of domestic terrorism, while being radically a party of the opposition, decided to commit itself in the first person to the fight against terrorism”. Minniti here refers to the period of fascist and communist-motivated terrorism that ravaged Italy in the 70s and that by defeating it, the PCI firmly condemned it because “in the face of the interest of Italian democracy it chose collective values” which means the survival of democracy itself. In this sense, Minniti implicitly tells us that when democracy is threatened, everything must be done to save it, and by using the TINA argument, he tells us that his solution is the only way forward.
Altruism To stipulate agreements with Libya and to govern the migratory inflows was presented as a selfless act by Minniti (i.e. an activity strongly linked to a moral value which is altruism). By repeatedly presenting the bright scenario that will manifest if Italy follows his plan, Minniti links his activity to a quality which is that of helping other people. In order to “circumvent judgment about the selfishness” (Reyes, 2011, 801) and the “cruelty” (Pugliese, 2018) of his actions, Minniti repeatedly presented the “government of the migratory inflows” as “beneficial to others” (Reyes, 2011, 797), the others being mainly poor people. As in Reyes’ example, the assumption here is that these actions “will make other people’s live better” (ibid., 802). According to Minniti, the MoU and generally the Italian engagement in Libya would help the Libyan population defeating the human smugglers and, eventually, stabilizing the country. Accordingly, the legitimization through a hypothetical (bright) future is combined with the legitimization through altruism by Reyes (2011) or the moralization through a value such as altruism by van Leeuwen (2007):
77 (20) L’impegno contro il traffico di esseri umani è un impegno diretto alla stabilizzazione della Libia. [The commitment against human trafficking is a direct commitment to the stabilization of Libya.] (10/05/2017)
(21) Io mi occupo della Libia perché vorrei fare capire ai libici che loro non possono passare nel mondo come lo Stato carogna che vive sul traffico delle persone, è chiaro qual è il punto? E questo è disumanità? No, io penso che sia il modo migliore per aiutare. Se di fronte al sindaco che mi dice aiutami a liberarmi dal ricatto, io mi giro dall' altra parte, io non faccio un buon servizio né alla Libia, né all’Africa né al mio paese, è chiaro qual è il tema? [I deal with Libya because I would like to make the Libyans understand that they cannot be seen in the world as the rotten state that lives on the trafficking of people, is the point clear? And this is inhumanity? No, I think it is the best way to help. If I turn away from the mayor who tells me to help me free myself from blackmail, I am not doing a good service neither to Libya nor to Africa nor to my country, is it clear what the issue is?] (3/09/2017)
(22) Il senso vero di questa sfida con la Libia è aiutare le istituzioni a rafforzarsi. [The real sense of this challenge with Libya is to help institutions strengthen themselves.] (5/09/2017)
(23) Perché il patto che avevo chiesto che si facesse era questo: voi vi impegnate a rompere e a scindere ogni responsabilità con I trafficanti di esseri umani noi vi aiutiamo a costruire un futuro positivo per le vostre comunità. [Because the pact I asked for was this: you commit to break and discard all responsibilities with human traffickers, and we help you build a positive future for your communities.] (26/09/2017)
Security, legality and humanity By following Minniti’s measures, Italy will become a model in the management of migratory flows where security, legality and humanity will be guaranteed. The following would be the scenarios imaged by Minniti if Italy stops illegal migration:
(24) È chiaro quello che faremo? è chiaro quello che farà il PD? è chiaro quello che insieme faremo, facendo una cosa straordinaria che nessun paese ha fatto! Gli altri hanno costruito muri, hanno parlato di come mettere barriere di filo spinato, noi stiamo parlando di come governare i processi rispettando due principi fondamentali: il principio di umanità e il principio di sicurezza.
78 [Is it clear what we are going to do? Is it clear what the DP is going to do? Is it clear what we are going to do together? Doing something extraordinary that no other country has done! The others built walls, they talked about how to put barbed wire barriers, we are talking about how to govern the processes respecting two fundamental principles: the principle of humanity and the principle of security.] (12/02/2018)
(25) Perché se io governo, riduco o addirittura cancello i flussi illegali allora del tutto evidente che è possibile avanzare l’altra parte della proposta e cioè, […] corridoi umanitari e flussi legali […] se l’Italia ce la farà, diventerà un riferimento molto oltre i confini del nostro paese. [Because if I govern, reduce or even cancel the illegal flows, it is quite clear that it will be possible to advance the other part of the proposal and that is, […] humanitarian corridors and legal flows [...] if Italy succeeds, it will become a reference far beyond the borders of our country.] (8/8/2017)
(26) Se noi […] in Libia separiamo i più deboli e coloro che hanno diritto e la protezione umanitaria e di quello se ne occupa la comunità internazionale e coloro che invece non hanno diritto alla protezione umanitaria perché non scappano dalla guerra li rimandiamo al punto di partenza con un budget per riprendere la loro vita. Se ci pensate bene questo è un modello che se dovesse funzionare ci dice una cosa semplicissima: che si può governare e si possono governare i flussi migratori, tenendo in conto due principi fondamentali: il principio di umanità, e il principio di tenuta democratica dei singoli Paesi. [If […] we separate the weakest and those who have the right to humanitarian protection in Libya and the international community takes care of this and of those who do not have the right to humanitarian protection because they are not fleeing from war, we will send them back to the starting point with a budget to resume their lives. When you think about it, this is a model that if it worked would tell us something very simple: that migratory flows can be governed and can be governed, taking into account two fundamental principles: the principle of humanity and the principle of the democratic stability of individual countries.] (17/09/2017)
As the previous fragments show, based on the MoU and Minniti’s engagement in Libya, there is the idea to create a model to select and distinguish between the refugees in Libya (i.e. those that have the right to be granted with the international relation and the so-called economic migrants who are looking for a better future). While the former are given the opportunity to reach Italy or Europe, the latter must be returned to their countries of origin. As already pointed out by Castelli Gattinara (2017a, 3), the refugee crisis played a crucial role in forcing mainstream parties taking a position and discussing complex issues such as “how societies
79 should be organized in terms of who is to be included and who, instead, is to be excluded” and this system of selection seems to be the personal interpretation of these dynamics by Minniti and the DP. With regard to this, Minniti legitimized exclusion in the following ways.
Through authority of the laws On many occasions when journalists reminded Minniti that this strict distinction between those fleeing war and famine (i.e. refugees) and the so-called economic migrants was a bit of a betrayal of the values of the left based on welcoming and caring for people in poverty, Minniti argued by legitimizing through reference to the authority of the international laws:
(27) Lei ha detto i politici distinguono tra i migranti che scappano dalla guerra, che scappano dalla carestia e i migranti che sfuggono da condizioni economiche negative. Non sono i politici è il diritto internazionale. [You said politicians distinguish between migrants fleeing war, fleeing famine and migrants fleeing negative economic conditions. It’s not the politicians, it’s international law.] (17/09/2017)
(28) In questo momento per stabilire se uno scappa da una guerra o è un migrante economico come si dice, ci sono delle regole internazionali, purtroppo bisogna seguire delle regole internazionali. [Right now, to determine if someone is running from war or if someone is an economic migrant as they say, there are international rules. Unfortunately, you have to follow international rules.] (23/09/2017)
In fragments 27 and 28, Minniti uses a strategy called perspectivation (Wodak, 2011) through which the speaker may express his involvement and position in the discourse. Especially through the expression “unfortunately” and “it’s not the politicians, it’s international law”, Minniti shows his detachment and passivity to the law as something unchangeable and superior.
Through theoretical rationalization (explanation) According to Minniti, distinguishing between economic migrants and refugees is the right thing to do since “doing things this way is appropriate to the nature” (van Leeuwen, 2007, 104) of the Minster of the Interior. The naturalization of this activity is perfectly expressed by the word “simply”:
80 (29) Il compito del Ministro dell’Interno è semplicemente questo, fare rispettare la legge: accogliere chi scappa dalla guerra e rimpatriare chi è fuori dalle regole e viola la legge. [The task of the Minister of the Interior is simply to enforce the law: to welcome those who flee war and repatriate those who are outside the rules and violate the law.] (10/05/2017)
When a journalist reminded him that when distinguishing between refugees (i.e. people fleeing war and famine) and economic migrants who come to improve their living conditions, there was a grey area to consider where people flee war caused by climate change, hunger, thirst, drought or other factors52, Minniti responded that considering the grey zone was not appropriate for his role as minister:
(30) Il ministro dell’Interno non si può muovere sulle tonalità di grigio, come lei può facilmente comprende anche perché dio non voglia se il ministro dell’Interno si muove sulle tonalità di grigio chissà cosa si pensa di questo ministro. Il Ministro dell’Interno deve muoversi sulle tonalità chiare, più possibile chiare. Poi uno può essere d'accordo o non d’accordo col ministro dell’Interno, l’unica cosa che non si può dire che il ministro Interno non cerchi di parlar chiaro. [The Minister of the Interior cannot move on shades of grey as you can easily understand because, God forbid, if the Minister of the Interior moves on shades of grey, who knows what people will think of this minister. The Minister of the Interior must move on light tones, as light as possible. Then one can agree or disagree with the Minister of the Interior, the only thing that cannot be said is that the Minister of the Interior does not try to speak clearly.] (17/09/2017)
Whether through the use of the authorization or the theoretical rationalization, Minniti omits to say that in Italian legislation there is another form of protection for migrants which is that of humanitarian protection. While it is true that the Italian legislative system recognizes the 1951 Geneva Convention and therefore the refugee status and that Minniti's task as minister is to enforce this law, it is equally important to remember that the “grey areas” mentioned by the journalist find consideration in Italian legislation. Accordingly, it is not corrected that people, who are not refugees, are stigmatized as outside the law or as someone who violates the law.
Moralization The practice of exclusion and rejection is legitimized by Minniti in terms of a discourse of balance between rights. The quality that Minniti tries to infer from the practice of excluding economic migrants from entering Italy is the full respect of balance between different rights.
52 The journalist explicitly refers to the situation in Nigeria where the threat is posed by Boko Haram.
81 On one hand, Minniti argues that when managing immigration and reception, “a great democracy” and “a country that is thoughtful about its future” should respect the balance between the right of who is welcomed and who welcomes newcomers. Put differently, Minniti says that if we welcome too many people, we will respect neither the rights of those who welcome – and who in most cases are worried about immigration– nor the rights of those who are welcomed since the overtaxed system will not be able to provide him/her the appropriate services. The act of preserving balance between different rights is moralized as it is the way to demonstrate thoughtfulness to the needs of everyone:
(31) Un Paese quando gestisce l’accoglienza deve tenere conto di due diritti fondamentali: il primo diritto fondamentale è il diritto di chi è accolto, il secondo diritto fondamentale è il diritto di chi accoglie. Una democrazia che ascolta soltanto che tiene conto di uno soltanto dei due diritti è una democrazia che non sta nel giusto equilibrio. [When a country manages reception, it must take into account two fundamental rights: the first fundamental right is the right of those who are welcomed, the second fundamental right is the right of those who receive. A democracy that only takes into account one of the two rights is a democracy that is not in the right balance.] (17/09/2017)
On the other hand, Minniti argues that to put on the same level the refugees right to be granted with international protection and the right of economic migrants to improve their living conditions would undermine the former, because it would lose its specificity. Exclusion is legitimized here by de facto sustaining that there is a hierarchy among migrants:
(32) Il diritto internazionale pone due diritti che tuttavia ci pongono di fronte alla necessità di dovere stabilire una gerarchia. Il primo diritto è quello che scappa da una guerra o da una carestia, perché chi scappa da una guerra o da una carestia ha in discussione la propria vita. Quello è un diritto assoluto ed è importantissimo che la comunità internazionale se ne faccia carico. Il secondo è un diritto anche qui è il diritto al miglioramento delle proprie condizioni di vita dal punto di vista economico, anche quello è un diritto importante ma lei mi consentirà di dire con grande chiarezza che una cosa è garantire il diritto alla vita e un’altra cosa è garantire a tutti il diritto a migliorare le proprie condizioni economiche. Sono due diritti importanti ma che necessariamente hanno bisogno di una gerarchia. Se non li mettiamo sullo stesso piano sa cosa succede? Succede che noi mettiamo in discussione il diritto fondamentale di proteggere la vita perché a quel punto si perde la specificità. [International law posits two rights that nevertheless confront us with the need for having to establish a hierarchy. The first right is the right of those fleeing from war or famine because those fleeing from war or famine have their lives at stake. This is an absolute right
82 and it is very important that the international community takes it on. The second right is the right to improve one’s living conditions from the economic point of view, which is an important right, too, but you will allow me to say very clearly that it is one thing to guarantee the right to live and another thing to guarantee everyone the right to improve their economic conditions. These are two important rights but they necessarily need a hierarchy. If we don't put them on the same level, do you know what will happen? What will happen is that we will question the fundamental right to protect life because at this point, we lose specificity.] (17/09/2017)
(33) La mia preoccupazione è questa che se noi facciamo diventare tutto quanto un diritto assoluto finiamo per scolorire il principio del diritto assoluto che invece io penso che sia una cosa sacra da mantenere. [My concern is that if we make everything an absolute right, we will end up fading the principle of absolute right which I think is a sacred thing to maintain.] (26/09/2017)
6.2.2 Why the code of conduct?
The introduction of a code of conduct for the NGOs saving human lives in the central Mediterranean Sea was legitimized by Minniti in different ways. First, he utilized the authorization by showing that the text was approved by the Ministers of the Interior of the European Union, the European Commission and the main EU stakeholders such as Frontex:
(34) L’Italia ha fatto una proposta alla riunione dei ministri dell’Interno dell’Unione Europea a Tallinn e ne ha avuto il via, poi ha inviato il testo del codice alla Commissione europea e ha avuto il via libera, poi questo testo è stato presentato ai principali stakeholder che agiscono nel Mediterraneo centrale […] e ha avuto il via libera. [Italy made a proposal to the meeting of the Ministers of the Interior of the European Union in Tallinn and got the go-ahead, then sent the text of the code to the European Commission and got the go-ahead, then this text was presented to the main stakeholders acting in the central Mediterranean […] and got the go-ahead.] (15/08/2017)
Furthermore, Minniti repeatedly legitimized the code by saying that the Italian parliament unanimously asked for the code of conduct. During the traditional press conference of “Ferragosto” (i.e. on August 15) and on several other public occasions, the Minister of the Interior declared:
(35) Il codice per le organizzazioni non governative è stato proposto dall’Italia sulla base di un’iniziativa parlamentare approvata all’unanimità dal Parlamento italiano, non ricordo
83 iniziative parlamentari unanimi nel Parlamento italiano. […] Penso anche che un Governo che di fronte a un’iniziativa unanime del Parlamento non facesse nulla sarebbe un governo poco rispettoso del Parlamento. [The code for non-governmental organizations was proposed by Italy on the basis of a parliamentary initiative approved unanimously by the Italian parliament. I do not recall any unanimous parliamentary initiative in the Italian parliament. […] I also think that a government which, in the face of a unanimous initiative by the parliament, does nothing would be a government which has little respect for the parliament.] (15/08/2017)
Regarding this fragment, there are some considerations to raise: although it is legally true what Minniti states about the parliamentary process that preceded the code, some inaccuracies and a certain vagueness must be reported. From Minniti's statement, a person not familiar with the parliamentary process might think that the parliament (i.e. the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate) in plenary session unanimously requested the introduction of the code. However, the reality of the situation seems to mitigate the scope of the request. Indeed, when Minniti speaks of a unanimous vote of the parliament, he refers to the fact that the Defense Committee of the Italian Senate – composed of 20 members – has unanimously approved – following a preliminary investigation of the role of NGOs in the Mediterranean Sea – a document53 recommending the introduction of a code of conduct54. Considering that the members of the committee proportionally reflect the majority in the Senate, it can be deduced that the vote reflects the unanimous will of the Senate and that the Chamber of Deputies (in Italy often only called “the Parliament”) did not assume any role and had no voice in the matter.
Furthermore, in fragment 35, the code is legitimized through a form of moralization as its introduction is seen as a kind of respect (moral values) towards the decisions taken by “the Parliament” (i.e. the Defense Committee of the Italian Senate). Moralization is also utilized by Minniti on other occasions in relation to the code:
(36) Io mi limito a dire una cosa semplicissima nel momento in cui vengono sollevati dubbi, un Paese serio cosa fa, un Paese serio dice due cose che devono essere tutte quante chiare: uno di fronte ai dubbi io non generalizziamo, perché non posso stabilire che tutti quanti fanno una cosa sbagliata, quindi io non generalizzo. Secondo non do giudizi affrettati,
53 Document available here http://www.senato.it/service/PDF/PDFServer/BGT/1023441.pdf 54 The document specifically recommends the introduction of some measures later taken up by the code, such as to “allow the timely intervention of the judicial police at the same time as the rescue by non- governmental organizations”.
84 perché se io arrivo già alla conclusione significa che sto facendo un altro tipo di operazione. […] sia la cosa più saggia per le ONG, sia la cosa più saggia per l’Italia, perché un Paese serio su queste questioni non procede in maniera affrettata e confusa. Toglie i dubbi e da risposte chiare… [I would just like to say one simple thing: when doubts are raised, what does a serious country do? A serious country says two things that must be clear: first, when faced with doubts, I do not generalize because I cannot establish that everyone is doing something wrong, so I do not generalize. Second, I do not make hasty judgments because if I already come to a conclusion, it means that I will be doing a different kind of operation. (...) This is the wisest thing for NGOs and the wisest thing for Italy because a serious country on these issues does not proceed in a hasty and confused way. It removes doubts and gives
clear answers.] (10/05/2017)
By using the words reported in fragment 36, Minniti evinces two moral values (i.e. the wisdom and seriousness of a country) from the action of introducing the code of conduct for NGOs. According to a strategy defined as perspectivation by Wodak (2001), the speaker can report, describe and narrate events from different perspectives, expressing an involvement or not. In this case, Minniti stands as an observer with respect to the action of raising doubts, as the one who takes note of the action and who reacts to the action of smearing and doubting the work of the NGOs, especially by the Trapani Public Prosecutor's Office (see contextualization). This, however, does not reflect the real position of Minniti which can be inferred from his actions as minister. As already explained in the section about contextualization, it appears from a recent investigation that it was the Ministry of the Interior that suggested a few days after the installation of Minniti at the Viminale to investigate the NGOs by using a report entitled “Analysis of migration flows in Italy”. This report supports the thesis that NGO ships in the Mediterranean represent a contributing factor to the increase of migratory flows by acting as ferries that enter Libyan territorial waters and directly pick up migrants under the guise of rescue. However, this text, does not adduce any data that could support this thesis such as in the case of the Defense Committee of the Italian Senate (see above) that Minniti uses as the main legitimization to proceed with the code. According to the investigations carried out so far, there is no evidence in any case that supports the doubts about the involvement of the NGOs with human traffickers that underlie the legitimization provided by Minniti. His active role in raising doubts about the transparency of the work of the NGOs in the Mediterranean differs clearly from his words about the sequestration of the NGO ship Iuventa by the Trapani Public Prosecutor's Office on August 2, 2017 about which he declared while investigations were still underway:
85 (37) In quelle immagini non c’è nessuna ricerca e non c’è nessun salvataggio. C’è un rapporto diretto di transito con gli scafisti, punto! [In these images there is no search and there is no rescue. There is a direct transit relationship with the smuggler, period!] (8/8/2017)
Finally, Minniti tried to legitimize the code as an act of altruism towards the NGOs (i.e. as a way to “safeguard” them):
(38) Penso che il Codice sia un elemento di tutela per le ONG. [I think the code is a safeguard for NGOs.] (8/8/2017)
(39) Quel Codice era un modo per tutelare le ONG che hanno fatto e che fanno un lavoro straordinario. [This code was a way to protect NGOs that did and are doing extraordinary work.] (5/09/2017)
The contradiction of this legitimization is that Minniti wants to protect NGOs from doubts which, as we have seen, he himself helped to create or strengthen and which found no foundation in the various investigations carried out.
6.2.3 Why the Minniti-Orlando law?
The narrative of the Minniti-Orlando law focuses primarily on the legitimization of the speeding up of the proceedings for the recognition of the residence permits based on the reduction of one level of judgement. First of all, it is important to remember that the law has never been central to the debates and press conferences made by Minniti and therefore it has rarely been discussed. In general, Minniti refers to the law mainly with regard to the decree on urban security which, however, is not taken into consideration by this thesis because it is not strictly related to the issue of migration. In fact, Minniti as Minister of the Interior does not only deal with immigration but also with public order. The starting point delivered by Minniti in order to legitimize this law is the slowness in recognizing legal status for migrants which, according to the data proposed by him, is averagely of two years. This means that in some cases the wait can be up to four years. According to Minniti, this slowness represents a violation of the migrants’ right to know about his or her legal status (i.e. his/her future) within a reasonable time as well as of the security of the people who welcome55 (i.e. the Italian population). Put differently, the
55 In the fragments proposed in this thesis, the violation of the security of those who welcome is vaguely expressed. However, in Gargiulo’s paper (2018) – which instead analyzed the interviews
86 following fragments show that Minniti tried to legitimize this law by moralizing it as a way to respect two different fragile categories:
(40) Il tempo medio in Italia per decidere se uno aveva diritto o non aveva diritto alla protezione umanitaria era due anni. Due anni è una vita, è una vita per coloro che hanno il diritto di sapere se hanno o no la protezione umanitaria, ma io aggiungo che è una vita per coloro che li accolgono. [The average time in Italy to decide whether one was entitled or not to humanitarian protection was two years. Two years is a life, it is a life for those who have the right to know if they are entitled to humanitarian protection or not, but I would add that it is a life for those who receive them.] (10/05/2017)
(41) Oggi mediamente per sapere se uno che è arrivato in Italia ha diritto o meno alla protezione umanitaria passano due anni. Due anni è una vita ma questo non è soltanto un problema per quelli che ospitano, è un problema per i richiedenti asilo voi comprendete cosa significa cioè è la lesione di un diritto. [Today, on average, two years pass until it is known if someone who arrived in Italy is entitled to humanitarian protection or not. Two years is a lifetime, but this is not only a problem for those who host, it also is a problem for asylum seekers. You understand what this means? This is the violation of a right.] (8/8/2017)
Furthermore, Minniti explains through an instrumental rationalization the function and the goal of the law (i.e. rapidity as well as integration or repatriations):
(42) Quindi l’idea è quella di intervenire, ridurre i tempi, stabilire se uno ha diritto o no, se uno ha diritto viene integrato se uno non ha diritto viene rimpatriato. [So, the idea is to intervene, to reduce the time, to establish if one has the right or not, if one has the right to be integrated, if one does not have the right to be repatriated.] (10/05/2017)
given by Minniti to newspapers during his time as minister – it becomes clear that he refers to the violation of the security of the people who welcome.
87 7. Discussion and conclusion
At this point, the findings presented in the previous section have to be discussed in the light of the research question and hypothesis. The process of normalization of far-right populism understood as the re-contextualization and re-semiotization of extreme positions in the mainstream is visible in Minniti’s legitimization strategies, especially through the endorsement of the so-called “politics of fear” (Wodak, 2015, 2020) where immigration is mainly seen as threat or danger. The ethno-pluralist doctrine perpetuated by the Northern League is based on the assumption that immigration is a threat to national identity and the major cause of criminality, social unrest and insecurity, and it was redefined in a softer way but still within a framework dominated by fear and exclusion. The core of the politics of fear promoted by Minniti’s narrative is the use of legitimizations through fearful scenarios enriched by expressions such as “to threaten”, “to destabilize”, “risk” and “danger”. In detail, migration is described as a risk for and threat to the Italian democracy, as a major cause for producing social tensions as well as terrorism. Hence, criminalization and securitization of the migratory phenomenon are distinctive traits of Minniti’s discourse. By contrast, a scenario characterized by the absence of migration (in particular the one described as illegal and which involves the so-called economic migrants) is positively described and correlates to the values of altruism, security, strong democracy, legality and humanity. Linguistically, the use of the TINA argument (there is no alternative to these anti-immigration measures), the use of the topos of danger and threat (according to which if immigration brought about such dangers and threats, one should not sustain it) and the use of euphemisms are signs for the normalization of the far- right populism. Euphemisms serve Minniti’s purpose to cover up the drama of the Libyan situation that was leaking from some journalistic and UNHCR investigations while he was still Minister of the Interior. Accordingly, he euphemistically described the activity of the Libyan Coast Guard as “saving human lives” and the places where migrants are located as “reception centers”. In the contrasting narratives of humanitarian and protectionist stands – which emerged in the scenario of the European refugee “crisis” – Minniti seems to fully belong to the second trend, contributing with his rhetoric of reservation and hostility towards migration to the generalized climate of fear and anxiety. The exclusionary trend – set and reinforced by the European refugee “crisis” – seems to permeate Minniti’s narrative, especially through a hierarchization of the most vulnerable categories where the lower layer is represented by the economic migrants. Put differently, Minniti de facto embraces the demands of the far-right populists – strongly hostile to the arrival of all those not fleeing war – by creating a model based on the idea that only specific groups (i.e. the refugees that escape wars and famine) have the
88 right to be included, whereas others (i.e. economic migrants) have to be excluded. In an attempt to cover up the discriminatory elements of this model based on a clear contagion of far-right extreme populist ideas and on a betrayal of the solidarity-based positions typical of the values of the left and center-left, Minniti makes use of legitimization strategies that appeal to principles higher than political ideology such as the respect of the international law (fragments 27 and 28), the appropriateness for performing the role of the Minister of the Interior (fragment 29 and 30) and the respect for the moral principles of the balance between different rights (fragment 31).
Furthermore, Minniti's operationalization of discursive changes characterized by populism, securitization and radicalization in the macro-level scenario of the refugee crisis and international terrorism is visible in a significant divergence of the positions on immigration historically supported by the center-left. Contextualizing Minniti’s discourse on immigration within the tradition of values typical of the left and center-left, this thesis can demonstrate that center-left stances on immigration have changed in favor of a negative evaluation of the migratory phenomena. Urso’s finding that left stands would tend to favor humanitarian over social security has been completely overturned whereby on the altar of security – a historical right-wing emphasis – the human rights of the weakest are systematically violated. Accordingly, the security of Italian democracy and of the Italians who welcome foreigners is given priority over the respect for the (human) rights of migrants to the point that it is legitimate to let them die in Libya (MoU) or to deprive them of a degree of judgment (Minniti-Orlando law). In fact, in order to protect the security of Italian citizens who welcome the foreign citizen and the foreign citizen’s right to know about his or her legal status within a reasonable time, Minniti decided to harm the foreign citizen’s right which remains the only one in the Italian legal system to have only three instead of four degrees of judgment. In short, what this law provides penalizes those who seek hospitality for the sake of the security of those who grant it. In general, in Minniti's narrative, humanitarian values are subordinated not only to security but also to other aspects such as the pursuit of the national interest (fragment 8). In sum, the historical left and center-left emphasis for solidarity-based positions gave way to a repressive and legality-based approach – a historical right-wing emphasis.
Elements of contagion of far-right populist claims in Minniti’s narrative are also present in the way he justified the introduction of the code of conduct. He de facto legitimized the doubts about the alleged crimes committed by the NGOs and raised by the defamatory campaign sustained by the League (and other actors), contributed to enhance them (fragment 37), and in
89 an attempt to protect the NGOs, he made their life impossible by arriving at the result hoped for by their detractors.
To sum, this way of conceptualizing migration seems to reflect at least three of the five main features of anti-immigration ideas and claims of far-right populism indicated by Schröder (2018) (i.e. the negative evaluation of immigration, the describing of negative future scenarios and claims for limiting the reception of immigrants). Accordingly, the hypothesis that Minniti legitimizes anti-immigration measures by normalizing ideas and believes about immigration such as the threat it poses and the security concerns it raises – which are typical to the far-right populist rhetoric – seems to be accepted.
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100 9. Acknowledgments
Thanks to my supervisor, Professor Florian Bieber and to all the professors who have played a part in increasing my curiosity and desire to learn. You have been very helpful.
Thank you, UBI GRAZ team! You were like a family to me when I was in Graz.
Thank you, Ruth! You have been such a special roommate and friend even in the darkest moments of my experience in Graz. You have taught me the power of kindness!
Thank you, Rosa! Your smartness has enlightened my university path and your friendship makes me a better student and person.
Thanks to my best friend Federico. You don't know how much it helped me to spend time together in Vienna, eating pizza and having very long conversations. It really felt like home. You are a very special friend.
Thanks to my best friend Martina, for all these years together. Your support, respect and love are a blessing to me.
Thanks to Rocco who even in the most difficult moments while I was writing my thesis always found a way to make me laugh. I love the person I am when I am with you!
Thank you to my uncle Vito for always believing in me. Your perseverance has been an inspiration to me.
Thank you to my parents for all the sacrifices they made to allow me to study, I will be forever grateful.
Thank you to my daddy, for taking me to Graz when I would have never had the strength to do it on my own and for always being such resilient and strong. You are special!
Finally, thanks to my mom, for teaching me everything I know about life! Thank you for always reminding me how important it is to study, not only to get a good grade but rather to increase my knowledge and broaden my horizons. I miss you so much!
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