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Mare Nostrum Mission? EXAMINERS’ COPIES What Explains the Change of Policy reflected in the Italian Mare Nostrum Mission? Thesis Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Coursework in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford by 1008567 Word Count: 14,754 Refugee Studies Centre Oxford Department of International Development University of Oxford Table of contents Acronyms Introduction 1 Theory 2 Methodology 3 Chapter 1 Two-Level Game 5 Mare Nostrum as a two-level game 5 Conclusion 12 Chapter 2 Mare Nostrum 13 When Mare Nostrum started 14 Where Mare Nostrum was operative 16 Mare Nostrum’s mandate 17 Structure 18 Funding 19 Conclusion 21 Chapter 3 International Level 22 Italy and Libya 22 The ‘Treaty of Friendship’ (2008) 23 After Gaddafi's death 23 The ruling Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy 24 Conclusion 26 Chapter 4 National Level 27 Breaking the status quo 27 Letta and Pope Francis 29 Conclusion 32 Chapter 5: Europeanisation 34 The Europeanisation of Mare Nostrum 34 The European Parliament and Council in October 2013 35 The (new) perspective of the Italian presidency of the European Council 39 Conclusion 40 FINAL CONCLUSIONS 41 Acronyms ANSA Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata ANCI Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani CIR Comitato Italiano Rifugiati CISOM Corpo Italiano di Soccorso dell’ Ordine di Malta INPS Instituto Nazionale Prevenienza Sociale M5S MoVimento 5 Stelle NCD Nuovo Centro Destra PD Partito Democratico PDL Il Popolo della Liberta SPRAR Sistema di Protezine Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati UNAR Ufficio nazionale Antidisriminazioni Razziali UDC Unione di Centro UFTDU Unione Forense per la Tutela dei Diritti Umani Introduction What explains the change of policy reflected in the Italian Mare Nostrum mission? The purpose of this research is to explore the reasons for the launch of Mare Nostrum, a mission that marked a significant change in how Italy dealt with irregular migration in the Mediterranena. From 2008 to 2011, Italy engaged in “push back” actions, in cooperation with the Libyan authorities (Human Rights Watch,2009; UNHCR, 2010:3; Frenzen, 2013, Andriasevick, 2009) while, in 2013, it started a military and humanitarian mission with the mandate of searching for and rescuing people and disembarking them in Italy (ANSA, 2013, Marina Militare, 2014). Questioning why Italian policy shifted when Italy began Mare Nostrum, and providing evidence for the assumption that these policies changed in 2013, this work differs from the analysis that presents Mare Nostrum as an example of the externalisation of Italian and European borders, and which consequently does not consider the operation to be a substantial change of policy (Cuttitta, 2014;). Moreover, it challenges the assumption that Mare Nostrum was exclusively instigated in order to save human lives and fight smuggling. In light of this, this research takes a different point of analysis compared to the claims arguing that Mare Nostrum “was first and foremost an action borne of moral responsibility to meet a growing humanitarian crisis” (Patalano, 2015:15, Sangiorgi, 2014). The paper argues that there was a shift in Italian migration policy for four reasons, which correspond to the four causes given by Aristotle to explain what makes something different from what it used to be. Firstly, there is Mare Nostrum’s ‘material cause’, i.e. its structure: it was carried out by the Italian Navy, relying on funding substantially larger than other EU missions in the Mediterranean, and patrolling an area which was larger than the official Italian SAR zone. Secondly, its ‘formal cause’, i.e the ‘essence’ of Mare Nostrum, was its mandate as both a military and humanitarian mission. Thirdly, its ‘efficient cause’, i.e. the author who instigated Mare Nostrum, was the Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. Finally, the ‘final cause’ involved controlling an area of the Mediterranean where the Libyan government was unable to prevent departures from its coasts, while at the same time aiming at the Europeanisation of the mission. In brief, Mare Nostrum was a military and humanitarian mission, required by the necessity of replacing cooperation with Libya and facilitated by the domestic political context, which Enrico Letta implemented in order to Europeanise Italy’s burden. The first chapter of this paper provides an explanation of the empirical analysis within the theoretical framework of the two-level game (Putnam, 1998). The second chapter explains 1 the material and the formal cause of the mission and demonstrates how it marked a shift in Italy’s migration policy. The third chapter analyses the international factors that created an international political context that required a policy change, namely the political instability in Libya after Gaddafi’s death in 2011 and the ruling of Hirsi vs Italy in 20121. The fourth chapter describes the Italian national political context in 2013. This section underlines the leading role of Enrico Letta, the efficient cause of the mission, in Italian politics at the time and analyses the domestic political context, focusing on the nature of his technocratic government and the role of the Catholic Church. The fifth chapter explains the final cause of Mare Nostrum, providing reasons for the claim that Letta aimed at the Europeanisation of Mare Nostrum. The timeline of this research is primarily focused on the period from 2008, when the Treaty of Friendship between Italy and Libya came into force, until 2013, when Mare Nostrum began. Theory This paper’s argument draws on Putnam’s (1998) theory of the two-level game to analyse how national and international political factors shaped the decision to initiate Mare Nostrum. It underlines the influence of individual agency of political actors (Nye, 2008), during a technocratic government (McDowell and Valbruzzi, 2014), which shows that the decision for this policy change did not occur in a political arena (Freeman, 1995; Guiraudon, 1998). Looking at the process of uploading Mare Nostrum at the EU Council, level 1, the paper refers to the process of Europeanisation. Europeanisation is here applied as a theory which aims at understanding the “issues of causes” that connect policy changes at the domestic and European level (Olsen, 2002:291; Caporaso, 1996, 2007; Armstrong, 2010; Bulmer, 2007, 2009; Radaelli, 2008, Büchs, 2008). It is applied according to a “bottom up” approach, which “starts with a domestic effect and then seeks to explain “Europe” as one of the competing range of independent variables that may have caused domestic change”, shifting upwards to EU to share responsibility (Kennet, 2010; Exadaktylos and al., 2009; Stolfi, 2008) . Methodology The paper studies the causal mechanisms that led to this policy change and applies the methodology of process tracing in order to analyse each step of this process. As has been 1 Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy , Application no. 27765/09, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 23 February 2012 2 claimed by George and Bennet (2005: 147), ‘process-tracing is one means of attempting to get closer to the mechanism or micro foundations behind observed phenomena’. This methodology refers to ‘histories, archival documents, interview transcripts and other sources’ to analyse the different elements that influence a case study (George and Bennet, 2005: 210– 222). Applying this methodology first involves giving an account, from a historical perspective, of the state of Italian migration policy prior to Mare Nostrum. Secondly, it involves analysing the political environment in 2013 to examine the changes that justified this shift in policy. The first part of this research refers to the literature that explains Italy’s migration policy in the Mediterranean and its diplomatic relations with Libya (Paoletti, 2010; Baloffi et al, 2015; Pastore et al., 2006). It then considers official documents, newspapers, NGOs and government reports in order to account for the elements that led to the creation of Mare Nostrum. The examination of the Europeanisation of Mare Nostrum employs the official documents of the EU Parliament and EU Council in 2013-2014. The description of the influence of Hirsi vs Italy uses the documentation of the Council of Europe in 2012. In order to explain the features of Mare Nostrum, reference is made to the documents of the Italian Navy and of Italy’s Minister of the Defence and Minister of the Interior, including migration data, the balance of the mission and an abstract of the review of the use of Mare Nostrum’s funds. The reconstruction of the national political context of 2013 and 2014 analyses the political debates of the Italian parliament and chamber of deputies (camera dei deputati) following the presentation of motions to modify or close Mare Nostrum. The reports of international agencies and non- governmental organisations and political declaration that was made on Mare Nostrum’s commencement are also considered. It was not always easy to collect evidence that explains exactly why Mare Nostrum was begun. For example, conducting research into Italian migration policy in the Mediterranean Sea in order to show how Mare Nostrum represented a change from past actions revealed that there was no linear or well-documented evolution. NGO reports, EU documents and national reports often express significantly different perspectives on the same issue (e.g. in regards of the ending of push back action as a consequence of the implementation of Hirsi vs Italy). In addition, sometimes it was challenging assessing the reliability of the sources. An example is the blurriness around Mare Nostrum funding, which were often estimated to be inferior than they were in reality (La Repubblica, 2013b). The collaboration of the personnel of Italy’s Ministry of the Interior has been particularly 3 helpful in conducting this research, in particular the Department of Integration and Immigration, which has kindly answered all of my questions and provided the balance sheet for the years 2013–2014 for the analysis of the funding of Mare Nostrum.
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