Italian migration policy: Changes and effects

Abstract

The phenomenon of Italian migration is characterized by a clear caesura, which makes Italy a country with a long history of emigration and a much shorter experience of immigration. The mid- 1970s are considered a breakthrough, when the zero-migration balance was recorded for the first time. The growing wave of arriving foreigners forced the rulers to change the current immigration policy, which rarely responded to the needs of both foreigners and citizens of the Republic. Subsequent laws, usually created in extraordinary circumstances, were also subject to the process of alternating power. Lack of legislative continuity and insufficient social integration gave birth to additional tensions around the observed influx of refugees. In this situation, it seems that the management of the migration crisis is no longer the responsibility of a single nation, but should be an action taken at the level of solutions of the European community.