Year: 2016
Type: other
Abstract: Sciurba Hotspot system as a new device of clandestinisation: view from Sicily opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/alessandra-sciurba/hotspot-system-as-new-device-of-clandestinisation-view-from-siThe 'hotspot' system for migrants remains an experiment, but it entails the implementation at the national level of human-rights-violating policies elaborated at the EU level.Lampedusan authorities disembark migrants from Libya, February 2015.Flickr/Jordi Bernabeu Farrus.Some rights reserved.In early December 2015 a group of Gambian migrants arrived at the local office of an Italian cultural association in Palermo.They each carried a 'deferred refoulement decree', or "7-days decree" as migrants have begun to call it, which obliged them to leave Italy via the airport of Fiumicino in 7 days.This was, however, an impossible order to fulfil, considering that they had been abandoned by the Italian Police at the railway station of Agrigento, without any money or information about where to go.These young men from Gambia, having set off from the Libyan coast on a small vessel, had been rescued at sea on 20 November, after which they were brought to Lampedusa.They spent five days in the reception centre on the island where they had to undergo identification procedures and were forced to sign a paper they were unable to read as it was written in a language they did not understand.These procedures are part of the new EU 'hotspot' approach, which has recently been adopted in Lampedusa.Whilst UNHCR officers informed the migrants about the possibility of asking for international protection, they reported that they had no real access to any asylum procedures.
Source: Aisberg (University of Bergamo)
Author: Alessandra Sciurba
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Women's Rights
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2737521734