ITALY: ‘White Supremacist Concepts Are Entering Mainstream Political Discourse on Migration’
CIVICUS discusses Italy’s restrictive immigration policies with Eleonora Celoria, a researcher at FIERI (Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull’Immigrazione), a research centre on migration, and a member of the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI), an Italian legal organisation that defends migrants’ and asylum seekers’ rights through advocacy, public awareness and strategic litigation.
In late February, Italy’s migration debate intensified on two fronts. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government passed a bill tightening maritime border controls and expanding deportation powers. Meanwhile, a far-right petition calling for ‘remigration’ – a concept associated with Austrian activist Martin Sellner that advocates mass deportation of minorities – gathered enough signatures to force a parliamentary debate. Civil society warns that both developments violate international refugee law.
What are the main objectives of the new migration bill?
The bill introduces a 30-day naval blockade mechanism, extendable to six months, for ships deemed to pose a ‘serious threat to public order or national security’, including on the grounds of ‘exceptional migratory pressure’. It goes beyond European Union (EU) frameworks and is designed to restrict civil society organisations conducting search and rescue operations.
The blockade is really a prohibition on entering Italian waters, and ships that violate it would face fines of up to €50,000 (approx. US$ 57,000), with repeat offenders facing confiscation. Since civil society rescue vessels are the only ships making multiple trips in and out of Italian waters, they are the primary target. This is not simply a border management tool; it’s a deliberate escalation of state control over maritime arrivals.
More significantly, the bill would make the Italy-Albania protocol permanent: migrants intercepted at sea would be transported directly to Italian-run processing centres in Albania, bypassing Italian mainland ports entirely. Their asylum claims would be determined outside Italy’s jurisdiction. Because they never reach Italian soil, they wouldn’t access Italian legal protections or independent judicial review. The government is determined to use this mechanism. Albanian facilities held only 10 to 15 people due to adverse court rulings, but the government has recently ramped up transfers to take the number to around 80.
How does the bill change asylum and border management practices?
The bill focuses on criminalisation, deportations and removals rather than asylum procedures. It introduces stricter rules for immigration detention centres (Centri di Permanenza per i Rimpatri, CPRs), expands expulsion grounds to include minor criminal convictions and ramps up criminal penalties for people facing expulsion. This effectively criminalises irregular status itself.
Critically, the bill eliminates special protection, a form of national protection that Italian courts have frequently recognised for people who don’t meet narrow refugee criteria but face serious risks if they are returned. This has been one of the few remaining meaningful pathways to legal status. Stricter eligibility criteria would reduce judicial discretion, trapping more people in legal irregularity.
Finally, the bill implements the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, a package of EU laws overhauling asylum and border procedures across the bloc, which member states must transpose by 12 June. It does so through legislative delegation, giving the government wide discretion to enact implementing measures by decree. Italy’s approach is the most restrictive possible. The Albania externalisation model is the primary mechanism, prioritising rapid removal over thorough examination. Changes to asylum procedures will be determined through executive action, with limited parliamentary scrutiny.
What is remigration, and why does it concern civil society?
Remigration is a white supremacist concept that calls for the forced removal of immigrants, refugees and their descendants, including legal residents and naturalised citizens, on grounds of ethnicity, race or perceived failure to ‘assimilate’. It targets people for who they are, not what they have done, violating the non-discrimination principle that underpins human rights law and the rule of law.
What makes this dangerous is that remigration has moved from marginal to mainstream political discourse. A far-right petition on remigration has recently gathered enough signatures to force a parliamentary debate. When such concepts gain mainstream legitimacy, they push other parties towards increasingly restrictive policies. Italy’s current bills move precisely in that direction.
From a legal perspective, remigration violates international human rights conventions and Italy’s constitution, which guarantees non-discrimination and solidarity. A policy based on ethnic or racial identity would also be incompatible with Italy’s international obligations.
Where do these measures conflict with international law?
The measures create serious tensions with several binding legal instruments: the 1951 Geneva Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and EU primary law including the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Expanded administrative detention in Italy and Albania risks being arbitrary where the legal basis is insufficiently precise or subject to inadequate judicial review. Documented conditions in Italian CPRs and foreseeable conditions in Albanian centres expose people to inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of Article 3 of the ECHR. The externalisation model creates a direct risk of violating the non-refoulement principle, the absolute prohibition on returning people to places where they face persecution.
The government will argue these measures align with the EU Pact. But alignment with the pact does not guarantee compatibility with the ECHR or the Geneva Convention. ASGI will respond with litigation, through individual cases and strategic cases targeting CPR detention and the Italy-Albania deal, and documentation of the human costs of these policies.
What risks do these policies pose for migrants’ and asylum seekers’ rights?
Under the proposed legislation, Italy would intercept boats and transfer rescued migrants to extraterritorial centres without assessing their health status, protection needs or vulnerabilities. Victims of persecution, torture and trafficking may never get to present their claims or be identified as needing protection.
The bill criminalises irregular migrants by allowing both administrative detention in CPRs and criminal imprisonment in prisons, a dual-track approach that multiplies the risk of fundamental rights violations and exposure to degrading conditions. Detention in existing CPRs is already documented as dangerous. Conditions in the Albanian centres, with minimal oversight and no independent monitoring, would predictably be worse.
The result is a system designed to process people quickly rather than accurately. Trafficking victims, torture survivors and people with severe mental health conditions — people who most need careful assessment and legal support — are unlikely to be identified and protected. Compressed timelines and limited access to lawyers amount to a serious restriction on the right to effective judicial protection.
CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.
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