Non-Persons – The Exclusion of Migrants in a Global Society

With its geographical position and long, easily accessible coastlines, Italy serves, from a migration point of view, as a “gate to Europe”.

The massive flow of migrants, mostly smuggled into Italian territorial waters by ruthless human traffickers on board rubber dinghies, has shifted intensity and points of departure in time, but has never really stopped.

Italy’s temporary detention centres, strategically located in places such as the island of Lampedusa, halfway between Sicily and Libya, are full to the brim and often described as failing to meet basic standards by human rights groups.

This is the dramatic picture emerging from Alessandro Dal Lago’s book, based on a range of first-hand accounts of immigrants as well as policemen, judges, lawyers and social workers.

Dal Lago dissects Italy and its many failures as a host country: its prejudices, the manipulation and stigmatization of certain ethnic groups by the media, as well as the inability of governments, both left and right, to tackle a problem which affects the western world as a whole.

Alessandro Dal Lago teaches Sociology at the University of Genoa. His research is currently focussing on cultures of war in global society.

You can read the introduction, first chapter, and comments or buy this book at www.ipocpress.com

By Alessandro Dal Lago
ISBN: 9788895145389 – p. 290 – € 23.00 – Paperback – Jan 2009
IPOC – Italian paths of culture
www.ipocpress.it

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