BORDERING SUBJECTS. THE UNSPOKEN INCORPORATION OF UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS IN ITALY.

Socio-legal and criminological research make sense of the mechanisms of border control by taking for granted that the main aim of logic of control is one to exclude, therefore they generally focus on removal procedures. My research takes a different approach: my focus is on the far more frequent conditions under which undocumented migrants are informally allowed to remain despite official permission. Therefore, in looking at the immigration control regimes, my focus will be on undocumented migrants living inside national territories rather than removal procedures. Undocumented migrants are generally seen as resulting from immigration law failing to enforce removal. On the contrary, I argue that undocumented migrants living inside national territories may be seen as the very product of law instead of its failure. In a sense, immigration control regimes are mechanisms that exclude through removal and at the same time processes of production of a new subject, that is, the undocumented migrant living inside national territories despite official permission. This thesis aims to enrich the literature on control by looking at the differential inclusion of those many undocumented migrants living in the territory. Differential inclusion is a concept elaborated by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson (2013); it is an invitation to look at the mechanisms of inclusion that can involve various degrees of subordination, rule, discrimination, racism, disenfranchisement, exploitation and segmentation. In this line, the foucauldian concept of discipline goes exactly in the direction of acknowledging punishment, specifically imprisonment, as a tool to normalize individuals, in order to make them to conform to the norm and include them in disciplined societies (Foucault, 1977). Hence, inclusion and exclusion are assembled logics. As well as it seems a logic of inclusion the one behind imprisonment, at least at the origin of capitalism and the modern state: prison is aimed at disciplining the individual to labour, at producing the disciplined worker useful for the development of capitalistic economy (Melossi and Pavarini, 1981). My theoretical perspective will move from here. One main concern of the present work is that, even if internal border control relies on similar discourses, power relations, and laws at the global level, I argue that it produce dissimilar outcomes depending on the local context. Therefore, by accepting Saskia Sassen’s invitation to see “the global inside the national” (Sassen, 2010), my aim is to show that the global logics meet other logics, conditions, and history at the local level, which affects the expected outcomes. On the one hand, the outcomes of global borders control depend on the local level; on the other hand, the local dimension is the only dimension where it is possible to study, recognize and understand even global dynamics. Using a case study of internal border control in Bologna, Italy, I will examine the logics underpinning global border control at the local level, as this may question the logics of global border control often taken for granted. The core of investigation will be the interaction between police and undocumented migrants at the internal borders, that is, once migrants have crossed external borders and live inside the territory. My case study looks at undocumented migrants in Bologna (Italy) continually undergoing police checks, being charged, and even detained. Few are actually removed; the great majority remains and finds their place in the Italian shadow economy. I argue that what we see in Bologna is a logic of subordinated inclusion rather than exclusion, whose main result is the production of a subject who may not completely belong, yet is not completely excluded either. Police are at the core of present investigation, as the Italian immigration law entrusts the control over undocumented immigration to general police (a specific immigration police have never been issued in Italy indeed). Even so, police practices are not taken into consideration alone: what really stands at the core of present research is the interaction between migrants and police. I consider that migrants are not passive subjects in the immigration control regime, but by enacting strategies of resistance, they oppose the police, force them towards negotiation, and contribute to the final results of interaction. The present analysis acknowledges that migrants oppose strategies of subjectivation to the strategies of subjection enacted by the police, which originates that migrants are active agents in the mechanisms of control that produce them as subjects. The conclusions discuss the importance to broaden our consideration of the elements taking part in the immigration control regime. They proposes that immigration penalty is much wider than just removal procedures. They summarize the process of creation of the peculiar subject of the present case study, underling global and local dynamics of power, and it will shed light on the connection between penalty, border, and economy. The process of bordering subjects in the specific case study of this investigation opens up for two additional considerations. 1 the analysis of border control should also take economy into account. 2) the bodies of undocumented migrants are the concrete manifestation of the link between economy and penalty. I argue that the complex processes through which undocumented migrants are produced as subject may be analysed as one segment of “the discursive interactions of all the actors“ (Melossi 2008: 7) which link penalty and economy. The research is aimed at answering the crucial question of how such mechanisms come to be. In fact, rather than as a well-organized and preconceived apparatus, the mechanisms of control is intended as the result of not planned actions of individual actors, who time after time look for the “best” way to manage the complex situation of undocumented immigration.