Paradoxical migrant allyship: the adoption of a disciplinary model of ‘compulsory integration’ for asylum seekers in Italy

Recent scholarship has focused extensively on the deployment of technologies of security as a tactic of migration governance. The analyses have largely been on the effect of prioritising state security over migrant rights and the subsequent impact on their well-being. In our analysis of a migrant accommodation centre called the L'Accademia d'Integrazione (Bergamo, Italy) we contribute to this literature through a multi-scalar analysis of the place-specific rationales justifying the use of these technologies. There, migrants are required to wear jumpsuits reading 'Thank you Bergamo,' and subject to behavioural regulation, restricted mobility, and omnipresent surveillance. We observe how this new model of migration governance based around compulsory training and discipline emerged as an attempt to gain political control over the dominant discourse around the perceived migrant threat. Racialised preconceptions of African migrants, their presumed lack of cultural compatibility and a perceived unwillingness to participate in existing integration programs permeated the media and political rhetoric, challenging state sovereignty and perceived control. We see how this approach designed to foster 'palatability' contributed to their further differentiation, subjugation, and marginalisation. We question the conceptualisation of integration within the program arguing that rather than produce parity it commits structural violence in form and practice.