Migration Policy Liberalization in Response to an Exogenous Crisis. The Case of Italy’s Regularization of Immigrant Workers Amidst the Covid19 Pandemic

In May 2020, at the peak of the Covid19-pandemic crisis, the Italian government approved a regularization campaign for immigrant workers. While far from uncommon in the history of Italian migration policy, the persisting narrative of immigration as a threat made regularization campaigns increasingly unviable. How can we explain the political feasibility of the 2020 amnesty? What was the role of the Covid19 crisis? What were the key dynamics that shaped the final policy as well as its shortcomings? This case study analyses how and to what extent, an exogenous crisis may impact the opportunity structures of the actors involved and, ultimately, the policymaking process. The paper provides insights into how the pandemic-related crisis interacted with the dominant securitarian approach to immigration. Through an analysis of semi-structured interviews and documents, the paper argues that the challenges contingent to the crisis enabled a shift in the narratives on immigrant workers and opened a space for advocates of a regularization campaign. However, the pre-existing narrative and policy paradigm of immigration as a threat were quickly restored, underlining how the securitarian lens remains deeply ingrained in the political and institutional dynamics. At the peak of the Covid19 crisis, the Italian government approved a regularization for immigrant workers. While not uncommon in the Italian migration governance, the dominant narrative of immigration as a threat made regularizations increasingly unviable. This paper analyses how and to what extent, the pandemic impacted dominant immigration narratives and policies. Through interviews and documents’ analysis, it argues that the crisis represented a window of opportunity for policy change, exploited by supporters of the regularization. However, the pre-existing paradigm of immigration crisis was quickly restored, underlining how the securitarian lens remains deeply ingrained in the political and institutional dynamics.