The continuation of criminalization by other means: the role of judicial agency in the Italian policing of humanitarian assistance at sea

Over the last few years, many of the civil society organizations engaged in search and rescue activities in the Central Mediterranean have been targeted in different ways by public authorities. This phenomenon, widely described in terms of ‘policing’, has been central in the EU’s and member states’ migration governance. Scholars have increasingly considered various aspects of that, mostly focusing on legislation, practices and consequences of policing. This article contributes to the existing scholarship by shifting attention to the policy dimension and specifically considering the policy-making process. I focus on the Italian case, in the context of the broader EU policing dynamics, adopting an actor-centred institutionalist perspective, with a view to explaining how and why such policies emerged and evolved over time. To do so, I focus on the policy influence of the judiciary, as enabler of both expansive and repressive dynamics, in the broader context of European and national migration policy-making dynamics. Based on extensive research encompassing different governance layers, the case at hand offers interesting empirical and analytical reflections related to the policing of humanitarian assistance and on the role of the judiciary as a complex and ambivalent driver of the policy process.