Cities, Asylum Reception and Legal Uncertainty: National Integration Framework and the Limits of Local Authorities
2025-11-06
While some (progressive) cities have been proactive in forced migrants' reception and integration policy formulation, the central state is ultimately the chief architect of migration policy and the legal framework. Legal status considerably shapes all facets of forced migrants' lifeworlds and thus has significant implications for policy and integration. The Italian government has recently made significant changes to its migration system, affecting asylum‐seekers and refugees' legal status and subsequent city‐level integration efforts. This article thus investigates the interplay between asylum‐seekers' legal status, national migration policy framework and local integration programme. Employing the concept of legal uncertainty and qualitative exploration of a local integration project in Bergamo, it problematises the state's institutional production of uncertain and precarious migration status and how this shapes the prospects of asylum‐seekers' integration processes. It is shown that the city's efforts to integrate asylum‐seekers, starting from their arrival, are stifled by the national migration legal framework.