History and Anthropology

ISSN: 0275-7206 (Print) 1477-2612 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ghan20

Migration between prohibitionism and the

perpetuation of illegal labour
Salvatore Palidda
To cite this article: Salvatore Palidda (2005) Migration between prohibitionism
and the perpetuation of illegal labour, History and Anthropology, 16:1, 63-73, DOI:
10.1080/02757200500073314
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02757200500073314

Published online: 16 Aug 2006.

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History and Anthropology,

Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 6373

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Migration between Prohibitionism and

the Perpetuation of Illegal Labour
Salvatore Palidda
0+3901020953732
Dip.
SalvatorePalidda
palidda@unige.it.
000002005
Sc.&
Antropologische
- DISAUniversity
of Genoac.so A. Podesta 216128 GENOVAItaly
History
10.1080/02757200500073314
GHAN107314.sgm
0000-0000
Original
Taylor
12005
16
and
and
Article
Francis
(print)/0000-0000
Francis
Anthhropology
Group
Ltd Ltd
(online)

The management of the migrations turn to a prohibitionism coexists with the perpetuation
of a widespread underground economy. Migrants are faced less with the possibility of legitimate and rewarding integration than with a system of use and discard. Migrants have
come to see two sides of dominant countries: paternalism, tolerance and solidarity, but also
the undervaluing of their presence, their tendency to exploit and discriminate (even on the
grounds of race), as well as their most criminal aspects. The regulation of migration is the
buffer necessary to confront the perpetuation of the misconduct of countries a large part of
whose economies aim to make a profit from the exploitation of black market workers, and
even better if it can be done surreptitiously. Illegal workers are often the response to appeals
from certain niche areas of economic activity that are involved in underground economies.
The paradox revolves arround, at the same time, the uneven relationship between dominant/immigration countries and dominated/emigration countries, and the coexistence of
the war against illegal labour and the growing need for a black market workforce. After
September 11th as part of the overall war against terrorism, but it quickly turned into
criminalization of migrants coming from Muslim countries.
Keywords: Prohibitionism of migrations; Criminalisation of migrants; Irregular
migrations for underground economies
Migration appears to be going through a paradoxical period that in reality is analogous with other periods in the past. In effect, it is perfectly evident that migration has
been fundamental to the second great transformation which has developed over the
course of the last thirty years (i.e., the development of a worldwide neo-liberalism).
However, this does not prevent it also from appearing to be the enemy that stalks
dominant countries, and from becoming the focus of particular attention from secret
Correspondence to: Salvatore Palidda, Dip. Sc. AntropologicheDISA, Facolt di Scien della Formazione, Universita degli Studi di Genova C. SO A. Podest 2 16128 GENOVA, Italy. E-mail: palidd@unige.it.
ISSN 02757206 print/ISSN 14772612 online/05/01006311 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/02757200500073314

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services, the military, and the police in the form of terrorist groups and criminal
gangs. Between these two facts is a very different situation to the one experienced by
migration in the past, when its role was perceived to be one of feeding the stable
workforce necessary for industrial development. Today, migration is faced less with
a system of integration than with a severe process of selection targeted at overexploitation by way of underestimating the value of immigrants, if not by racialisation
and criminalisation.
A Telling Track Record
After thirty years of new migration in the United States and Europe, it is possible to
think that the number of dead and disappeared, and the turn-over, are considerably
greater than during periods of migration in the past1 (relatively speaking, taking into
account that South-North migration in the past was much more important). In effect,
it is well known that migration previously went through traumatic times as a result of
sporadic crises, wars and widespread instances of persecution (most notably in the
case of Jews and Communists). However, the economic development of the past
depended for the most part on immigrants who would serve to stabilise the economy,
replenish the workforce and act as cannon fodder in wars, if not to become citizens
of their host country. By contrast, it may be possible to argue somewhat provocatively
that economic development depends upon the over-exploitation through criminalisation, underestimation and discrimination against immigrants on the grounds of race,
and upon a very high turnover because the workforce is either exhausted very quickly
or becomes emancipated. If it is true that one section of the economic activities of
dominant countries requires a stable workforce, another section depends on a lack of
security, indeed on the unlimited exploitation of illegal workers. In the United States,
and less obviously in Europe, prohibitionism co-exists with the perpetuation of a
widespread underground economy (see Ceyhan, 2004).
The first aspect characterising immigration to dominant countries over the last
few decades emerges from the fact that immigrants are faced less with the possibility
of legitimate, peaceful and rewarding integration than with a system of use and
discard.2 It is true that, today, there are numerous immigrants who have had the
good fortune to integrate successfully (in the first place through self-sacrifice, and
then thanks to the opportunity of coming into contact with people who, if not actually disposed to facilitating the integration of immigrants, are at least non-hostile to
them). In the majority of cases, however, rather than encountering circumstances
that augur well for their smooth and secure integration, immigrants have been
forced to return to their former countries because, in the meantime, new arrivals
have been guaranteed by the actions of public authorities and especially by the
private sector, which is simultaneously permissive and harshly repressive. In this
way, immigrants have come to see two sides of dominant countries: their paternalism, tolerance and, from time to time, their solidarity, but also their undervaluing of
immigrants, their tendency to discriminate on the grounds of race and their criminal
elements.

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The Regulation and Perpetuation of Illegal Workers

Around one million immigrants have been processed in the United States each year;
Italy passed legislation on five occasions between 1986 and 2002. In other countries,
these same procedures have been adopted according to more or less the same rationale. These facts are not evidence of any particular generosity on the part of governments, but rather are proof of a practice that they are unable to avoid. The regulation
of immigration is the buffer necessary to confront the perpetuation of the misconduct
of countries a large part of whose economies aim to make a profit from the extreme
exploitation of black market workers, and even better if it can be done surreptitiously.
In effect, the arrival of illegal workers is often the response to appeals from certain
niche areas of economic activity that are involved in what are called underground
economies.
Between the War against Migration and Paternalism
The paradox revolves around, at the same time, the relationship between dominant
countries (who experience immigration) and dominated countries (who experience
emigration), and the co-existence of the war against illegal labour and the growing need
for a black market workforce. In effect, this is the same paradox that brings about the
co-existence of war and peace under the new strategy of the American empire (i.e., as
part of the position known as Full Spectrum Dominance). Europe (and even its most
liberal countries) appears to have difficulty in resolving this paradox, which, by
contrast, the United States, at least in part, appear to succeed in doing. A few reasonably
self-evident examples will suffice. For more than 15 years, the United States has turned
the war against immigration (especially on its border with Mexico) into a business as
remarkably successful for private enterprises as for the police and the security industry.
Yet, as Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) officials and the experts working
in the Bush administration themselves acknowledge, illegal immigration in the United
States is (as of Spring 2003) estimated at between eight and ten million people, of which
four to six million are Mexican (ten million in 2004).3 Even if these estimated figures
are often inflated in order to legitimise this business and the number of positions
available for the police, the military and the experts, it is nonetheless a well-known fact
that, as the experts of the American Congress themselves have written (including the
Rand Corporation), the continuation of the illegal workforce is vital to the American
economy: newly arrived immigrants fill the gap left by others who, for different
reasons, have failed to meet the criteria necessary for their work permits to be renewed
(a phenomenon often seen even in Italy). This process of replacement is accompanied
by thousands of deaths and millions of arrests and deportations of people attempting
to enter the United States.
Here are some partial but relevant facts about this issue concerning the Mexican
border specifically: in 2000, there were 377 deaths and 1.6 million arrests recorded by
the American police; in 2001, 336 deaths and 1.2 million arrests; in 2002, 350 deaths
and 900,000 arrests. (More recently, a number of cases have been uncovered of the

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summary execution of immigrants by private police forces who even, from time to
time, organise hunts for illegal immigrants in the manner of the Klu Klux Klan for the
amusement of rich people.) That said, these deaths, just like those of migrants who
drown or die in the course of their attempts to enter Europe, only make the headlines
in order to deter those who aspire to leave their own countries from doing so. Otherwise, these deaths are just as meaningful as deaths of Afghans, Iraqis or Palestinians
in other words, meaningless. This new reinforced wall which has been erected by
dominant countries against dominated societies has become a killing machine that has
undoubtedly led to the deaths of as many people as the Berlin Wall. Since September
11th, the situation has become still more aggravated, especially to the detriment of
immigrants from countries considered to be Muslim, and this includes those who
have a legal permit. At times they are consigned to living an illegal existence, at other
times they are ejected or forced to work on the black market and paid less than they
previously earned.
Italy: The European Country Closest to America
In comparison with the United States, Italy can be considered to be the European country most keen to emulate this dominant model. The first country, along with Greece,
in which the level of underground economies makes up 30 per cent of the gross national
product, Italy has between six and eight million people working in or profiting from
(either fully or partly) the black market. Among these people, illegal immigrants represent only a minority, but they are the most sought-after, notably by the corporals of the
padanie (the recruiters/foremen of the region designated thus by the northern racist
voters of Bossi & Co.). It is these corporals who, starting at five oclock in the morning
until very late at night, transport illegal immigrant workers between building sites, small
factories and their stalls and shacks, which occasionally are hidden in remote areas in
the countryside or under motorway bridges. And it is these corporals who complain
about the speed restrictions and workplace inspections conducted by members of the
municipal police force, and who have not yet understood the spirit of the reform envisaged by Bossi. Via so-called devolution, Bossi demands control of the police at a local
levelin other words, a discretionary management, appropriate to a police force which
serves its electors, in particular of those small entrepreneurs of the padanie who claim
complete freedom of action, and a police force which, if necessary, will immediately
deport the illegal immigrant who is no longer useful for work because he or she has been
over-worked or dared to complain and claim their rights and a better wage. In effect,
an important characteristic of the black market workforce is that it needs a reasonably
high turnover because in the majority of cases it is unable to function due to the
extremely hard levels of work in jobs that are very heavy and often extremely dangerous
as they are not subject to the states health and safety directives (it is enough to note
here the increase in accidents and deaths at work, including unknown or unreported
deaths, with regard to illegal workers). To this are added those who seek to obtain a
minimal amount of power to negotiate (as we have seen in the case of Ion Cazacu, the
Romanian engineer who was burnt by his employer for this very reasonsee the

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History and Anthropology 67

documentary entitled Sciusci, 2000). As Sciusci clearly showed, the minor employers
of the Po valley (known as padanie by the racist Northern Alliance) who most exploit
the illegal workers are the very same people who call for attacks to be launched on boats
carrying immigrants and cry out against the integration of immigrants.
However, the racists of the Northern Alliance and their friends have found a
formidable method of dodging, as far as possible, the integration of immigrants,
which, in any case, and as the Italian Minister for Finance has acknowledged, has
become an extraordinary enterprise for the state and for a variety of tradesmen and
immigration criminals (around 700,000 immigrants have requested legal status
through the obligatory postal applications, paying on average no less than 4,000
euros eachand there are also those who have to pay on behalf of their employers,
etc.). Thus, they created a process by which access to legal status (which is moreover
precarious because it depends on the length of their work contract) can be bought! In
fact the acquisition of legal status is an interminably long process: the police claim
that they do not have enough staff to carry out the necessary investigations and often
continue to mistreat immigrants. Thus, a significant number of those immigrants
end up failing to meet the necessary requirements for them to be able to renew their
visas and therefore either return to the underground (the perpetuation of which is
guaranteed) or are deported under the Bossi-Fini Law (two ministers of the Berlusconi administration, the former is the head of the post-fascist party, and the latter the
head of the Northern Alliance). As in Spain and elsewhere, there have also been
hurried deportations, without witnesses or leaving no administrative traces, thanks to
members of the police force who have received the governments message loud and
clear, and who know that the same government will protect them in any case (they
will benefit from the same type of protection they received following the torture and
massacre of anti-G8 pacifist protestors in Genoa in July 2001). In Italy, foreigners are
ten times more likely (and for young people coming from Muslim countries, over
twenty times more likely) to be arrested than Italian citizens; this discrepancy is even
higher than that between blacks and whites in the United States. Furthermore, there
are plenty of small-time entrepreneurs and caporaux (headhunters/foremen) among
whom there are also immigrants who have managed to integrate themselves: it is
much better to let willing foreigners do the dirty work. On pay-day they call their
friends in the police force to force illegal workers to run away, and thus avoid having
to pay them (something that has been known to happen on the building sites of
Berlin).
Following this logic of subjugation and segregation of immigrants, one should note
the actions of the local administration of Milan (see Palidda, 2000, 2002a, 2002b). A
decree deprives the immigrants of their only time and place to socialise: they used to
meet in their thousands on Sundays in public gardens to play, dance, eat and party
all inconceivable activities considering that their everyday lives are dominated by infernal working hours and extremely small and precarious accommodation. This is not
surprising in a country where the integration of immigrants was never high on the
agenda of local and national government (in spite of vague promises from the centreleft). Since the law passed by the centre-left government of 1998, all immigrants pay

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S. Palidda

0.5 per cent of their income to a fund which is then distributed to the regions. However,
the regional governments have found very different uses for this money: part of it to
fund deportations, another part to finance detention centres, another part for friends
of their friends (right-wing nongovernmental organisations (NGOs)) and, finally,
another part to support the relocation by Italian entrepreneurs to the countries of
emigration (to help them on their own territory say the moderates of the Northern
Alliance). It is worth noting that, in Italy, there has never been any investigation into
the money generated by immigration, nor into the costs of the war against migration,
nor indeed into the perpetuation of the illegal workforce and deaths.
An example of this war disguised as a humanitarian project can be found in the agreement between the IOM (International Organisation of Migrations) and the Italian
Minister of the Interior: 550,000 euros were ringfenced to help women find a way out
of prostitution; yet only 80,000 euros were actually used for about ten women who
benefited from a one-year visa, while 380,000 euros were spent in deporting the majority of the women who had been arrested in spite of the fact that they had a legal right
to a visa. Thus, hundreds of Nigerian women who were arrested during night-time raids
in the name of the security of the city have been deported and imprisoned in Nigeria;
they can only be released by paying a large amount of money, which is often paid by
their pimps, who then put them back on the European prostitution market to re-pay
their benefactors.
As reported by the Italian Audit Office (Corte dei Conti),4 in 2002, the total national
resources allocated to the migration sector amounted to 65,469,100 euros for contrast
activities and 63,404,004 euros for support measures. In 2003 the amounts were,
respectively, 164,794,066 and 38,617,768 euros. The reactionary measures adopted by
the Berlusconi government increased spending on contrast activities by 81 per cent and
decreasing spending on support measures by 19 per cent. It should be noted that the
resources for the entire migration sector derive from the wages of the immigrants
themselves. Moreover, part of the spending on support measures is used also for
contrast activities (private enterprises selecting the migrants, managing imprisonment/
expulsions, etc.). The number of migrants actually expelled in 2000 was 69,263 (i.e.,
53 per cent of the total migrants arrested as irregular), 77,699 (58 per cent) in 2001,
88,501 (59 per cent) in 2002 and 65,153 (61 per cent) in 2003. To expel fewer persons
in 2003, the police have spent more than in the previous years!5 Of those expelled, only
about the half had to leave Italy compulsorily, while the other half were rejected at the
frontiers, which is not an expensive operation, except for the deportations (e.g., 1,200
unidentified migrants were handcuffed and flown from Lampedusa to Libya in military
aircrafta total violation of international norms).6 After such a massive manu militari
deportation, the practices of collective expulsions violating European rules have
become more and more usual (see the protest of Amnesty International).
Some time ago, thousands of small Italian and European entrepreneurs found
another goldmine: the relocation of all kinds of activities to countries of the Third
World. The big businesses such as Benetton, but also tax-evaders and other small-time
criminals, can travel unimpeded in those countries of emigration where they can easily
buy the cooperation of local authorities or power brokers to organise an extreme form

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History and Anthropology 69

of exploitation in conditions that are obviously much more liberal than they are in the
European Union (see Sacchetto, 2003; Peraldi, 2001, 2002). Therefore, they make profits that are even greater than those they can make within the underground economies
of Europe. For instance, a woman who works for Benetton, or other companies in
Tunisia or Romania, can earn between 60 and 100 euros per month working six days a
week between eight and twelve hours a day. This production system known as offshore or sous douane, plays on European fraud (which is never exposed) involving
importing finished products from Third World countries (with labels that have already
been attached). Moreover, no European trade union has tried to create links and a
common strategy with the trade unions from Third World countries. In effect, today
more than ever, any small-time entrepreneur or European tourist can just go into
countries of emigration whenever and however they please to do whatever they want,
including behaving like colonisers of neo-liberal globalisation.
It is this violent new development of economic dependency, at the mercy of
European relocations that are peripatetic in nature (which allows them to blackmail
dominated countries to force onto them the lowest possible costs) that prompts a new
wave of emigration. Why be enslaved in Tunisia or Romania by Italian and European
entrepreneurs, and be unable to demand your rights? Why not try to find an opportunity to live in Europe? Why be subjected to the human and social disaster, or even the
risk of death, in countries like Somalia, Congo or Liberia, rather than risk your life in
the hope of freedom (i.e., emancipation)? Why can Italians and Europeans go to
countries of emigration, whereas the people from those countries cannot go to rich
countries, not even to be reunited with their families (similarly, the immigrant waiting
for a visa cannot go back to his or her own country: this is the new restraint imposed
on neo-liberal workers)? These are the questions that thousands of young people from
Third World countries ask themselves, disgusted as they are by the inequalities in terms
of rights and opportunities that are imposed by the current domination of rich countries. Now more than ever, immigration is above all an aspiration to economic and
social, but also political and religious, emancipation. People emigrate because they are
desperate to escape from war, but above all to find somewhere else what they are unable
to find where they liveemancipation.
Mahdi Mabrouk (2003) said at the Conference of the Tunisian League of Human
Rights that, in the world of those who are forced into illegal immigration by fascist
European prohibitionism, we can find young people who all aspire to freedoma
freedom they sing about in rai, rap or neo-blues, a music that can now be heard on the
road to rich countries, and on the Turkish, Libyan and Maghreb coasts (see Boubakri,
2003a, 2003b;, 2003; Mabrouk & Rouis, 2003; Pliez, 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Palidda,
2004: Chapter 4.5, 2005, Chapter 3.2). Perhaps without realising it, it is these young
people with their twenty-first-century songs of emancipation who contribute to the
movement against globalised liberalism and against any sort of war, for the fundamental rights of all human beings. And it is against this aspiration to emancipation
that the new Bava Beccaris7 rage openly, as they did at the end of the nineteenth
century, when they were shooting at the crowds who were demanding bread and
rights. The racist eurocentrists (and a proportion of the European voters, including

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those from the centre-left) know that their privileges, real or imaginary, are based on
the neo-enslavement of others, of those who do not belong to the European Union
(i.e., on the security of those who dominate). The fear of losing the privileges which
come from domination, and the frenzy to protect that domination, lead to war against
migrationto what Bauman (2002) calls the destruction of the human surplus, those
people who are not even good enough to be slaves, or who refuse to be made inferior.8
European governments claim that the countries bordering the European Union turn
into inflexible figures policing migration; in other words, doing their dirty work
(waste disposal of exceeding migrants). Tony Blair, still appreciated by a number of
European left-wing leaders, has advocated the creation of detention centres for deported
migrants in Third World countries, in the same way as his government is detaining a
number of asylum seekers on prison ships in the Victorian tradition. The deal that has
been offered by Europeans to Third World countries is explicit: you take charge of the
management (or the elimination) of a proportion of those who aspire to emigrate, and
of those who will be deported, and we will give you some money to guarantee the wellbeing of your elites, to support your police forces and maintain your regime. However,
the regimes of these Third World countries are at times unable to be too strict. Sometimes they simply have to surrender some of their control over migration, either to boost
the workforce or, more often, because otherwise the social situation in their own countries runs the risk of spiralling out of control (as can be seen from the periodical rebellion
of young people, or ephemeral success of fundamentalism, or the escalation of deviance
and criminality).
As in the past, emigration is useful for the relief of social and political tension,
especially for authoritarian regimes. For instance, if there are no more illegal immigrants coming from Albania, it is because, on the one hand, the potential of those who
aspired to immigration has almost dissolved and, on the other hand, because the local
mafias (which have strong links with European mafias) seem to have negotiated with
European secret services certain freedom of drug and other types of trafficking in
exchange for their active control over petty and slightly more serious criminal activity
that was mostly associated with illegal immigration (several men in the entourages of
Albanian ministers are involved in drug trafficking, travelling with diplomatic passports; some of them have been identified by investigators) (Fraioli & Giordano, 2002).
In any case, it seems rather fanciful that organised crime bosses should in fact be interested in human trafficking when other kinds of trafficking are much more lucrative. In
most cases, human traffickers are only reasonably minor criminals who improvise as
smugglers; they have no scruples, but they do not work for criminal organisations.
Suffice to say that, except for the Chinese and sometimes the Nigerians, it proves to be
cheaper to be smuggled into a country than to acquire legal status. Migration prohibitionism will, like any kind of prohibitionism, lead to criminal activity and result in
death. This rather banal statement of fact has always been ignored or rejected by the
centre-left, which, in effect, has cleared the path for the present fascist and racist right
that now has the majority in Europe. Can anyone forget the Kater Y Rades, which was
sunk with over 80 dead following the peremptory order from the Prodi government to
the Italian navy not to let anyone through?9 And can anyone forget the other events

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History and Anthropology 71

managed by DAlema and Amato governments before, during and after the Serbian
War, and later before the G8 summit in Genoa? (see Dal Lago, 2002; Gubitosa, 2002;
Italian Team Report at: www.eliseconsortium.org). As a result, the Berlusconi government had no problem covering all of the police violence against the peaceful demonstrations in Genoa. In the coming months, it is likely that some of the migrants will be
saved by the oscillation between moderate neo-liberalism and the all-out war desired
and implemented even on an everyday basis by the post-fascist and the eurocentrist
racists of the right in government.10
Finally, this portrait cannot end without mentioning the new weapon to help select
migrants: it was implemented after September 11th as part of the so-called war against
Islamic terrorism, but it quickly turned into a succession of cases in which migrants
coming from countries considered to be Muslim were systematically criminalised.
Consider, for instance, the tragicomic case of the four North Africans arrested on suspicion of being terrorists preparing an attack on the basilica of Saint Petronio in Bologna,
simply because they were looking at a painting in which Mohammed was pictured in
Hell. There have, however, been numerous additional and more serious casesfor
example, the 17 Pakistanis arrested when they arrived in Sicily because they were
suspected of being members of Al-Qaeda, or the 27 people arrested in Naples, also
suspected of being members of Al-Qaeda; all were released after months in prison
because they were in fact only migrants! Similarly, a number of North Africans were
charged with being members of Bin Ladens European network, although no proof
could be provided for the judges. In reality, all these operations have been suggested
by the American secret services, never having any real basis; they have been used to
justify the necessary European collaboration with Bushs permanent war, and hence to
justify the necessary selection of migrants in order to reject those coming from Muslim
countries. Just as the case in the United States with the Patriot Act, the effect of this
criminalisation resides in the fact that those coming from Muslim countries are more
subject to inferiorisation, if not to neo-enslavement; and yet this tends to be applicable
to all immigrants. Equally, the questioning of liberties and democracy in the name of
security provokes a genuine process of authoritarian involution managed by elites who
champion racketeering as well as the business of security and war, in the United States
as in Europe.11

Notes
1

[1] See the List of 4591 documented refugee deaths through Fortress Europe (Documentation on
10 February 2004 by UNITED for Intercultural Action, European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees, Postbus 413, NL-1000 AK
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: (+31) 20 6834778; Fax: (+31) 20 6834582; E-mail:
info@unitedagainstracism.org; Website: www.unitedagainstracism.org).
[2] This is the main characteristic of post-Fordist globalised liberalism: the activities are unstable
and do not grant any right to the workers. In the dominant countries, this phenomenon also
includes an increasingly important role on the part of national workers, but these do not run
the risk of expulsion. In reality, the postmodern management of migrations may be considered the most important experiment of a social order that swings in a new continual social

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[3]
[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]
[9]

[10]
10

[11]
11

S. Palidda
disorder, thus explaining the obsession with insecurity and the success of zero tolerance
(the business of the securitarian domination is the new source of huge profits).
This was estimated at around five million in 1998 (OECD, 1999).
Corte dei Conti, Relazione. Esiti dellindagine sulla Gestione delle risorse previste in connessione al fenomeno dellimmigrazioneRegolamento e sostegno, controllo immigrazione
clandestina. Available online at: www.corteconti.it/Ricerca-e-1/Gli-Atti-d/Controllo-/Documenti/Sezione-ce1/Anno-2004/Adunanza-c/Documenti/allegati-d1/CHimmigrazionecfRELAZIONE.doc_cvt.htm (accessed 21 May 2004).
According to the Prefect Pansa (2004 SIDI Conference), in 2003, the cost of the expulsion of
65,957 irregular strangers amounted to about 16.5 million euros. There are also some other
costs for the detention before the expulsion, and for the policemen and private police or
NGOs employed in these circumstances.
This deportation was denounced by some NGOs, including Amnesty International, MSF,
GISTI, ANAFE, ASGI, ARCI (see the websites of theses NGOs).
The Italian general Bava Beccaris became famous after he ordered that the population demonstrating in Milan for bread be fired upon (1 May 1898).
For a development of the concept of excess or surplus of humans, Rahola (2003).
The time and date: 19.03, 28 March 1997. See www.notizie-est.com; in particular:
Naufraghi by Antonello Mangano and Il Kater I A-451 affonda. Ordine eseguito. The
families of the victims were compensated with some millions of euros. After this event, there
were other drownings in the Mediterranean; in particular between Tunisia and Sicily (see
Note 1 above, and www.unitedagainstracism.org, International Amnesty, and others).
The three main parties of the Berlusconi government are Forza Italia (eurocentrist and fans of
President Bush), postfascists and the new racists of the Northern Alliance. Some deputies of
these parties have been convicted of racism offences. The chief of another governing party is
Buttiglione, excluded by the European Commission for his verbal attack on homosexuality.
See the websites of the challenge project and eliseconsortium; see also the first number of the
review Conflitti globali.

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