The European ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Italy

This chapter provides context for the examination of asylum governance in Italy throughout the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’, illustrating its key events. It initially illustrates the policy and legal framework, how the multi-layered governance of asylum is organised and the key actors involved in it. Then, it describes key structural factors, providing data about the scale of flows and public opinion data. Subsequently, it illustrates the key outputs produced by the multi-layered governance system throughout the ‘crisis’, at the subnational, national and EU levels, including policies, levels of political contestation of asylum and public mobilisations. The chapter also introduces the three regions selected as case studies for subnational analyses, and key outputs produced therein.