The EU and Italian Asylum Governance

This chapter examines how EU institutions and other actors engaged in European asylum governance framed the impacts of asylum-seeking migration in Italy, as well as how they enacted these understandings. The chapter concentrates on the prognoses made by these actors regarding the Italian ‘refugee crisis’, along with the inputs and pressures exerted on the Italian government throughout the examined time frame. Through an exploration of interactions and power dynamics among actors within the EU migration governance system, the analysis reveals which of these understandings, inputs, and pressures were the most influential. It also shows that actors’ understandings and actions at the supranational and national governance levels mutually shaped each other.