The Multi-Layered Governance of the Italian ‘Refugee Crisis’

This chapter first maps the multi-level migration governance network and identifies political conflicts and cleavages therein. It then examines the interplay between actors’ understandings, actions, and interactions of actors within this multi-layered network, showing that understandings, actions, and governance outputs at the subnational and supranational levels influenced the construction of policy problems and solutions at the national level. In particular, it decisively influenced the restrictive turn in Italian asylum policy implemented in 2017, which led the Italy-LibyaLibya agreementItaly-Libya agreement to stop migration flows, the restrictive reform of the asylum procedure, and restrictions to NGOs’ SARSAR operations. This influence was exerted not solely through direct pressure on national decision-makers, but primarily through an impact on national policymakers’ diagnostic understandings of their environment.