Resumen de La dialettica dell'inclusione degli immigrati nell'età dell'incertezza: il caso dell'Europa meridionale
In this paper, that expresses in a nutshell the arguments ofher lmmigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe, Calavita argues that Italian and Spanish immigration laws emphasize integration, but at the same time welcome immigrants exclusively as workers, their legal status contingent on temporary work permits. These laws therefore pull in opposite directions at once, limiting immigrants' ability to put down roots by denying them permanent residence, while at the same time underwriting ambitious programs designed to integrate them into the social and cultural life of the community. She argues further that this tension is the manifestation in the legal and policy arena of broader contradictions in the political economy. That is, immigrants are useful as others who are willing to work, or are compelled to work, under conditions and for wages that locals largely shun. The advantage of immigrants for these economies resides precisely in their otherness or difference. At the same time, otherness is the pivot on which anti-immigrant backIashes turno If marginalized immigrant workers are useful in part because they are marked by illegality, poverty, and exclusion, this very marking, this highlighting of their difference, contributes to their distinction as a suspect population and fuels backIash. Racialization and criminalization are central elements of immigrant marginalization and the attendant backIash. Immigration law thus simultaneously preserves otherness and must combat its political, social, and fiscal fallout. In concrete terms, it both constructs illegality and difference, and spends millions on doomed projects of integration.
