Migration and (De)Securitisation Dynamics at the Local Level: Discourses and Practices in South Tyrol

Abstract

In the past decades, South Tyrol, an Italian autonomous province with a German- and Ladin-speaking population and a power-sharing system to protect their cultural features, has witnessed the arrival of many migrants from foreign countries. In addition, as result of the increase in the refugee flows in recent years, thousands of asylum-seekers have passed through and settled in the province. Situated within the ‘local turn’ in migration studies and in the interplay between the fields of migration and security studies, this chapter analyses processes of (de)securitisation vis-à-vis migration in South Tyrol. Adopting the Copenhagen School’s understanding of securitisation as a speech act in combination with a sociological variant that highlights the role of practices, the chapter reveals how, to what extent and in what terms (de)securitisation dynamics have unfolded in South Tyrol regarding the settlement of migrant communities and recent refugee flows. I use a qualitative methodology that looks at discourses and practices as they have emerged in party programmes, political speeches, policy and legal documents. In this way, the chapter will offer a genealogy of (de)securitising discourses and practices at the substate level, revealing the anxieties and problems of dealing with migration when the arrival of migrants meets the presence of old minorities.