Power and The "Everyday Politics" of Refugee Protection in the Case Study of Gioiosa-Ionica, Italy

Abstract

The way in which a norm is legally codified in laws and treaties can differ from what that norm actually accomplishes in practice. Norm implementation interrogates how global norms are put into practice at the local level. This thesis analyzes the "everyday politics" of protection implementation through the case study of the SPRAR refugee protection project in Gioiosa-Ionica, Italy. I illustrate how productive and structural power work through the intimate relationship between frontline workers who are formally mandated to implement protection, and the refugees who are the beneficiaries of protection. Frontline workers create new local norms through patterned behaviour and practices that condition legal protection, the provision of basic services and integration measures, on the acquiescent behaviour of refugees. This perpetuates a stereotypical refugee subjectivity based on passiveness and "victimhood". Refugees resist these practices and the way their protection is received in commonplace and concerted ways. Local actors who are not officially mandated condition the arena in which frontline workers do their work by infiltrating implementing organizations; and placing barriers on how they are able to do and accomplish their work. As such the "everyday politics" of refugee protection in Gioiosa-Ionica is fertile ground for how power, resistance and contestation play into norm implementation.ii

Power in the Global Refugee Regime: Understanding Expressions and Experiences of Power in Global and Local Contexts

“…65 Likewise, Wojnarowicz's case study of the town of Gioiosa-Ionica, Italy, highlights how local organizations who have been outsourced to implement protection hold discretionary authority to develop new practices that contest protection and condition its provision on the acquiescence of refugees. 66 As such, global refugee policy rarely reaches the local context uncompromised, as a wide range of policy spheres and local actors inside and outside the global refugee regime shape the outcomes for refugees and other forced migrants.…”