Reframing Special Protection and Immigration as an Emergency: Italy’s Not-So-Novel Approach

The Italian government has decided to resort to a national state of emergency to manage recent migration flows. This approach, which has been used previously, aims at expanding the existing reception system. This is also accompanied by a set of measures, as outlined in Decreto Legge No. 20/2023, which adopt a more restrictive stance. This decree further restricts the possibility to grant special protection to asylum seekers and prosecutes more severely the participation in human trafficking operations. This paper analyses the latest developments in Italian law and outlines the legal issues they have raised.