The Italian Decree on Security: An Analysis of the Impact on Asylum Applications

Despite the existence of a normative space as the European Union (EU), the rates of recognition for asylum seekers’ protection statuses remarkably vary across different countries (Van Wolleghem, Sicakkan, 2022). Several studies have attempted to examine the potential explanations of these different between-countries rates of recognition, considering both economics and political reasons, without finding any clear driver (Toshkov, 2014), up to the point that it has been commented that «asylum decisions in Western Europe are highly arbitrary» (Bronkhorst, 1991, p.151). At the same time, it has been argued that changes in asylum policies within a given country may be associated with changes in recognition rates on asylum application flows (Thielemann, 2003), modifying the level of deterrence characterizing a determined socio-economic context (Holzer et al., 2000). On December 3rd 2018, the Italian government approved the so-called “Immigration and security” decree. Among its intentions, regarding a wide range of matters (contrast to mafia and terrorism, urban security), the decree remarkably changed the regulation of asylum, immigration and citizenship (De Petris, 2019). This contribution aims to evaluate the association between the “Immigration and security” decree and recognition rates of asylum applicants in Italy and if and how this association has been conditional on the applicant’s socio-demographic characteristics. This goal will be accomplished by performing some statistical analyses on a dataset created from the annual Eurostat database on the first instances decisions on applications.