Stuck at the borders, in open spaces or occupied buildings in the cities or in ghettos in rural areas, without access to basic goods and services and often in extremely difficult living conditions: this is the fate of thousands of asylum-seekers and refugees who find themselves outside the formal reception system in Italy. This is according to the second edition of the Fuori Campo report produced by Doctors without Borders in Italy (MSF).
The medical relief charity has counted approximately 10,000 mainly asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection living in a total of 47 informal camps in Turin, Milan, Florence, Foggia, Rome and other parts of the country, including the border cities of Ventimiglia, Como, Gorizia and Bolzano.
Over half the settlements without water or electricity
The informal sites visited included abandoned or occupied buildings (53%), open-air camps (28%), tent camps (9%), shacks (4%), agricultural buildings (4%) and containers (2%). Some 55% of the settlements are without access to water or electricity, 53% are inhabited only by adult men, 13% by adult men and women and 34% by adults and children. In 7 out of the 47 informal settlements surveyed there were children under 5.
MSF points out that recent forced evictions in the absence of alternative accommodation have led to the fragmentation of settlements and the creation of small groups living in increasingly marginalised conditions without access to social and health services and even the most basic goods. The migrants include people from sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa, but also from Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, who have recently arrived in Italy or been here for many years and who have received a form of international or humanitarian protection but struggle to find stable work and accommodation. Italians also live in the same conditions alongside the migrants in some places.
Attempts to overcome exclusion
In its report MSF highlights the fact that in some cities the institutions have tried to overcome conditions of marginalisation even in the case of occupied buildings by avoiding the logic of forced evictions, for example. Elsewhere, the local health authorities have promoted the inclusion of people living in informal settlements in the public health service. In any event, "the reception system needs to be reformed," said MSF Italy director general Gabriele Eminente in Rome. "The first thing that needs to be done is to abandon the logic of the 'extraordinary': currently most of the places in the reception system are in CAS (extraordinary reception centres), improvised structures that are often staffed by people who are unprepared. This needs to be overcome."