On a cold winter afternoon in 1999, I was waiting for a train at Rome’s Termini station when I noticed an elderly woman having trouble with her suitcases.Signorine“Luckily, there are still young people like you,” he told me in a trembling voice when I offered my help. “I was very worried, this station is full of Albanian thieves, it’s an invasion,” she added.
At that moment, I didn’t have the courage to tell her that I was also Albanian. One of the lucky ones, because she was studying in Italy with a scholarship and was not part of the group of compatriots who dedicated themselves to masonry, housekeeping, care or sex work. At that time, we were in the news in Italy. Sometimes, as the country of smugglers, pimps and thieves. Others, as failures, having grown up in a different social system and having difficulty integrating. Or as a corrupt and lazy people, unable to apply in their own country the formula for success broadcast on the other side of the Adriatic by Silvio Berlusconi’s television channels.
“Invaders” was just one possible label. Of course, from a historical perspective, the only invasion happened in the other direction. On April 7, 1939, Mussolini’s troops landed in Durrës, my hometown, and annexed the Kingdom of Albania to that of Italy, using it as a military base for the later invasion of Greece, exploiting, among other resources, its copper and chrome. and adorning the flag with fascist symbols.
Since the end of the communist regime in Albania in the early 1990s, no politician in the country has dared to confront the Italian government about its past colonial relations. On the contrary, the most normal thing is to celebrate the historical and special friendship between the two nations, as with the recent agreement to allow the government of Giorgia Meloni to manage extraterritorially, in Albania, the asylum requests of people rescued in the Mediterranean. After all, in Albania we got rid of the chemical weapons that Italy had used during the invasion of Ethiopia. And the incident of March 1997, in which dozens of Albanian women and children drowned after being hit by an Italian patrol boat, is now considered an accident.
But a government is never the same as its people. Many Albanians also feel gratitude as they recall the hospitality with which they were received starting in the 1990s. During my student years in Rome, I met dozens of Italians who apologized for the insults I often had to hear in public and assured me that foreigners were welcome. Italians were also émigrés, they told me.
They weren’t the same people who believed in the myth’Brave Italian people [Italianos, buena gente]that had served to normalize and justify Mussolini’s past. They were not the ones who thought that the nation should be above all else. They were not the same ones who voted for parties like Meloni’s.
Senior British officials, including apparently Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have expressed interest in concluding a deal similar to the one with Albania for the UK. Albania will not be the country with which they sign it. On other occasions, the government in Tirana has already considered similar requests from the British authorities and rejected them, stating that the country would never become a European dumping ground.
Of course, the only thing the UK needs to reach a similar agreement is a former colony whose government has a good memory for the roads and buildings built by its master in the last century, but not so good at remembering the human beings it has exploited in recent decades. It needs a people with a recent past so traumatic that it erases from its memory the slightly more distant history, a people governed by a submissive political elite complacent towards the liberal order that repeats, without ever questioning its geopolitical causes, the mantra that we must all share the consequences of migration.
However, it would be naive to criticise Starmer’s efforts to tackle migration by moralising about these issues, as many on the left tend to do. When the argument about “being pragmatic” is first put on the table, principles – memory, responsibility, care for the vulnerable – are already bracketed.
Bad premises
How to oppose it, then? Perhaps, simply by using logic. Migration deals similar to the one apparently being considered by the British Labour Party are based on several premises: migration is a problem. in itself; that the best way to combat irregular migration is to impose draconian border restrictions; and that extraterritorial detention can have a deterrent effect.
There is plenty of research showing how problematic each of these claims is. But even assuming they are valid, there are three issues that any “pragmatic” politician should understand.
From a political point of view, the Albanian model is presented as a novelty in the management of migration flows because it involves cooperation between a candidate for the European Union and an EU Member State. It claims to be inspired by the desire to find a “structural” solution to the issue of irregular immigration, but the truth is that it does exactly the opposite, since it transforms into a bilateral negotiation a process that should concern the whole of the EU. Not only that, but it also sets a dangerous precedent – and this is particularly relevant for the United Kingdom, which has no intention of joining the EU – in which each country seeks for itself how to manage its own immigration “problem”, removing the possibility of a truly coordinated process throughout Europe.
Second, the principle of non-refoulement (enshrined in the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees) prohibits the expulsion or return of people to countries considered dangerous. Meloni insists that Albania is a safe country, justifying this by the country’s status as an EU candidate, and why then are pregnant women, children and other vulnerable people not included in the agreement?
We are told that the Starmer government has a pragmatic approach and is interested in what works. But how can a “solution” that lacks political, legal and economic logic continue to be considered “pragmatic”? There is perhaps only one plausible answer: it is just propaganda.
Third, the economic issue. In order to comply with international law, the expelled migrants must remain under the responsibility of Italy. According to the agreement between Italy and Albania, Rome assumes the entire cost of building and managing the two centres, as well as the police, medical, nursing and administrative staff. A total expenditure estimated at 670 million euros. For Italy, each irregular immigrant in Albania costs the same, or even more, than if all the procedures were carried out on its territory. The only advantage is to make the immigrants invisible. As the Italian proverb says, Lontano dagli occhi, Lontano dal heart [comparable al ‘ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente’ del español].
We are told that the Starmer government has a pragmatic approach and is interested in what works. But how can a “solution” that lacks political, legal and economic logic continue to be considered “pragmatic”?
There is perhaps only one plausible answer: this is all propaganda. Labour knows that its majority is precarious, threatened by far-right politicians who denounce the dangers of immigration. It is clear that Labour is planning to send a message to its far-right base that it is also tough on immigrants. The problem is that in doing so, it is taking for granted the support of its liberal and left-wing voters.
These voters might put their principles aside and forgive the rhetoric for a while. But the political, legal and economic contradictions will persist. If the plan comes to fruition, they will begin to wonder what kind of pragmatism they support.
Translation of Francisco de Zárate
