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Paper short abstract:

In North of Italy, hundreds of undocumented asylum seekers have been facing expulsion from the so-called "reception system." I consider their condition as a de facto "administrative disappearance": the social services have been governing them as homeless, not considering their specific necessities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper stems from an ongoing research on homeless asylum seekers in Italy (and, specifically, Milan) and aims to highlight a governmentality directed towards this population.

Since 2011, Milan has become the destination for hundreds of undocumented asylum seekers (in different stages of their application for protection) coming from non-EU countries. The analysis of the procedures enacted by the state and local institutions makes it clear that those people have been disappearing as an administrative category.

In the last two years, the Milanese Prefecture has expelled some five hundred applicants for international protection; also, those whose legal path ended up in a rejection must be considered. At the same time, as the municipality-run reception centers closed, a reorganization of the Immigration Office has brought to the shutdown of a municipal department explicitly oriented to asylum and reception.

The new organization of the Immigration Office sees homeless asylum seekers only as sans-papiers with the result of dissolving their specific needs and problematics and reserving for them the same treatment as Italian and European citizens living on the street.

The analysis makes some questions arise: What happens to the institution of asylum when the administrative category of applicant disappears? Which practices enable and reinforce this dynamic? Which other forms of disappearance descend from the act of not dealing with somebody in light of his or her application for protection? Referring to the work of Didier Fassin, I argue that this process can be understood as part of a broader re-conceptualization of humanitarianism.