Refugees, Institutional Invisibility, and Self-Help Strategies: Evaluating Kurdish Experience in Rome

The article investigates the way in which asylum reception hasbeen organized in Italy in response to Kurdish refugees. Theanalysis suggests that Italy, as compared to northern Europeancountries, has failed to develop a public system of reception,which has been counterbalanced by the parallel development ofa private one. The abandonment of the vast majority of asylumseekers to their own survival strategies should read as an institutionalfailure to develop adequate reception policies and serious protectionplans. The ‘Kurdish crisis’ has exposed the importanceof state intervention in providing reception, which could nolonger be left to local NGOs, self-help strategies and migrants'networks. In particular, the article looks at the way in whichItaly, during the 1990s, has organized refugee reception; the(non) reception system in the municipality of Rome; and finallysome private survival strategies that Kurdish asylum seekershave resorted to once no public help was made available to them.