Where Free Markets Reign: Aliens in the Twilight Zone

Abstract

Immigrants arrived almost unnoticed in southern European countries in the 1980s, and found its governments ill-prepared. Weak entry controls and large informal sectors, alongside a virtual impossibility of legal employment, led to expanding informal economies and immigrant niches within them. Policy responses have been directed exclusively at the immigrants themselves – border controls, legalization programmes, deportations – whilst ignoring the structural context, which continues to encourage further illegal immigration. Conformity with Europe-wide measures has done little to address fundamental issues and, through an exclusionary mentality, has probably created more illegality. It is concluded that although the ‘problem’ of unwanted immigration has been contained, the reactive nature of most policy-making has led to denial of longer-term issues. Thus the location of immigrant communities in southern European societies has yet to be determined: its contestation may, or may not, prove problematic.