The legal battleground surrounding the notion of “safe country of origin”: from Sicily to Albania: on the epistemic, spatial and temporal bordering of the right to asylum

Abstract

Two years after the Italian Senate’s ratification of the Italy-Albania protocol, and despite the partial failure of its implementation, the management approach it introduced remains at the heart of complex legal and political struggles. Its implementation involved the selection on the high seas of foreign nationals deemed “eligible” for the accelerated border procedures introduced by the so-called “Cutro Decree”, and their subsequent transfer to detention facilities under Italian jurisdiction in Albania. In response to the radical challenging of these procedures by Italian courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Italian government has moved, on the one hand, to “delegitimise” the judiciary’s work and, on the other, to issue new regulatory provisions aimed at bypassing “inconvenient” case law. Through a socio-legal research approach, this article examines the legal battles that have emerged around the notion of “safe country of origin” at local, national, and European levels. In particular, it highlights how this notion has become functional to processes of epistemic, spatial and temporal confinement of asylum, as weel as to the hollowing out of this right. Finally, by acknowledging the legal, political, and cultural impact of these legal struggles, this contribution questions their legacy in view of the imminent entry into force of the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum, a tool potentially capable of further undermining the rights of seekers of international protection.