Ali arrived in Italy in 2008, when he was sixteen. Immediately, he applied for asylum, a process that took two years. During this time, he was advised to stay in a state-run refugee camp, which offered neither Italian-language courses nor integration programs that could help him find employment after receiving his documents. With nothing to do, Ali got bored and left.
Today, eight years later and still unemployed, Ali says everything he has, he’s earned on his own. The national reception system, he tells me in the nearly fluent Italian he picked up while working small gigs, pushes refugees to fend for themselves with predictably mixed results. [...]
Ali’s story is fairly common among those seeking asylum in Italy. A recent study by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) found that more than ten thousand refugees live in abandoned spaces, handmade shacks, or camping tents throughout the country — and that’s an improvement over last year. [...]
The Italian government does provide shelter for asylum-seekers. But the demand often outpaces the spaces available in state institutions. In 2015, nearly 154,000 people arrived in Italy, while less than 97,000 beds were offered throughout the country. [...]
The Italian government is failing in another respect: preventing extreme exploitation. “20 percent of Italy’s GDP comes from the black market,” says Giovanni Abbate, a project manager for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Italy. “And much of this is based on underpaid migrant labor.”
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