The ambiguous terrain of rights and controls: Italy's emergent immigration regime

In a period marked by heightened interest in the domain of rights, this article focuses on the delivery of rights with respect to cross-national migrants and, in particular, on the position of non-EU migrants in Italy. Italy is chosen as a special case, having moved quickly and recently to establish a regime of both rights and controls with respect to migration, culminating in its 1998 legislation. The article considers the emerging picture of rights, alongside impediments to their realization, and a set of associated ambiguities related to delivery and implementation. The outcome is viewed as a pattern of stratified rights ? or ?civic stratification?? which operates along both formal and informal dimensions. Underpinning this picture is a hybrid system whose chief characteristics are: a bureaucratized framework of rights and controls; the permeation of this formal system with informal practices; and the continuing presence of irregular migrants. For them, reasonable chances of clandestine employment and last-resort provisions are the basis of a survival existence not rooted in formal rights, but subject to minimal formal control.