“Nothingness” is the psychological state experienced by people living inside alienating penitentiary structures. “Nothingness” is the institutional vacuum that shapes Italian migration policies that are designed as if we were in a constant state of emergency to criminalize people who reach our coasts. “Nothingness” is living in a place where space and time are frozen and being forced to do nothing all day long. “Nothingness” is not knowing which direction your life is going to take the next day. “Nothingness” is facing a long trip, investing all your resources in it, and then being forced to go back to the start. People who live in Italy in an administratively illegal status can be stopped and brought into CPRs (Centri di Permanenza per i Rimpatri). “CPRs are places where foreign citizens are detained pending the completion of expulsion orders” (art. 14, D.Lgs. 286/1998). People in CPRs experience “nothingness” every day.
To investigate this relevant issue, I interviewed Camilla Ponti, a psychologist and activist focusing on the mental health of people living inside penitentiary structures. After volunteering in prisons, she diverted her interests towards the effects of the criminalization of migrants and she joined Mai più Lager-NO ai CPR, an organization that aims at denouncing the inhumane conditions in CPRs.
Italy is one of the main countries of destination of the Mediterranean route, an illegal route that migrants take because their only opportunity to obtain asylum is to reach the European territory first, and then make a request there. The tortuous bureaucratic process to obtain asylum in border countries like Italy undermines the international right of non-refoulement. Therefore, there is often a situation in which migrants who have arrived in Italy and have not been able to obtain a permit, also due to the inefficiency of the system, end up living in the country in an administratively illegal status. As mentioned above, if they get stopped by the police, they are transferred to CPRs where they will be either released or deported to the country that is identified as their country of origin. The critical conditions of these structures have often been ignored in the public debate, but the perquisition and subsequent seizure of CPR di Via Corelli, in Milan, has attracted some attention to the topic.
Hi Camilla, can you tell us briefly what you do and why you decided to focus on CPRs?
When I got introduced to the Italian migration reception system, I soon realized that it is extremely complex, and it has significant impacts on migrants’ mental health. I then decided to focus on administrative detention and CPRs, studying the socio-cultural roots of the creation of a hostile image of migrants and the effects of criminalization on the migrants that end up being detained in CPRs. I had a wide experience working in prisons across the country before I started entering CPRs. CPRs are totalitarian structures. In my experience, they are the worst form of detention structures in our country. There are similarities between prisons and CPRs, but the dynamics of prisons are inflated in CPRs, disrupting a person’s mental health. As a matter of fact, while prisons are designed to host people for a certain amount of time providing some kind of activities, CPRs are thought to host people for a very short time, without any type of assistance even if people end up staying there for months.
The topic of our issue is “nothingness”, and I wanted to ask you about the feelings of the people you talk to in CPRs. They arrive in our country with some expectations but end up being stuck in a system that is designed to reject them.
“Nothingness” is everywhere in this type of structure. The first shade of “nothingness” is the institutional vacuum that shapes the whole system. Even more than inside prisons, CPRs show a total abandonment of people; for example, nobody enters the area where people sleep, not even agents except for extraordinary circumstances. This creates an extremely alienating environment that leads to toxic social relations in which the tortured victims-migrants become torturers of those newly arrived, creating a hierarchical structure that is terrifying from the perspective of behavioral studies. What has recently happened in CPR Macomer, in Sardinia, shows the consequences of living in such conditions. Without any alternative way of manifesting their opposition, some people ignited a fire in the center. After being forced to spend the first night outside, on the ground, the migrants hosted in the center were obliged to go back to sleep in the burnt structure without any assessment of its security conditions.
Listening to the accounts of people hosted in these structures, they always highlight that the most deteriorating element for their mental health is not to be found in the nasty conditions of the structure or in the internal violence, but in the void generated by being forced to do nothing all day long. Imagine how alienating it could be for people who were living their lives finding themselves from one day to another in a place where time and space are frozen.
A characteristic of trauma is that time is perceived as frozen and CPRs are places which freeze the time of life, alienating a person from their own identity and complexity as human beings. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the detained person cannot have contact with their family or the people around them and does not have the possibility to receive any kind of assistance, either physical or psychological.
Another shade of “nothingness” experienced inside the CPRs is being invisible to society, which often does not even know that these structures exist. Without testimonies, the suffering one experiences does not exist outside the self, so the trauma is not validated.
Finally, there is the void of not knowing what your fate is going to be. On the one hand, there is the possibility of going back to the life you have been separated from for months, with the paradox of risking being brought back to the CPR anytime, due to the lack of legal support after being released. On the other hand, people risk being deported to a country identified as the country of origin after having abandoned everything. This practice often leads to people being repatriated to countries that are the countries of origin of their parents but that they may have never lived in, arriving with no relations and in certain cases without even knowing the local language. Those who are repatriated post-arrival, without passing through CPRs, experience, instead, the “nothingness” of having faced a long trip, investing physical, psychological, and monetary resources for nothing. This creates a void of scope and identity, that undermines a person’s agency.
You are an activist, and the main political request of NO ai CPR is the closure of these structures. What type of policies could be introduced in the Italian migration system to improve its conditions?
The only solution for this system would be to completely invert the paradigm, from an emergency and criminalizing approach to normalizing migration inflows overall. Migration is part of human history and people will not stop moving around, especially over the next decades, which will be characterized by climate emergencies. We need person-first policies not guided by a securitization approach, but by the goal of accompanying migrants in their integration journey.
What are your activities as a volunteer and what could people do to support your stances?
The Rete NO ai CPR and NAGA (Associazione volontaria di assistenza socio-sanitaria e per i diritti di cittadini stranieri, rom e sinti – ONLUS), regularly publish reports and videos to denounce the situation inside the centers, posting them on their platforms and making them available to the public to raise awareness on what happens inside CPRs. People must talk about CPRs to start a debate in public opinion and heal at least one type of “nothingness”: being forgotten by society. It is important to talk in schools and in educational fora to share awareness about the cruelty of this institution.
I'm Chiara Todesco, I live in Milan where I'm attending the first year at Bocconi’s bachelor in International Politics and Government. I have done classical studies at liceo classico Carducci and I'm interested in humanities and politics. I like to study and deepen my knowledge about international dynamics. I'm active in my territory as “consigliera di municipio”.
