Reception system, the new CAS* scattered between hills and mountains of the province. “Migrants increasingly lonely and isolated: this way they can be blackmailed”

MeridioNews.it - After the public call by the prefecture for the entrustment of foreign citizens asking for international protection, centres have opened far away from the cities. “They answer to the logic of hiding people”, Alberto Biondo, representative of Borderline Sicily, denounces: “It is an immigration factory which creates invisible people”.

Photo: Cooperative "Lavoro e non solo"

Ever More Isolated and Alone

Castellana, Collesano, Geraci, Isnello, Palazzo Adriano, Ciminna, San Cipirrello, Villafrati, Marineo and Godrano: these are just some of the provincial wards where there are now Extraordinary Reception Centres, or CAS*, in the province of Palermo. There are centres dispersed among the hills of the Madonie mountain range, centres which follow on from a logic of hiding people away. Old and new cooperatives have opened their doors amid forests and agro-tourism hostels, far from inhabited centres.

Tunisian migrants forced to sleep on the ground at the Agrigento train station

The Difficulties of the Reception System in Trapani

Requests for help have been coming in from people hosted in reception centres across Sicily, but over the past month such messages have been particularly concentrated in the province of Trapani. We understand this to be due to a number of factors, first and foremost the new contracts which have recently become active, and which have been awarded to entities with little experience in the reception business and cooperatives which have attempted to expand their activities by taking on several structures simultaneously (Extraordinary Reception Centres* as well as centres for minors and ones run by the central service in Rome*).

Young migrants in the Extraordinary Reception Centre 'Essarasya', San Miceli (Province of Trapani)

A Reception System Which Only Benefits the Few: A Visit to the Centre of First Reception for Minors at Castiglione di Sicilia

“State of emergency”, “exceptional” and “extraordinary” measures: those words so frequently associated with illegal practices carried out without any check and controls, but which seem to be the only method used for years to run the so-called “welcoming” system in Italy. The Extraordinary Reception Centres (CAS*) are but one example of this, another being the First Reception Centres (CPA*) which for years now have become part of the “ordinary” character of the migrant reception system. For ever more people, the possibility of having professional figures throughout the procedure for getting documents, and during insertion into a host community, has simply disappeared.

Don't Worry Dad, I'll Die Happy Because You're Alive At Least

I cannot but feel pain when confronted by the death of an innocent, and the thought that someone you love might lose their life in such an unjust way sends a long, cold shiver down your spine. The news that a father had to leave his small daughter dead at sea so as to try and save other lives during yet another maritime massacre, the harvest of murderous European policies, has disturbed me deeply. What can we possibly do to help a desperate father who has lost both wife and child?

"Half a Human"

It is already 7 pm but the sun is still blazing. Not a single shadow on the highway that leads from the tiny city center of Marina di Modica to the heartland. In front of us, S. rides his bicycle with his backpack on. He is soaked in sweat and forced to to cover the distance to downtown Marina di Modica as quickly as possible. Since recently, he is accommodated with another 27 migrants in the new first reception center of the province of Ragusa. The cooperative Azione Sociale, which has operated the hotspot in Pozzallo until a month ago, manages this newly opened center as well as a new facility for migrants in Modica.

Ph. Lucia Borghi