Reception or Exclusion?

Mass accommodations for asylum seekers as segregation devices

The increase in the number of migrants and asylum seekers headed to Europe in recent years has put a strain on the capacity and organization of the EU reception system, invalidating the guarantee of adequate standards of living granted by the right of asylum. The peak in asylum applications in Europe reached in 2015 worsened the already existing problems and exacerbated the political and social debate on reception; the absence of a unified political vision has led to a problem-solving approach in which European asylum-seeker reception focuses more on provision of services than on the well-being and the effective possibility of integration of asylum seekers. In practice, the lack of stringent guidelines has left the specifics of asylum-seeker accommodations largely to national governments, whose policies often reflect explicit strategies of exclusion. Paradoxically, 'Reception' or 'Accommodation' Centers end up belonging, in both form and function, to the same category as Expulsion Centers: controversial spaces designed to seclude and control. This article attempts, following a concise analysis of European legislation and the structures it produces, a conceptualization of collective centers for asylum seekers as a contemporary manifestation of the camp-form.

The migratory flows directed toward Europe in recent years, without precedent in the history of the European Union, have severely tested a reception system that is unprepared, relatively young, and structured according to emergency-driven logics. This situation, within the complex system of social, political, and economic factors that govern European reception, has fueled a growing attitude of resistance toward immigration, which has manifested both through increasingly restrictive legislative measures and through strategies of containment and deterrence. Some of the most explicit manifestations of this containment policy, bordering on propaganda, have materialized in the military protection of borders, such as the wall built by Hungary in 2015¹ to block the entry of migrants arriving via the Balkan route, or the wall built by Greece along its border with Turkey², or, more generally, the extensive use of maritime patrols and pushbacks at sea. Similarly, the European Union has implemented strategies to externalize the protection of its borders by signing agreements with third countries to delegate the management of migration flows, such as the EU-Turkey Agreement of 2016³ or, more recently, the agreement signed by Italy with Albania in 2023.
Alongside these markedly political interventions, less visible but equally effective practices have developed in limiting the integration and rights of asylum seekers. Among these, the reduction of funding for reception programs and the reorganization of reception facilities, with large-scale accommodations having established themselves as the dominant response in Europe⁴. These buildings, large collective structures often obtained from former barracks or penitentiary buildings, are designed and managed as devices of exclusion, which simultaneously isolate asylum seekers from the local population and contribute to a broader process of criminalization in the public imagination, fostering an unfounded sense of threat associated with the entire category.

It has been documented several times how large collective buildings offer living conditions far below those established by the minimum European standards^{5, 6} and raise numerous critical issues in terms of social, health and fundamental rights. They are buildings often characterized by overcrowding, infrastructural deficiencies, lack of privacy and in general by an insufficient presence of psychological, legal and educational assistance services (fig. 1). They cause a systematic marginalization of migrants and increase the risk of exposure to violence and precarious living conditions; yet large collective buildings continue to be the most widespread choice among the governments of European countries^{7, 8}. 

The relevant legal framework is that of European legislation on the right to asylum, which is relatively recent and still evolving: the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) was established only in 1999 by the then fifteen Member States of the European Union. One of the main driving forces behind the creation of the CEAS, already discussed in the Dublin Convention of 1990, was the desire to harmonize reception systems, based on the recognition that, in the absence of internal borders, asylum seekers would move from one country to another in search of better conditions or more favorable selection criteria. Since the establishment of the common asylum framework, there have been five multiannual programmes, each with specific objectives and instruments, including legal ones. The current programme is the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, proposed in 2020 following the European Agenda on Migration, the programme that was intended to respond to the period of highest migratory flows. The new programme was planned to reach full implementation by 2026, although many of its amendments entered into force in 2024⁹. The main tools currently in use are: Reception Conditions Directive (Directive 2013/33/EU), Asylum Procedures Directive (Directive 2013/32/EU), Qualification Directive (Directive 2011/95/EU), Dublin III Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 604/2013), and Eurodac Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 603/2013). These are almost exclusively tools inherited from previous programmes, or recasts of them, and, as indicated by their names, they are primarily instruments of management and control, such as the EURODAC fingerprint database. In fact, they focus almost entirely on the mechanisms that govern the granting of asylum rights and on determining who is responsible for managing asylum seekers, with very little attention paid to the places where asylum seekers are housed while the necessary bureaucratic procedures for granting international protection are carried out.

Among this body of legal texts, the only document that actually focuses on the physical conditions of reception is the Reception Conditions Directive¹⁰. The main objective of this text is to establish the minimum common standards of living conditions for asylum applicants, and to achieve this, it provides a very open framework to serve as a basis for organizing the various national reception systems. Housing provision is only one of the numerous topics it addresses, and consequently, the articles that directly refer to this aspect are extremely generic. Rather than being prescriptive and suggesting potential best practices, the text appears to describe, in an extremely broad and concise manner, the various solutions already adopted by different European countries, thereby effectively legitimizing them. The essentiality of the articles that refer directly to the housing provision is so illustrative that it seems relevant to report it in detail. Article 2 defines, in a rather tautological way, what is meant by accommodation centre, i.e. "any place used for the collective housing of applicants" (Art. 2, i). A more detailed explanation of the structures proposed for the accommodation of asylum seekers is given in article 18, and consists of only 3 groups: “premises used for the purpose of housing applicants during the examination of an application for international protection made at the border or in transit zones”, meaning the specific buildings where applicants are identified and registered (Art. 18, 1a); “accommodation centers which guarantee an adequate standard of living" (Art. 18, 1b); and “private houses, flats, hotels or other premises adapted for housing applicants” (Art. 18, 1c).

These two articles summarize all the information regarding the housing provision within the European directives. As anticipated, it is essentially a description of the current state of reception in various European countries, without any explicit division between the buildings that are used during the initial phases of reception, generally large collective structures, and those that instead presuppose a more long-lasting use over time, and which should have a less emergency-driven character. It emerges that Member States maintain a very high level of freedom, as long as a dignified life is guaranteed: what constitutes a decent standard of living and how this should be achieved, however, remains at the discretion of national systems.

It is also indicative that in defining the minimum requirements for a dignified quality of life, any architectural indication is completely neglected and, similarly, in the European reference texts a general disinterest in the physical and spatial organization of housing is noted. There is a lack of design references in terms of organizational typologies, and the specific dimensional standards, when provided, focus mainly on the minimum habitability requirements¹¹. Yet, different types of housing have a very different impact on the quality of life of the inhabitants. Isolated buildings, both through extreme decentralization and through the use of physical barriers such as walls or road junctions, limit or prevent the possibilities of interaction with the local inhabitants and preclude the participation of asylum seekers in collective life, with obvious repercussions also on the future integration prospects of refugees, should their application be accepted. Paradoxically, one of the best practices at the European level was the Italian SAI system (Integrated Reception System), which had become the ordinary system before the last reform. After an initial phase of reception in collective centers, it provided for widespread redistribution across the territory, in apartments or collective buildings of limited size. The system was dismantled with the Cutro Decree (DL 20/2023), reducing its beneficiaries and abandoning the dispersed ordinary system in favor of reception based on large collective centers (fig. 2).

Mass accommodations are the preferred solution of European governments, with officially different forms and functions, but in fact serving the same dynamics of containment and control, whether these buildings operate as first registration centers, as accommodation centers for applicants waiting to submit their asylum application, or as detention centers for forced migrants awaiting deportation. In addition to the obvious desire to save resources – reducing services, facilities and personnel to a minimum and in many cases offering a quality of life that is neither dignified nor safe – an evident desire for control emerges; as Milman and Frederiksen state, “it is safe to argue that these institutions are not politically neutral and not exclusively concerned with care for asylum seekers”¹².

In general, the Italian reception system for asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection remains fully within the limits defined by European legislation. This does not mean, however, that it is a stable system. The political charge inherent in these places becomes evident when considering how the structure of the reception system has been reorganized several times in recent years, changing modes, principles, and even beneficiaries with each change of government.

The decree that serves as the foundation for the Italian reception system is DL 142/2015, explicitly referred to as the "Reception Decree" (Decreto accoglienza)¹³, which transposed into national law the recast Reception Directive of the European Union. The system, like the majority of national systems in Member States, is organized into phases, with an initial phase of reception and registration in large collective buildings located near the borders, known as hotspots, followed by a second, more long-term phase. Hotspots were introduced in 2015 by the EU's "Migration Management Agenda", although they actually already existed under different names. They are the first large centers for identification, photo-signaling, fingerprint collection, health screening and preliminary assessment of asylum requests. In Italy there are currently 6¹⁴: Lampedusa, Messina, Pozzallo, Trapani, Taranto and, from 2023, Porto Empedocle. They are positioned in strategic points along the migratory routes, and within the territory itself they are often located near infrastructures or ports, to make access easy even for migrants rescued by sea, and in almost all cases well separated from the urban fabric (figg. 3, 4 and 5).

The first reception phase has remained the most unchanged over time, as bare life is universal and biological needs are the same for all; the most significant changes have primarily concerned identification technologies. The same cannot be said, however, for what would be the more prolonged phase of reception, namely, it is important to remember, the phase in which a forced migrant has submitted their asylum application in the first country of arrival, which must process it to determine whether or not refugee status will be granted. Throughout the entire assessment phase of the application, an asylum seeker is not yet formally recognized by the state in which they reside, has no right to work, and is completely dependent on the accommodations and physical assistance provided by the host country. The arrivals in unpredictable flows, combined with the continuous emergency-driven approach characterized by the understaffing and under-resourcing of a system that should be ordinary, lead the processing times for asylum applications to consistently exceed the prescribed limits (typically 3 months, with a maximum of 6 months), reaching critical conditions during peak influxes¹⁵. 

This leads to what is defined as "ordinary reception", first SPRAR, then SPROIMI and SAI, and now in a hybrid situation mainly based on the CPA (Centri di Prima Accoglienza, First Reception Centers), and, paradoxically, the CAS (Centri di Accoglienza Straordinaria, Extraordinary Reception Centers) and CPR (Centri di Permanenza per il Rimpatrio, Centers for Immigration Detention). If this plethora of acronyms is not enough to underscore the strong political character these structures assume, it is also necessary to highlight how the models that have followed one another, sometimes even in quick succession, have in fact applied two completely opposing models of reception, both in terms of objectives and types of structures used.

To clarify in an extremely complicated and ever-changing system, in which often equivalent structures have different official names or functions, it may be sufficient to follow the changes in the beneficiaries of the so-called "distributed reception model" over the years. The system based on decentralized and distributed reception, relying on accommodations consisting of apartments or small-scale facilities that are well integrated into the local area and located in close proximity to essential services and infrastructures, has shown a markedly positive impact on the integration process¹⁶. The system was established in 2002, building on the experiences of decentralized and networked reception initiatives carried out by associations and non-governmental organizations between 1999 and 2000¹⁷ and was named SPRAR (Sistema di Protezione per Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati, Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees). As the name suggests, it was open to all categories of asylum seekers without distinction, provided that there were available spaces. The issue of insufficient available places has indeed been a key feature of the decentralized system from the beginning, as it was based on voluntary participation by municipalities and associations. The shortcomings of the ordinary system have always been filled by organizational centers, until the increase in the flow of forced migrants made it necessary to institutionalize an Extraordinary System, based on CASs, in 2014.

In 2018, under Salvini's Ministry, the so-called Security Decree (DL 113/2018) severely reduced access to the distributed reception system, renaming it SIPROIMI (Sistema di Protezione per Titolari di Protezione Internazionale e per Minori stranieri non accompagnati, Protection System for Holders of International Protection and for Unaccompanied Foreign Minors); in fact, a different name but a system equivalent to the current one; those excluded were channeled into CAS, or equivalent government mass accommodations. Only two years later, it is important to underline how impactful it is for the reception system to return to a functional situation after heavy cuts in funding and personnel, the Legislative Decree no. October 21, 2020, n.130¹⁸ extended the formal beneficiaries of decentralized reception, transforming SIPROIMI into the ordinary reception system and renaming it SAI (Sistema di Accoglienza e Integrazione, Reception and Integration System), although without proportionally increasing the number of places available. Finally, as anticipated, Legislative Decree 20/2023 has once again set a strongly restrictive and penalising approach towards asylum seekers, once again reducing access only to refugees and vulnerable categories^{19, 20}. 

To address the need for accommodations for asylum seekers excluded from the distributed reception system, Law 50/2023 also introduced a new category of "temporary" centers: pending the identification of available spaces in government-run reception centers or CAS, the Prefect can order that accommodation take place in temporary structures, where only basic needs such as food, clothing, healthcare, and linguistic-cultural mediation are provided, excluding any form of psychological support or initiatives aimed at integration. Once again, therefore, the reception system is mainly based on the use of large collective centers and temporary structures, as also highlighted by the progressive shift of resources to the CPRs, real detention centers for asylum seekers who have been denied their asylum application, which in case of need can also serve as housing for asylum seekers still awaiting acceptance but considered “at risk of absconding”. Finally, with such a clear desire for externalization and exclusion that it would be almost comical in other circumstances, the Italian Government signed in 2024 (Law 14 of 21 February 2024) an agreement with the Albanian Government aimed at cooperation on migration matters. Of the three centers on Albanian territory under Italian jurisdiction, one should serve as an identification and screening center, one as a reception center with 880 places²¹, and one as a repatriation center, presumably three successive phases of the same process, but in fact, buildings indistinguishable in structure and function.

It emerges that large collective centers are not places of poorly managed reception, or at least not involuntarily. The use of emergency structures and procedures is systematic: the continuous cutting of resources and the reduction of beneficiaries of widespread reception, the extreme decentralization of collective structures, and the forced separation of migrants from the local population are all extremely conscious choices, and loaded with political connotations. 

Mass accommodations for asylum seekers are hybrid spaces, still relatively young within architectural discourse, and situated conceptually between the camp-form and total institutions. In order to better understand their implications, a brief overview of these two concepts is necessary.

There is a rather conspicuous literature that describes internment camps in terms of exception. In the text “Zone definitivamente temporanee” Rahola²², taking up the theories of many philosophers who before him have questioned the concept of camp, from Arendt to Bauman and Agamben, theorizes the existence of a camp-form, advancing the hypothesis of a common matrix that can explain all the phenomenologies, even distant from each other, with which camps emerge in the present. The idea proposed is that the camps were born as the only possible territory in which to segregate the Surplus, a humanity in movement between borders and univocal national belongings.
The reflection on the rights acquired through belonging to a state, and consequently their loss without such affiliation, is introduced by Hannah Arendt when, in The Origins of Totalitarianism²³, she defines the difference between "citizens" and "human beings". Since rights are not universally granted to humans, but rather to citizens as such, those who do not belong to any state have no rights or political protection; they are merely living bodies. Hannah Arendt’s theories are expanded upon by Agamben, who combines them with Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower. In his interpretation, the camp represents the physical materialization of the state of exception. When the political system, defined through the fundamental relationship between physical space, the established order, and government, enters a prolonged crisis, the camp space is born: at the moment when the nation-state is no longer able to guarantee order within its territory and, by necessity, creates a space "other". The camp, therefore, is a device of segregation and exclusion, separating those who deserve a dignified and protected life from the "undesirables"²⁴. Agamben’s texts have strongly influenced subsequent studies on the camp form and its spatialization^{25, 26, 27}. Kreichauf, in particular, speaks of the "campization" of asylum seeker facilities in Europe, analyzing them not only from a physical and spatial perspective and in terms of the lowering of quality standards, but also considering containment, exclusion and temporality.
Building on his work, this article underlines that campization should also be understood conceptually: like camps, mass accommodations for asylum seekers are devices of containment and control for those who do not belong, in this case, asylum seekers trapped in the limbo of bureaucratic waiting, forcibly excluded from the territory in which they find themselves (figg. 6 and 7).

The aspect of control, in particular, strongly aligns mass accommodations with another major theme of the twentieth century: that of Total Institutions. The term was coined by Erving Goffman in Asylums to describe those social structures in which individuals, physically separated from the broader society, live lives entirely regulated by a single authority. Such institutions – psychiatric hospitals, prisons, military barracks – are characterized by strict behavioral control, a clear separation between the inside and the outside world, and systematic practices of discipline and surveillance. Emphasizing isolation from the external world, omnipresent control, and the loss of individual identity, numerous contemporary scholars have drawn parallels between mass accommodation centers and total institutions^{28, 29}. Like modern panopticons, they are not merely architectural forms, but rather expressions of a power structure – an apparatus of control embedded in spatial and social organization.

Fieldwork conducted by Minca reveals that asylum seeker compounds are tightly controlled spaces, characterized by surveillance, censorship, and custodial oversight (fig. 8). In his visit to the center in Gradisca, Italy, he describes it as a space entirely detached from the outside world, “a sort of grand space of exception, where time and social meaning appear as strangely suspended”³⁰. It is particularly significant that the author, having been compelled to comply with the prison-like rules imposed by the structure in order to carry out his research, later reflected on his own complicity – acknowledging that, by accepting the ideological premise of such an artifact, he had implicitly contributed to its legitimation.

The ideological dimension is, indeed, highly relevant. Kreichauff highlights how the use of spatially segregating structures – such as emergency facilities or converted military barracks and penitentiaries – conveys a message of necessary segregation, fostering an implicit criminalization of the individuals housed within³¹. It is also well documented that the operation of such centers is directly modeled on the logic and practices of carceral systems ^{32, 33, 34}, fostering what is commonly referred to as "crimigration", the a priori criminalization of migration itself.

This article has sought to reaffirm the necessity of studying and conceptualizing mass accommodations for asylum seekers, hybrid spaces imbued with profound political and philosophical implications. Particularly emblematic is the rapid diffusion, within the discretionary space granted by European legislation, of diverse yet conceptually identical spaces of control and exclusion across Member States. This phenomenon, as argued throughout the paper, stems from the pervasive and systematic isolation of asylum seekers from the local population – an approach that draws upon abstract models of power, exclusion, and control which have historically resurfaced whenever nation-states perceived the need to segregate and exclude undesirable masses.

Asylum seekers are separated from the local population both through actual physical segregation in isolated structures and through extreme decentralization, preventing any relations with host communities. Yet, the way in which temporary accommodations for asylum seekers are organized – their spatial arrangement, their location within or outside urban environments, and the nature of interactions they enable – plays a crucial role in shaping integration outcomes. Rather than facilitating inclusion, mass accommodations tend to function as urban enclaves of exclusion: they deepen social divisions, hinder access to the cultural, social, and economic fabric of the city, and, in doing so, contribute to reshaping the city’s broader spatial and political dynamics.