The Continuum of Securitisation: A Critical Analysis of Italy’s Migration Governance along the Italo-Slovene Border

This thesis explores the evolution of Italy’s migration governance along its north-eastern border from 2019 to 2025. The research adopts an inductive approach and, through semi-structured interviews with key informants such as legal and social practitioners and volunteers, collects empirical evidence that is subsequently triangulated with official policy documents, court rulings, local reports and media sources. While the study initially focused on Italy’s conduct of pushbacks against migrants across the Italo-Slovene border, after its illegalisation declared by the Court of Rome, deterrence did not cease but rather evolved throughout the years into new policies and practices. Therefore, this thesis argues that the management of this border stretch features a “continuum of securitisation” implemented through a form of “dual exclusion”: on the one hand, intensified external surveillance at the frontier; on the other, internal procedural exclusion and an inadequate reception system of the institutions of Trieste, aimed at delegating responsibility of these subjects to other jurisdictions. Drawing on the Copenhagen and Paris School’s theoretical frameworks of securitisation, the study attempts to prove how the state strategy has evolved from a theatrical politics of emergency to one of administrative invisibility. This thesis thus seeks to offer a contribution to securitisation studies, demonstrating how the Parisian focus on professional routines provides an accurate lens for understanding border violence than the traditional Copenhagen framework alone.