We publish a contribution by Dr. Rita Daila Costa and Dr. Claudio Costanzo, focusing on complementary protection after Decree-Law no. 20/2023, also drawing on the experience of the Legal Clinic on Migration and Rights (Clinica MiDi) at the University of Palermo (UNIPA).

This paper proposes an analysis of the institution of complementary protection in the Italian legal system, showing the impact of the successive reforms that started in 2018 on the lives of migrants and their access to employment, also in the light of the experience of the Migration and Rights Legal Clinic of the University of Palermo (MiDi Clinic). Starting from some references to the old humanitarian protection, the work focuses on the Institute of Special Protection, which, as reformed in 2020, represented an important regularisation option for many irregular foreign workers. The intervention of Decree-Law 20/2023 has significantly reduced the scope of this form of protection, creating uncertainty not only at the level of the effectiveness of constitutional and international obligations, but also with regard to access, through administrative channels, to the effective guarantee of the fundamental rights that these obligations protect. Despite the possible interpretations aimed at limiting its impact, the reform has already shown its capacity to affect the lives of people who have been living in Italy for a long time, where they have rooted their private and family life, as the critical observation of the MiDi Clinic has shown.

The article is published in open access at the following link.