Stuck and Exploited. Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Italy between Exclusion, Discrimination and Struggles

Refugees and asylum seekers in Italy are ‘stuck’ because they often end up caught in the legal and social limbo of the reception system. The effects of the pandemic and lockdown measures to avoid transmission have stacked on top of these conditions. This scenario, along with the Italian policy field increases the vulnerabilisation of refu- gees and asylum seekers for their labour exploitation, but also create a space for media struggle, where political forces and social entrepreneurs clash and manipulate the issue of “asylum seekers”. This introductory chapter analyses these aspects, introducing the thematic lines of the volume and presenting its contribution.