Arrival, Laws and Order: constructing migration as a social problem

This chapter examines how migration has been constructed as a social problem in Italy, focusing on the interaction between media narratives, political debate, and cultural representations. Since the early 1990s, events such as mass sea arrivals and legislative reforms have brought immigration to the forefront of public discourse. The analysis adopts a constructivist perspective, viewing social problems not as objective realities but as the outcome of public definitions shaped within institutional arenas. Media coverage often portrays migrants as faceless crowds or potential threats, reinforcing a sense of emergency and legitimizing restrictive policies. Political discourse reflects this dynamic, oscillating between securitarian and humanitarian approaches, shaped by both domestic pressures and European integration processes. Crime reporting further links immigration to public order concerns, embedding the figure of the migrant within a framework of deviance and suspicion. In conclusion, the persistent framing of migration as a threat reveals not a failure of media or politics to understand social change, but rather a structural pattern rooted in cultural narratives, symbolic politics, and institutional routines. What appears as an emergency is often the result of entrenched discursive practices that normalize fear, reproduce hierarchies, and maintain migration as an unresolved, yet politically useful, problem.