Immigrazione e infra-diritto: dal governo per circolari alla tweeting governance

Since its birth in 1861, the Italian state has administered the foreigners’ social and legal status – both in the homeland and the colonies – through administrative orders and acts, mainly expressed through circulars, i.e. infra-law acts. It has continued to do so even in its democratic phase. More recently, and due to a general global trend toward the linguistification of politics and law, Twitter or Facebook messages are replacing traditional circulars on migration. Political or state authorities increasingly use social media to issue their orders. Infra-law therefore stands out as a permanent normative paradigm for foreign populations, preventing them from accessing legal subjectivity and consequently producing countless negative effects. This article aims to highlight not only that this unchanging form of foreign population management leads to its perpetual subaltern social and economic condition, but also – in contrast to what Weber claims about the structural link between law and capitalism – that it is crucial to capitalism’s development because it can best satisfy its need for predictability and calculability.