Migration Regulation:the Displacement Effects of Emergency Rules. Evidemnce from the Legal Advice Service of Casa della Carità

n 2011, the Italian government released the North Africa Emergency Provisions (ENA) temporarily relaxing immigration policies for refugees who fled to Italy as a consequence of the Libyan civil war and political turmoil in North Africa. One of the most important charities in Milan - Casa della Carità (CdC) provides legal advice to migrants wishing to comply with immigration rules. CdC had to handle a relevant number of applications for residence permit in accordance with the ENA. During the emergency, legal advisers at CdC directly experienced a significant change in the outcomes of the applications related to its users. In this study we use an original dataset based on CdC micro-data to run empirical analyses to estimate the impact of the ENA provisions on the probability of obtaining a residence permit. As expected, the analysis shows that such provisions actually increased the number of residence permits released to migrants entitled to the ENA benefits. On the other hand, the emergency rules seem to be associated with a significant displacement effect on permits required following ordinary procedures. In particular, our results show that migrants who were not entitled to the ENA protection suffered from exacerbated difficulties in obtaining residence permits according to the standard procedures.