Between Routine Police Checks and ‘Residual Practices of Expulsion Power’: The Impacts of the Anti-Terrorism Law on Phone Centres and the Resistance of Owners. An Italian Ethnography in the ‘Emergency Season’

Since 9/11, enforcement officers in many EU countries have made extensive use of anti-terrorism preventive powers by carrying out repeated identity controls targeted at people they presumed to be Muslim. In 2005, investigations into terror attacks in London and Madrid, lead to the arrest of a terrorist who was caught in a phone centre in Rome1. Anti-terrorism law 144/20052 introduced specific requirements for the management of phone centre shops, requirements which were unique to Italy. It was made compulsory for owners to obtain police authorisation to operate their business. In addition, article 7(4) required customers’ operations be monitored and their personal data stored. It also allowed for the preventive acquisition of records of the ID of individuals using unmonitored publicworkspaces for communication and wireless Internet access. Consistent with the implementation of the Anti-terrorism law, inspections of phone centres increased. This paper will explore to the consequences of the implementation of this aspect of Italian Anti-terrorism law. Elaborating on the impact this piece of legislation and the resulting police inspections had on phone centre-customers and owners in Verona and Modena, the paper will focus on the implications of what the author defines as ‘residual practices of expulsion power’. It will also analyse forms of resistance to these practices by phone centre-owners. In particular, the ways in which ‘residual practices of expulsion power’ affected the life of migrants and phone centre-owners and how and why they were challenged by phone centre-owners.