Afghanistan Peace CampaignAfghanistan Analysts Network
Because of its position, Italy has been a major junction in Afghans’ migration to Europe for the past two decades. The area around Trieste on Italy’s northeastern border, in particular, has come to represent in recent years one of the foremost terminals on the land route from Turkey, the so-called Balkan Route, and a veritable gateway to the European Union. Despite this and the very high recognition rates for Afghan asylum seekers, Italy has remained mostly a country of transit and unlike other European countries, still lacks major well-established Afghan diaspora hubs. AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini, who has worked with or closely observed Afghan migrants in Trieste for over a decade, reflects on what is holding back the development of the Afghan diaspora in Italy and how recent changes in asylum policy at the European Union and Italy are affecting Afghans’ movements and decisions.
The story goes that when Amir Amanullah (r 1919-1929) visited Italy in January 1928 during his ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe, he was met by the Italian King, Vittorio Emanuele, with a witty remark: pointing to the similarity between their names, the Italian monarch bestowed on his Afghan homologue a royal decoration, the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, in the effect, making him an honorary cousin. One-and-a-half years later, dethroned by the revolts against his attempts at modernisation, Amanullah made it back to Italy as a refugee, broken in power and spirit, but with a number of family members and retainers and expecting suitable assistance and hospitality by his Italian ‘cousin’. Taken aback, Vittorio Emanuele was forced to oblige, probably cursing his earlier attempt at wittiness.
The dynamics between the Italian state and the Afghan asylum seekers could be said, half-jokingly, to repose on similar misunderstandings. On one hand, for the best part of the past two decades, Italy has honoured its commitment to Afghanistan and the plea of those fleeing first violence and now lack of freedom there with some of the highest asylum recognition rates in the EU; on the other, behind the façade of this recognition and beyond the legitimation of their status, Italy does not have much to offer Afghan refugees.
This report, following AAN’s update[1] in the summer on the situation of Afghan migrants along the Balkan Route, will outline aspects of Afghan migration to and through Italy, looking at the numbers of those transiting and those staying in the country over the past decade and to the living and working conditions they face, with a particular focus on the country’s northeastern border region.
Patterns of Afghan migration through and to Italy
Since the early 2000s, Italy has featured consistently on the map of Afghan migrants. At first, they mostly travelled through Greece and reached Italian shores by ferry, often hidden in lorries. While most continued to other destinations, some stopped in Italy and small communities started to develop in Rome and Milan, with Hazaras representing a relative majority. In the mid-2010s, the land route through southeastern Europe, later known as the Balkan Route, gained prominence. Afghans thus entered Italy through the border between Slovenia and the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, often regrouping in the regional capital, Trieste, or in Gorizia, located near or, in the case of the latter, on the border.
The humanitarian corridor of 2015-16 saw unprecedented numbers of migrants, many of them Afghans, reach Europe via the Balkan Route. Although the main branches of the humanitarian corridor bypassed Italy, Friuli Venezia Giulia was still affected because of its proximity. However, only a small number of the Afghans arriving in Italy in that time applied for asylum: rather, they took the chance to reach destinations further north and west and it was mostly migrants from other nationalities, especially Iraqis and Pakistanis, who opted to claim asylum in Italy.
Although not experiencing a surge comparable to those in other European countries, the number of Afghan asylum seekers in Italy increased steadily from the mid-2010s.[2] Applications rose from 1,365 in 2012 to 2,056 in 2013, to 2,994 in 2014, peaking at 3,975 in 2015. In 2015 Italy awarded a record number of asylum decisions to Afghan asylum seekers: 4,283, of which the great majority consisted of either of the five-year types of international protection, that is the status of ‘political refugee’ (381 instances) or being granted ‘subsidiary protection’ (3,279 instances). Only 59 requests were rejected, making Italy one of the surest countries for asylum applications for Afghans in the whole EU.[3] 2016 saw only 2,860 applications.
In the following years, recognition rates for Afghans remained constantly above 95 per cent. The subsidiary protection became the standard decision issued to Afghan nationals almost by default, being awarded on average to around two-thirds of those applying. Rejections were altogether very rare and Afghans had very good chances of seeing any overturned on appeal. At any rate, Italy never arranged the deportation of Afghans whose demands had been rejected, as was done by a number of other EU countries in the years before 2021.
Despite this, Afghan asylum requests fell to 982 in 2017 and 599 by 2019. A new spike in the number of asylum requests came in 2021 (5,250) with the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). This was clearly linked to the evacuation of August 2021: Italy airlifted nearly 5,000 Afghan nationals in the wake of the collapse of the Republican institutions (Italian Embassy in Afghanistan).[4]
The following year, 2022, asylum demands fell to 2,113. However, reflecting the backlog of requests from 2021, the number of asylum decisions rose: 4,211 and 4,230 decisions were made in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and were overwhelmingly positive. Meanwhile, the Italian government, in partnership with civil society and charitable organisations, launched a humanitarian visa scheme for selected Afghans (vulnerable individuals and families, and those who had a history of working with Italian organisations in Afghanistan) admitting 1,200 people in 2022-23 and a further 700 in 2025, via a third country (Pakistan, Iran or Turkey) (AIDA p58).
In 2023, 1,900 Afghans applied for asylum in Italy and in 2024, 2,042. Afghans still ranked better than most countries in terms of the outcome of their asylum demands: in 2024, out of 1,833 decisions on Afghan asylum seekers, only 149 were rejected, an 8 per cent rejection rate, inferior only to those from Burkina Faso and Mali. Afghans were also, by far, the nationality most often granted full refugee status in 2024, with 851 applicants qualifying for it; an additional 782 were given subsidiary protection and only 51 a lower-type special protection (UCS).
Afghan applications have been slightly on the increase in the last three years because of both continued favourable recognition rates in Italy and declining acceptance in other EU countries, especially those already hosting large numbers of Afghan refugees, such as the Scandinavian countries, Germany and Belgium. Faced with higher hurdles and uncertainties, many Afghan asylum seekers originally directed there – or already arrived there – considered falling back on Italy as a more viable second choice. Most Afghans still arrive via the Balkan Route, while a smaller but significant fraction reached Italian shores by boat from Turkey, circumventing Greece. Most of the Afghans on the Balkan route are single men. The sea route, presenting a different range of dangers, came to be the route of choice for many single women and families.[5]
A separate mention must be made for non-accompanied minors. Already in 2017, AAN reported on the comparatively high numbers of Afghan children transiting through Italy. Most seem originally to be aiming for Switzerland, but a significant number end up applying for asylum in Italy, which offers decent reception programmes for minors.[6] Indeed, Afghan nationals still top the list of nationalities among non-accompanied minors who apply for asylum in the country. In 2025, they represented roughly a quarter of those in the reception system and made up almost the same percentage of those who applied for asylum in 2025, with 219 out of 950 (Ministero del Lavoro; AIDA p124).[7]
In every EU state, ‘subsequent applications’ (as opposed to first-time applications) by Afghans, once negligible, were at their highest ever in 2025, making up almost half of the total 108,765 asylum requests by Afghan nationals across the union (UNHCR). This has created a new group of asylum seekers, the so-called ‘failed refugees’, who often subsequently try to apply in other countries. In 2025, NGOs began to report increasing numbers of Afghans seeking assistance in Ventimiglia on the western Italian border, where they would normally transit when leaving for France, Belgium, or the UK: they were returning to Italy to apply for asylum after having their applications rejected in other countries (AIDA p57). The same movement has been happening on the northeastern border of Italy, where it is Afghans who saw their applications rejected in Austria, Germany or the Scandinavian countries who are arriving.
However, long-established patterns of asylum recognition for Afghans in Italy might have begun to change. In 2025, 2,755 Afghans applied for asylum, but positive decisions decreased to 82 per cent, and the rate of five-year international protections also fell relative to a two-year type of protection issued by Italy, labelled ‘special’ or ‘humanitarian’ protection.[8]
In 2025-26, different estimates of the number of migrants on the Balkan Route circulated, contributing to uncertainty about the number of arrivals in Italy. Frontex, the European agency for the management of external borders, and, to a lesser extent, other organisations such as IOM and UNHCR have pointed to a marked decrease in overall migration flows on the land route (see our previous report), while some NGOs working with migrants at Italy’s northeastern border have disputed this.
At any rate, the continued arrival of Afghans in transit and as asylum seekers in Italy seem certain for the next future, as proved by the most recent data from the first half of 2026. Afghans made up around twenty per cent of the 5,000 migrants identified as entering the EU via the land route in Southeastern Europe, most of them heading to Italy, as AAN has detailed in its previous report on the situation in Serbia. Moreover, during the first half of 2026, Afghans were, together with Bangladeshis and Egyptians, the most represented nationality on the Eastern Mediterranean sea route,[9] which proved the most used in 2026 so far, with nearly 17,000 arrivals (UNHCR). A significant number of those Afghans who arrived in Greece will likely continue on to Italy, either by land or by sea, in the coming months.
Another recent survey by UNHCR which heard from Afghans en route to Europe found 21 per cent of 657 migrants interviewed between January 2025 and July 2026 in the Balkans listed Italy as their choice of destination, second only to Germany. It is unclear how many intended to apply for asylum and stay in Italy, though. And then, even for those who may want to stay, it is not clear if this is going to prove a viable choice in the long run.
An unstable diaspora
According to a recent migration survey, as of 2025, around 19,000 Afghans were residing in Italy (ISMU, p103). As a new migrant group in the country, the community’s numbers have shown clear growth over the past fifteen years, from fewer than 4,000 in 2011 (Wikipedia, based on Eurostat data). The increase was driven by the high number of asylum applications between 2014 and 2016 and after 2021. Altogether, the Afghan diaspora in Italy is still negligible compared to those that have developed in other EU countries such as Germany or France or even in less-populated ones such as Sweden or Austria.
In its 2017 report, AAN had already described the difficulties Afghans were facing in establishing themselves in Italy, without an already rooted diaspora community to provide newcomers with support, advice and access to jobs.[10] After a decade of Afghan migrants transiting through the country, with a significant proportion applying for and obtaining asylum, it remains difficult to assess whether this obstacle has been overcome. Numbers alone do not necessarily work here, as we reported back then:
…obtaining protection and the various necessary documents in Italy has not meant the beginning of a new, sedentary life for the majority of Afghan newcomers. Mostly, they would move out of Italy to try and find a job in some other European country.
Although difficult to verify, prolonged observation suggests that many Afghans who obtain asylum in Italy eventually move on and relocate, temporarily or permanently, out of the country. The transient nature of the presence of many Afghans in Italy has hindered the development of numerically relevant and cohesive communities, apart from a handful of major cities such as Rome, Milan, Bologna or Turin. This lack of rooting stems from several factors. As explained in our previous report, there existed already “an ‘insulation’ between older migrants [ie the few high-profile refugees already in Italy, where Zaher Shah and part of his entourage had also fled in 1973], from urban and educated backgrounds who are fully integrated, and more recent newcomers.” Afghans were therefore divided by fault lines of economic status and ability to integrate in Italian society.[11]
Along similar lines, a division may currently be reproducing itself between refugees who were evacuated in 2021 or through successive relocation programmes and those entering Italy through the Balkan Route. The first come often from urban and educated backgrounds, have better working skills and, in some cases, even previous knowledge of the Italian – or at least English – language. Moreover, they are often in family groups and usually end up in the care of committed organisations that run efficient programmes capable of providing the tools for successful integration into Italian society and the job market. On the other hand, migrants coming via the Balkan Route are mainly young men from rural areas, often with only basic education and language skills. The language and training courses they are offered during reception programmes have been shrinking, along with the average reception time they are granted and their chances of entering subsequent government support programmes.
Moreover, Afghans arriving from the Balkan Route are overwhelmingly single men. Once they receive asylum, they do not automatically succeed at bringing their families from Afghanistan. Family reunification has always been a long and complex procedure and a source of frustrations for Afghan refugees in Italy. Nowadays, the process has become even more arduous and burdensome: with the Italian embassy in Afghanistan closed, Afghan citizens who apply for family reunification need to do their paperwork at embassies in nearby countries (Pakistan or Iran) and often to reside legally in the country where the embassy is located in order to be able to access it. Finally, family reunification is impractical not only from a bureaucratic perspective but also from an economic one, as Afghans in Italy soon learn.
Italy: A republic founded on informal labour?
Italy’s job market for newly arrived migrants is constrained and most available jobs are in the agricultural or tourism sectors, both characterised by seasonal and informal labour. For those with limited professional and linguistic skills, it is virtually impossible to pursue other occupations, except for those with the capital to open a small shop, grocery, call centre/money transfer, fast food, or other services directed at migrant communities. Consequently, it is mostly single young men from rural areas who opt to spend time working in Italy after receiving asylum documents – their families left behind in Afghanistan, at least for the time being – while those with a degree, previous working experience or a family with them try to get a better job in other EU countries as soon as they can.
The resulting dispersal of many Afghan refugees who stay in Italy to rural areas, together with their frequent relocations to pursue short-term job opportunities, perpetuates the fragmented and transient nature of the Afghan diaspora in Italy. Moreover, even for day labourers, job competition is tough: Italy sits at the crossroads of three major migrant routes into Europe and sees other large communities from Africa and South Asia seeking low-skill or seasonal work for wages many Afghans cannot readily accept. As an Afghan migrant said: “Behind each of us there is half a village back home, that we have to support.” That may be true for every migrant labourer, but Afghanistan is not a cheap country to live in and the cost of living has been on the rise due to the now year-long border closure with Pakistan.
The pervasive presence of informal labour in the Italian economy allows some members of migrant communities to position themselves as providers of labourers to a range of economic actors, from farms to building companies, and to exploit their compatriots and other migrants by having them work without proper contracts or safety regulations, or for longer than the recorded working hours.[12] This so-called caporalato (‘gangmaster’) system is based, along with the connivance of many Italian economic actors, on the willingness of its victims to be exploited in order to get to work and earn some money at all. The people involved at the various levels can be from very different national backgrounds. However, a shared nationality usually facilitates both access to the labour market through gangmaster intermediaries and, it seems, the acceptance of exploitation by the labourers. Afghans, like most other migrants, need to earn money fast in order to support people at home, but rarely have the numbers or the connections to be those running the rackets.
The author has observed several Afghans quitting their prospective careers in the shipyards of Monfalcone near Trieste – the biggest in Italy, where the non-unionised workforce is largely from Bangladesh and mobilised through Bangladeshi small firms and labour agencies – and leaving for other EU countries because of the impossibility of progressing beyond a certain level of recompense.
Where most migrants involved in this abusive system are easily coerced into accepting poor working conditions and pay, either through proximity (if compatriots of the gangmasters) or because of their irregular or vulnerable juridical status in Italy, ie failed asylum application – Afghans are an exception, with regular permits of stay by virtue of their high recognition rates as asylum seekers. This apparent strength can make them more vocal in claiming their rights and some exploiters are well aware of that. The author remembers many futile attempts by a very gifted young Afghan tailor to find employment in the Chinese-managed, largely informal, textile district in the city of Prato. Each time, he came back puzzled by the rejection, until a fellow Pakistani would-be tailor, who had just been hired, explained: “They saw your papers: you are a political refugee, you’re gonna be a troublemaker.” Such situations take a dramatic turn, when migrants who protest against unfair wages or abusive working and accommodation conditions are punished with violence and even death by their exploiters, be them Italians or fellow migrants.[13]
In this context, it is no surprise that, after receiving their asylum documents in Italy – which allow them to travel legally across the EU – many Afghans move on to other countries and return to Italy only to renew them. The single most important factor limiting the growth of the Afghan diaspora in Italy is probably the appeal of many other European countries, where, despite the ever-present risk of abuse and exploitation, wages and salaries are considerably higher at almost all levels. This is especially true for refugees with connections to compatriots or prior experience in a given country, but the pull factor is not limited to those cases. There is a sheer economic incentive at play: the awareness among Afghans in Italy that the country’s salaries have been stuck longer than in any other European country amid an ever-growing cost of living. Even many Afghans who have been living for over a decade in Italy, perfectly integrated and skilled so as to be part of its social and economic life and some even having obtained citizenship, are leaving in search of better wages. Secondary movement within the EU after initiating an asylum procedure (European Parliament briefing) and continued mobility after asylum have both been observed and researched as recurring phenomena for Afghans refugees in Europe (Global Migration Research Paper). In this case, however, Afghans are also reacting to a situation specific to their country of asylum. Despite the obvious differences, by leaving Italy, they behave like the increasing number of young Italians who also leave to seek better jobs elsewhere (Reuters).
More stable Afghan communities will have a chance to develop only in those areas of Italy featuring the coexistence of more structured, post-2021 relocation programmes involving whole families in urban environments and a more varied job market. Such conditions may favour the economic and cultural integration of sufficiently large groups of Afghans, thereby enabling the capacity to attract and employ other Afghans in catering or in providing services to their compatriots. So far, however, the development of this type of community has been stunted even in the very city that has seen the highest number of Afghans transiting or applying for asylum over the past fifteen years -–Trieste. To understand the situation there, it is necessary to look more closely at trends in migration flows on Italy’s northeastern frontier and at the policies trying to regulate, control, or discourage them.
Number-crunching on the Balkan Route
When the land route through the Balkans became prominent for Afghan migrants in 2010s, Trieste, a medium-sized port city on Italy’s northeastern border, could boast of a fairly well-developed reception system. Local NGOs and government offices relied on expertise gained during previous refugee crises caused by the ex-Yugoslavia wars of the 1990s. Until 2015, all asylum seekers were hosted in small flats spread across the city and offered intensive language courses and vocational training. Later, rising numbers of refugees and reduced government support for such programmes posed increasing hurdles to this model, reducing reception to its basics (for details see our 2023 report).
Even after that, Trieste has continued to represent for migrants a major goal, a place where they could finally discard the fear of being detained by police and pushed back across a border, or harassed by greedy smugglers and criminal groups.[14] Some migrants cash in their ‘Game’ achievement and stop in Trieste to apply for asylum; others simply rest and regroup before continuing on. Indeed, once migrants overcome the last risks posed by informal push backs at the Italian-Slovenian border,[15] the city offers them a rare chance to come safely out of hiding and live openly.[16] After weeks spent almost entirely in hiding or in the care of their smugglers’ handlers, this comes as a respite, even if it means living on the streets and sleeping rough in abandoned old buildings (InfoMigrants). Local authorities have neither the scope nor the will to assist all migrants, but long-established charities still offer migrants help and advice.
Every evening since 2018, a network of volunteer organisations united under the umbrella Linea d’Ombra (Shadow Line) has been present in the square in front of Trieste train station, providing medical first aid, warm meals and information to migrants. The choice of venue is no accident: the square has long been the meeting place for migrants in Trieste. Newly arrived migrants, after walking across the border that runs along the Karst plateau above the city, head to the square to get information and find a place to stay in the Silos area of the old port, located just behind the railway tracks; those already there, waiting for a place in the reception system or to start the next leg of their journey, gather daily with relations or friends already living or staying in the city.
The presence of a large number of migrants occupying public spaces in the centres of major cities also characterised the height of the Balkan Route in 2015-16, hence the various ‘Afghan Parks’ of Belgrade and other southeastern European cities (read this 2016 AAN report). Since then, local government or upscale urban development projects have evicted migrants from central and visible locations and relegated them to marginal places, typically disused industrial complexes and railroad hubs at the city outskirts, which offer migrants basic accommodation and transport facilities, while being conveniently invisible to residents and tourists.[17] In Trieste, such a marginal space, the old port with its dilapidated warehouses, dead railway lines and empty wagons, is located too close to the heart of the city centre and cannot be insulated from it.
The daily gatherings have split the city’s public opinion and become a national case, with many volunteers from Trieste and across Italy and neighbouring countries joining to support migrants,[18] while local right-wing parties and some city residents criticise them, especially after episodes of criminality among migrants squatting in nearby areas. In the face of the decidedly anti-migrant tones assumed by the political debate and part of the local institutions, this mobilisation of civil society transcends a purely charitable effort to take up a social and political role: in cooperation with organisations for migrants’ rights such as ASGI, Linea d’Ombra aims to uphold the moral and legal standards connected to the right of asylum, which they feel the institutions in Trieste are neglecting (InfoMigrants).
These organisations also reported on the number of migrants’ arrivals in 2025-26; they differed from statistics made available by some international bodies. Frontex, for example, claimed a 42 per cent reduction in irregular border crossings on the Western Balkan Route (includes the land borders of Romania, Hungary, Croatia, and Bulgaria) in 2025 and another 24 per cent in the first half of 2026 (Frontex, Frontex). Organisations working with migrants in Trieste have instead said that the overall drop in arrivals over the past couple of years is minimal. The director of the Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), Gianfranco Schiavone, estimates that arrivals in Trieste fell by only about 15 per cent last year and argues that, in the first months of 2026, they increased. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) also reported a 27 per cent decrease in arrivals in Trieste in 2025 (IRC 2026) and a 31 per cent increase in the first eight months of 2026 (RaiNews).
This shows that increased border controls have not effectively reduced the flow of migrants to a trickle, as the official narrative would have it. Rather, like the karst rivers that crisscross this region, securitisation policies have forced the flow underground, only for it to resurface in Trieste. Many migrants in the Western Balkans stay under the radar of even the humanitarian actors present in the Balkans, moving secretively and relying on their smugglers’ network for accommodation. As the efforts of police forces in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina increasingly concentrate on making migrants invisible, the number of migrants on the Balkan Route is likely being underreported by organisations like Frontex.
Data by the local organisations corroborate the notion that the arrival of migrants at Italy’s northeastern frontier has continued unabated in 2025-26 and that among them, Afghans continue to represent the major group. According to the IRC registry, Afghans have ranked first among the nationalities arriving in Trieste for the past five years, with altogether nearly 30,000 Afghans spending some time in the city between 2021 and 2026 while on transit or eventually applying for asylum there. Although their number declined after 2023, with 3,889 individuals registered in 2025, they still constituted 40 per cent of the total (IRC 2026). Moreover, in 2025 the IRC recorded, for the first time, an increasing trend among Afghan migrants to state that Trieste was their final destination; 41 per cent said so, a notable shift from previous years when they pointed to other destinations inside the EU (IRC 2025).
Indeed, 2026 so far shows a prospective increase, with 2,735 Afghans recorded as arriving in Trieste in the first eight months of the year. Unaccompanied minors featured prominently, accounting for 576 of a total.
Data from the IRC/Diaconia Vallese monitoring monthly surveys in Trieste Central Station
Other cities in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region also reported rising numbers of Afghan asylum seekers. Gorizia, which, like Trieste, sits right on the Slovenian border, recorded a major spike in Afghan asylum seekers in July 2026; they were almost the only nationality arriving in the city. September saw a more varied background among asylum seekers; however, Afghans still featured prominently, with around one hundred demands.[19] Udine, though slightly more removed from the border, also recorded that Afghans formed the vast majority of those applying for asylum in the spring of 2026 – 83 per cent of the 450 individuals contacted by the local organisation Ospiti in arrivo during their survey.
This is consistent with the EUAA’s mid-year review, which at the end of June 2026 reported a 77 per cent increase in asylum demands by Afghans in Italy compared to the same period in 2025 (EUAA, p26). What are the reasons for these numbers, given what has been said about Italy’s economy not offering great opportunities for Afghan migrants? One is certainly the lack of alternative opportunities: although some other EU countries, and Germany foremost, remain the most coveted destinations, lower recognition rates, longer waiting times for asylum papers and the risk of deportation[20] in case of rejection make Italy a reasonable choice. Moreover, some EU-designed asylum mechanisms influence migrants’ choices, sometimes with unexpected results.
A bureaucratic twist across the EU
In the past, the Balkan Route used to split in Belgrade, from where it went in two completely different directions: migrants who went north and crossed into Hungary would continue further north and west into Slovakia and Austria, to reach Germany or Scandinavia. Those who headed west into Bosnia or Croatia continued through Croatia and Slovenia until they reached Italy and then France.
This may no longer be the case; all routes seem to lead to Trieste, or at least to the eastern Italian border. Speaking to Afghans in Belgrade and in Trieste, AAN heard that many migrants heading from Serbia to Hungary report plan to travel from Hungary through Slovenia to Italy; once there, they would continue on to Austria and Germany. It is not only the controls on the Austrian – Hungarian border that influence the decision to make such a detour, but also the fact that being fingerprinted in the Eurodac biometric system in Italy can be a bonus for migrants. By now, asylum seekers with their first EU fingerprints in Croatia are routinely reassigned to that country under the terms of the Dublin agreements[21] if they later try to lodge an application in central or northern Europe. By contrast Italian fingerprints seem to prevent other countries from sending back asylum seekers. Italy is one of Europe’s major recipients of migrants in transit from both the Mediterranean and the Balkan routes and hosts a sizeable number of asylum seekers, so initiating a Dublin transfer procedure with Italy is an arduous enterprise that many other EU countries would rather not face or, at any rate, not be able to carry out with success.
In 2025, Italy received 19,889 Dublin requests (ie requests for Italy to ‘take back’ asylum seekers), down from 24,217 in 2024. Not a single Dublin-related transfer took place last year, however, likely because Italy suspended transfers to other EU countries on 5 December 2022 and was still maintaining that suspension in 2025 (AIDA).
The inability to activate a Dublin procedure is sometimes also due to a shortage of facilities for families in the Italian reception system, which is shaped by arrival patterns that see a vast majority of single men. In recent years, moreover, the need to expand reception capacity, reduce benefits and their duration to cut costs, as well as the political hostility of state organs at the local and national level towards programmes aimed at long-term, resource-intensive reception systems have further reduced suitable structures for families. As a result, requests by other EU countries for Italy to accept responsibility for an Afghan family may be blocked by the need to ensure guarantees about the type of reception that family will receive once there (AIDA p102).[22]
The flip side of the coin is that, among the Afghans currently applying for asylum in Italy, a growing number are not first-time applicants, but individuals whose claims have been turned down by other EU countries. As mentioned in the first section of this report, they have reached almost half of the total asylum requests by Afghans across the EU in 2025.
The new country of asylum may deem such applications inadmissible and send applicants back to the first if no new elements are presented or the situation in the country of origin has not deteriorated; for Afghans, different recognition rates can be enough to secure success. Moreover, recent jurisprudence offers hope to subsequent asylum seekers. In late 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling on questions posed by civil courts in Rome and Florence about the transfer of asylum seekers to Italy who had already been rejected elsewhere. The CJEU ruled that the Italian judges could decide to apply the sovereignty clause and examine asylum claims when transferring the applicant to another EU country might ultimately lead to their deportation to an unsafe country, thus violating the non-refoulement principle.[23] The courts subsequently decided in favour of the two Afghan asylum seekers who had applied against the transfers to, respectively, Germany and Sweden, and their applications were examined anew in Italy (AIDA pp93-94).
Differences in recognition trends and policies across the EU countries have long influenced each other more to the effect of causing dysfunctionality than bringing about a balanced and cohesive system. Even recent developments connected with the European Pact on Migration and Asylum (known in Italy as PAF), which is aimed at standardising policies and procedures, are now affecting asylum practices at Italy’s northeastern border in new and unpredictable ways.
The (il)logic of deterrence in 2026
As summer 2026 was approaching, all eyes – migrants and workers on migrant issues – were fixed on the European Pact on Migration and Asylum, set to be applied from 12 June 2026. Some migrants feared radical overnight changes, and smart smugglers no doubt made good use of those fears to extract higher prices from their unfortunate customers. What happened in Trieste after the fateful date was indeed a radical departure from the established legal framework.
Under decree-law n.100, issued by the Italian government on the same day the EU migration pact entered into force,police in Trieste began applying the so-called accelerated border procedure to asylum applicants crossing the border between Italy and Slovenia.[24] The normal asylum procedure was thus replaced with one that offers fewer guarantees to applicants and shorter time windows to appeal against decisions. Although the PAF was devised to sort asylum seekers from countries considered safe under EU rulings more quickly and should thus not affect those from Afghanistan, in Trieste, several Afghans have been subjected to it and later appealed its rulings. Moreover, any future radical change to the reception system in Trieste, such as shrinking reception places, would affect Afghan asylum seekers as well.
The impact of the massive application of PAF during the summer of 2026 was strongly felt in the asylum and reception system in the city. The fast-tracking was only relative: asylum seekers could still be waiting in the streets for weeks or months before being suddenly summoned and taken by the police to a migrant hub outside Trieste. Legal advisors to migrants complain that asylum seekers are made to believe that they cannot leave its premises lest they be considered to have abandoned the reception project. This makes it difficult for asylum seekers to get legal aid in the city and, coupled with the very tight timing of the procedure once the intake has taken place, leaves many without a clear understanding of their options. The asylum interviews are reduced to a mere formality (their record hardly filling one page) and the timeline for an appeal against the decision is only five days.
As of early October, the PAF faces increasing hurdles. Throughout August and September, civil courts in Trieste and other Italian cities have upheld migrants’ appeals, ruling that the Italian-Slovenian border is not an external Schengen border (AIDA update on PAF). The police authorities have been forced to revive the ordinary procedure and shift part of the applications back to it.
According to ICS director Gianfranco Schiavone, with the PAF the government’s objective was to cancel the normal procedure in the areas of the country most affected by arrivals, or at least to make them inhospitable to asylum seekers. In Trieste, the aim would be to make the city a place of mere transit, disincentivising asylum seekers from applying for protection there. The implementation of the PAF coincided with an inexplicable months-long halt to the transfers of asylum seekers from the streets to reception projects in other parts of Italy, which, in normal times, is the only remedy for the chronic overcrowding of migrants left without shelter in Trieste. Faced with the failure of other policies aimed at containing migration flows, this type of indirect deterrence might have become an option.
The decision by many countries to suspend the Schengen area free-travel agreement and reinstate border controls in the past few years and by Italy with respect to Slovenia since October 2023 (Associated Press), has proved largely ineffective. Mixed Slovenian-Italian border patrols mostly focus on road and railway communication networks, of only marginal use by migrants crossing the Italian-Slovenian border around Trieste. True, high-profile migrants or families may opt for an all-inclusive car transfer bringing them beyond the border, but single young men, who make up the vast majority of migrants on the Balkan Route, normally cross the hilly country marking the border between Slovenia and Italy on foot. Periodic evictions of migrants from the old port warehouses have proved just as ineffective (Linea d’Ombra): given the wealth of empty buildings available in deindustrialising (and depopulating) Trieste, it amounts to kicking the problem around a few blocks without solving it.
However, if creating a bottleneck in the reception system was truly the authorities’ contingency plan to reduce pressure on Trieste from migration flows along the Balkan Route, this would require thorough revision. Deterrence, which implies leaving migrants to their own devices to live on the streets, clashes with the authorities’ parallel agenda of rendering migrants invisible so as to pacify public opinion. It also fails to account for the harsh reality of migrants’ mindsets and priorities, and what they are prepared to put up with to find a new home in Europe: given the risks and abuses they have already faced, making life harsh for them on arrival in Italy is hardly a deterrent.
Time is telling; time will tell
Time seems to be the all-important factor for Afghans when deciding where to apply for asylum. Many asylum seekers want to reach a destination where they can work and send money home as soon as possible, so are in race against time. That means the probable timeline for getting asylum papers in a particular country beats the quality of the reception programme or even proximity to relatives or friends in another. The quest for speed in bureaucratic procedures and in securing accommodation is typically hard amid crowded Italian police stations, asylum commissions and reception systems. Like the choice of which route to take or smuggler group to hire, it is also a battle largely fought out on social media. This was the case, for example, with L’Aquila, a small city in central Italy removed from any migrant route or major job market, which, after being featured in a Pashto-language video posted on TikTok in late 2025, experienced a sudden boom of arrivals and asylum requests by Afghans, hopeful of getting faster reception and, most importantly, their paperwork done (InfoMigrants).
The figures provided by migrant support organisations illustrate the scale of the problem. The gap between declared intentions to apply for asylum in Trieste and actual requests is revealing. IRC reported that in 2025, 3,607 individuals expressed their intention to apply for asylum in Trieste. Yet only one-third, around 1,200 applications, were eventually registered at the police station. Even accounting for migrants who changed their minds and moved on immediately, and for those who were transferred and induced into other reception programmes by the authorities, this still leaves a significant number of individuals who were ultimately unable to access the procedure at all and were forced to move and try to apply elsewhere (IRC).
The introduction of the accelerated border procedure in Trieste did not speed up the reception timeline; although it has sped up the procedure itself in police stations and asylum commissions once an applicant is in the system. However, any reduction in the waiting time to obtain asylum documents can become a pull factor for asylum seekers with a fair chance of getting protection. It seems likely that Afghans would easily come to terms with the risk of being ‘PAFed’, prioritising getting any type of asylum document that would allow them to move around legally, and being happy with a lower-level types of protection in a comparatively shorter time – they can always appeal against any decision, hoping, sooner or later, to see it transformed into full international protection.
So, even measures aimed at deterring migrants could turn out to be acceptable for at least some Afghan asylum seekers who are willing to cope with a rough street-life, a short and very basic reception programme – if any at all – and a horizon of informal and underpaid labour (or fast relocation to other EU countries and long-term mobility from one to another). Only, this fits exactly the representation of the migrants whom many Italians and most Italian right-wing politicians keep complaining about: young, male, uneducated, living on the margins of society and potentially engaging in criminal activities.
If the future of asylum laws lies in deterrence, it is difficult to see how far can asylum seekers and host countries be pushed. Afghans will likely be willing to accept ever-harsher conditions of travel, reception and asylum procedure. Thus, Italy’s continued role as gateway to Europe for Afghan migrants is certain. The way the situation in Italy evolves and influences Afghans’ ability to get asylum and their decision to stay or move on, will continue to be relevant for the rest of the European Union.
Edited by Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark
References
| ↑1 | See Jelena Bjelica and Fabrizio Foschini, A Good Smuggler is Hard to Find: The evolution of Afghan smuggling networks in the Balkans, Afghanistan Analysts Network, 25 July 2026. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | By comparison, in 2012, Germany saw 7,498 asylum applications by Afghans (BAMF 2012), 31,382 in 2015 and 127,012 in 2016. A great part of the 2016 figure consisted of the backlog of applications from Afghans who had arrived in 2015, but were unable to apply for asylum at once. See Thomas Ruttig, Afghan Exodus: Afghan asylum seekers in Europe (3) Case study Germany, AAN, 17 February 2017. In the same years, France recorded 444 Afghan asylum applications in 2012, 2,200 in 2015 and 5,641 in 2016 (AIDA-ECRE France). |
| ↑3 | Figures taken from the Italian government’s UCS, AIDA-ECRE and Eurostat databases. |
| ↑4 | This was one of the highest numbers among EU countries: Germany evacuated 4,100, France 2,600 and the Netherlands 2,500 (Reuters). The UK airlifted 15,000 Afghans in 2021 (UK government). |
| ↑5 | See Fabrizio Foschini, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: No good options for Afghans traveling to and from Turkey, AAN, 12 May 2022. This hitherto ignored route came to the attention of the public when a shipwreck near the coast of Calabria in southern Italy cost the lives of nearly one hundred migrants, most of them Afghans (Human Rights Watch). |
| ↑6 | See Fabrizio Foschini and Jelena Bjelica, Afghan Child Migrants: Italy, the preferred country of transit?, AAN, 6 September 2017. Afghans interviewed in 2026 mentioned how those minors well below the age of majority cross Italy aiming to apply for asylum in Switzerland, while others, already around the age of 18, prefer the less strict admission requirements by Italy. |
| ↑7 | This does not include all non-accompanied foreign minors present in the reception system in Italy, but rather only those among them who apply for asylum. |
| ↑8 | This makes more complex the comparison of recognition rate at the European level, as such nationally-devised forms of protection are unregulated by the EU and are thus counted as negative decisions in some statistics, such as those by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA). |
| ↑9 | This is defined by UNCHR as the route leading migrants from Libya and Egypt to the shores of Greece and Cyprus. Use of this route has been expanding in 2026, especially with an increase in arrivals from Libya to Crete. |
| ↑10 | See Fabrizio Foschini and Jelena Bjelica, Afghan Asylum Seekers in Italy: A place of temporary respite, AAN, 13 September 2017. |
| ↑11 | Regional and ethnic background also played a role in keeping Afghan communities in Italy fragmented. Hazaras, who constituted the majority of arrivals in the early 2000s, had developed a close-knit community in Rome and even attempted to create associations. However, they had failed to include the newcomer Afghans from other backgrounds, for example a majority of arrivals from the Balkan Route who, increasingly so since 2021 and up to the present days, are Pashtuns. |
| ↑12 | Italy has witnessed in the past two decades the burgeoning growth of Bangladeshi and Pakistani diasporas – and now hosts the most numerous in Europe after the UK. Members of these communities are often better positioned than Afghans to access the job market. |
| ↑13 | In June 2026, three Afghan labourers were trapped in a vehicle and burnt to death, together with a Pakistani national, by two other Pakistanis who had hired them as strawberry pickers (The Guardian). A fourth Afghan, who managed to escape through the boot and survived with burns, said that they had been threatened for protesting for overdue pay. He said the gangmasters had set the minivan alight after blocking the labourers inside, a scene fully recorded by the fuel station’s surveillance cameras. The labourers had been moved across workplaces in various Italian regions by the same gangmasters and had to themselves pay for their transport. It is possible that the “huge Pakistani mafia.” as the survivor termed it, had decided to set an exemplary punishment, or that a personal dispute had escalated beyond the pale (MeltingPot). |
| ↑14 | The near mythical status acquired by Trieste for migrants traveling along the Balkan Route has been further explored in Claudio Minca and Dragan Umek, Trieste is Beautiful at Night’, in Thinking Like a Route: Counter-geographies of informal migration in the Balkans, Claudio Minca and Yolanda Weima (ed), Edward Elgar Publ., 2026. |
| ↑15 | Push backs were more frequent in 2019-20. They stopped after the mobilisation of local civil society and a court sentence in January 2021 which deemed that Italy’s pushbacks of migrants to Slovenia were illegal, though occasionally, they are reinstated. For example, four migrants were readmitted from Italy to Slovenia in 2025; see AIDA 2026 update for Slovenia, p25. |
| ↑16 | This is correct even though instances of smugglers’ violence against migrants in the city and its surroundings has increased in recent years: in 2025 a Pakistani smuggling network with links in neighbouring Slovenia and Croatia was busted after it had kidnapped and held Indian migrants for ransom in a Trieste flat (Rai News), while in November 2024 an Afghan smuggler was arrested for kidnapping and assaulting two migrants heading to Trieste near Lokev, Slovenia, just a few kilometres before the Italian border (Slovenian Police). |
| ↑17 | See Martine van Bijlert and Jelena Bjelica, Afghan Exodus: The re-emergence of smugglers on the Balkan Route, AAN, 10 August 2016. |
| ↑18 | Practical and symbolic initiatives of solidarity with the migrants travelling on the Balkan route are also undertaken, such as field trips to bring humanitarian help to and monitor the situation of migrants in Bosnia or, just recently, the public commemoration of five migrants, most of them Afghans, who had drowned while crossing the river Kupa on the Slovenian-Croatian border at the end of September 2026 (Associated Press). |
| ↑19 | Personal communication with asylum personnel in Gorizia, October 2026. |
| ↑20 | Since May 2025, Germany has resumed deportations of Afghans back to Kabul. The focus has been on convicted criminals, but recently, some rejected asylum seekers with no criminal record have been included, as well (Reuters). Other EU countries are taking similar steps (New York Times). |
| ↑21 | The Dublin Regulation is a series of treaties among EU countries stipulating that asylum procedures are the responsibility of the EU country of first-entry and that asylum seekers must be transferred back there. |
| ↑22 | This situation may of course not last forever: some EU countries have recently started to push for Italy to accept Dublin transfers. It seems that after the inauguration of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum in June 2026, such efforts have been more resolute and Austria was able to send back at least four asylum seekers to Italy in August, reportedly following similar moves by Germany and Switzerland (ANSA). |
| ↑23 | Non-refoulement, a principle of international law forbidding countries from returning individuals to places where they face the risk of persecution, torture or grave harm, has often been invoked to argue against the readmission of migrants on the Balkan Route to countries where they experience abuse at the hands of security forces and criminal groups and also, as here, against the deportation of Afghan nationals back to Afghanistan. |
| ↑24 | A ministerial decree from 5 August 2019 had already identified border and transit areas for the implementation of this accelerated examination of asylum applications; these included Trieste and Gorizia as the only northern provinces in a list featuring mainly coastal areas in southern Italy. In line with this decree, in 2019, the police subjected a few migrants intercepted at a short distance from Slovenia to the border procedure, but attempts at implementing the decree were soon dropped (possibly because informal readmissions to Slovenia took priority back then) and were not revived until the EU Pact came into force. |