Between protection and precarity: professional intervention in migrant reception and social inclusion in Palermo’s SAI system

Migration governance in Italy is characterized by a structural paradox: reception systems are formally designed to guarantee protection, yet they often reproduce precarity through bureaucratic delays, fragmented funding, and uneven territorial resources. Palermo, marked by longstanding socio-economic fragilities, offers a critical case for examining how local actors negotiate this tension within the Sistema di Accoglienza e Integrazione (SAI). This study investigates the role of professionals working in Palermo’s SAI, analyzing how they navigate restrictive national and European policies while responding to migrants’ everyday needs. Drawing on a qualitative, narrative-interpretive design within the Global-ANSWER project (H2020-MSCA-RISE-GA-872209), the research is based on semi-structured interviews conducted between January and March 2024 with 12 practitioners across seven SAI centers, including social workers, educators, cultural mediators, and coordinators. Findings identify three thematic axes: the fragility of protection systems, marked by institutional bottlenecks and housing shortages; professional mediation, as practitioners act as street-level bureaucrats translating policy into practice; and social innovation, through community-based initiatives that foster participation yet remain structurally vulnerable. The study shows that protection and precarity are co-produced, positioning professional intervention as an ethical and political practice shaping migrants’ inclusion and autonomy trajectories.