Integrazione o ReImmigrazione

Albania Hubs: The Real Issue Isn’t Transfer — It’s Enforcing the Integration Contract

Written by

Fabio Loscerbo

in

The debate over offshore migration hubs—particularly the Italian initiative in Albania—is being framed in the wrong way. Most commentary focuses on logistics: where migrants are transferred, under what procedures, and whether such arrangements comply with human rights standards. These are legitimate concerns, but they miss the central legal question.

The real issue is not transfer. The real issue is the criterion.

Without a clear legal standard determining who is allowed to remain and who must leave, any system of offshore processing risks becoming an administrative holding pattern. This is not a theoretical concern. Across Europe, detention-based systems have consistently failed to produce effective returns, while generating litigation, delays, and structural inefficiencies.

Italy offers a revealing case study—not because of the Albania protocol itself, but because of a largely overlooked legal tool already embedded in its system: the integration agreement.

Under Italian law (Presidential Decree No. 179/2011), non-EU migrants are formally subject to an “integration agreement,” a points-based system tied to measurable benchmarks such as language acquisition, employment, and compliance with legal obligations. In theory, this creates a contractual framework: the right to remain is linked to demonstrable integration.

In practice, however, this system has never been meaningfully enforced. It exists on paper but does not function as a real selection mechanism. Administrative decisions on residence status are rarely grounded in a structured evaluation of integration. As a result, the system lacks coherence: individuals with limited integration may remain, while others who are well integrated face legal uncertainty.

This is where the paradigm of “Integration or Reimmigration” becomes relevant.

The core idea is straightforward: immigration policy must move beyond an economic or purely procedural framework and adopt a behavior-based legal standard. The right to stay should depend on objective indicators of integration—not identity, nationality, or origin, but actual conduct. Work, language, and respect for the legal order become the decisive factors.

Within this framework, offshore hubs—such as those in Albania—take on a fundamentally different role.

They are not places where integration is assessed. They are places where its failure is enforced.

Access to the hub presupposes that the individual has already failed to meet the minimum requirements of the integration contract or has otherwise lost the legal basis for remaining in the country. The evaluation phase occurs beforehand, within the domestic legal system. The hub is the enforcement stage.

This distinction is critical.

If hubs are treated as spaces for discretionary reassessment, they risk reproducing the same inefficiencies that have plagued onshore systems. Endless procedural loops, repeated claims, and unclear standards will continue to undermine the credibility of return policies.

If, instead, hubs are integrated into a system where the criteria are clear, objective, and applied upstream, they become effective tools of enforcement. Decisions are no longer improvised; they are executed.

This approach also clarifies a broader issue in European migration policy.

The new EU Return Regulation adopted on March 26, 2026 strengthens enforcement mechanisms: it expands detention possibilities, promotes mutual recognition of return decisions, and facilitates externalization through return hubs. However, it remains primarily focused on execution.

What it lacks is a substantive selection criterion.

Without such a criterion, enforcement becomes blind. States may increase their capacity to remove individuals, but they still lack a coherent legal framework to determine who should be removed in the first place.

From a U.S. perspective, this problem is not unfamiliar.

American immigration law also grapples with the tension between enforcement and selection. Debates over border control, asylum processing, and interior enforcement often overlook the need for a consistent, behavior-based standard governing long-term presence. The system oscillates between strict enforcement and broad discretion, without a stable middle ground.

The “Integration or Reimmigration” paradigm offers a different model.

It establishes a clear sequence:
first, a structured and verifiable assessment of integration;
then, if integration fails, a predictable and enforceable outcome.

In this model, offshore hubs are not controversial because of where they are located. They are controversial—or effective—depending on how they are used.

If they are merely places of transfer, they will fail.
If they are embedded in a system that links legal status to integration, they can function.

Ultimately, the success of the Albania initiative—and of similar policies elsewhere—does not depend on geography.

It depends on whether the legal system is capable of answering a simple but fundamental question:

Who has earned the right to stay?

Until that question is answered with clarity and consistency, no amount of logistical innovation will resolve the underlying problem.

Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Lobbyist – EU Transparency Register n. 280782895721-36
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-7030-0428

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