Criminalization of Solidarity: a case study of the Riace Model

This study focuses on the Riace Model, a comprehensive hospitality program for refugees in the town of Riace in Southern Italy. Before the Model, Riace was becoming a “ghost town” because of emigration, but the hospitality program brough life back to this area, benefitting both the locals and the refugees. The aim of this study is to understand the Riace Model and the aftermath of Criminalization of Solidarity of the Model in view of local hosting strategies and to understand if the Model is replicable. This study also analyses the vicissitudes of the trial against Domenico Lucano, the former mayor of Riace and face of the Riace Model. This paper explains why the trial against Lucano is a case of Criminalization of Solidarity and looks at the aftermath of it for the town of Riace and the hospitality program. Through the support of data gained from interviews with key informants, this study finds that the Model can be explained through three senses, the sense of self-reliance, the sense of community and the sense of hospitality and it can be positioned into the larger literature on resilience humanitarianism. It also finds that the Model is replicable if certain recommendations are followed and that the Criminalization of Solidarity of the Riace Model has affected the town negatively, but it has not broken the hope of the people of Riace, and Riace will always be the “Città dell’Accoglienza” (the town of hospitality).