Immigració i repartiment competencial en estats descentralitzats. Una comparació entre els casos espanyol i italià

The starting point of this paper is the restrictive approach of the Constitutional Tribunal‘s sentence number 31/2010, regarding the regulatory powers of the autonomous communities in the area of immigration. The idea is that to tackle the block imposed by the sentence on the development of this jurisdiction, it is necessary to compare with other experiences. This should broaden the debate and allow greater involvement by the autonomous communities in the regulation of affairs that affect the social integration of thepeople who live in them. With regard to the Italian case, the text discusses the evolution of the conflict on immigration powers between central government and the regions before and after the constitutional reform of 2001, when a thorough reform was carried out of the powers contained in Title V. Specifically, we analyse a conflict that has been especially intense in terms of the possibilities of regional legislation in shaping the content of the rights of immigrants, sometimes extending the contents or the intended recipients contemplated in central government regulations, and other times restricting possible actions. The text seeks to highlight how the distribution of powers in immigration, both in the Spanish and the Italian cases, is determined by the way we understand the nature of migration and the framework of coexistence one seeks to build; from a legal perspective, this distribution comes from the possession and exercise of rights enshrined in the constitution.