The e‐Making of the Citizenry: Exploring the Digitised Implementation of European Naturalisation Policies Through the Italian Case

ABSTRACT Studies on migration control policies opened their scope of research to the use of technologies and IT tools showing the extent to which controls are delegated to data‐based or algorithm‐based systems and how these dynamics escape democratic accountability and challenge equality and nondiscrimination. European naturalisation policies, widely informed by the integrationist paradigm, are also going through dematerialisation and automation. Yet, the impact of digitisation on the way assimilationist naturalisation policies are concretely implemented and subjectively perceived by the actors involved, remained underlooked. This article proposes a first exploration of the topic, grounding on a multimaterial qualitative research on the implementation of Italian naturalisation policy. This policy has been largely dematerialised, resulting in a procedure in which: applicants and bureaucrats never meet, applications can only be submitted electronically, a variety of State agencies directly upload the pieces of the electronic application file, bureaucrats' tasks have been limited to doubtful cases and refusals and their scope for global and autonomous judgement has been curtailed. Rather than demonstrating a widening or restrictive impact of digitised implementation to foreigners' access to citizenship, the article shows how digitised implementation nourishes a specific governmentality in which citizens‐to‐be experience disorientation, growing dependence towards third actors and long‐lasting consequences of (police) records and documents. It also shows how bureaucrats similarly experience policy alienation and how both actors are hindered in their ability to construct meaningful biographies of ‘integration’ through the curation of the application files, a task that is increasingly delegated to third actors. It finally pinpoints the fact that digitisation offers discursive and technical opportunities to enhance assimilationist rhetoric, such as applicants' autonomous activation through the platform, and tools, such as the ‘integration’ questionnaire introduced to replace the in‐person meeting at the prefecture.