In current Italy, the path of non-citizens’ inclusion has been characterised by the continuous encounter with legal and administrative barriers. The paper, using a variegated set of methods and research strategies (documental analysis; critical discourse analysis; key informants interviews; administrative data analysis), shows the results of a research program focused, on one hand, on the policies of exclusion at local level and, on the other hand, on the policies of integration at national level, analyses the ways with which migrants’ obstacle course has been structured and the reasons why it is so arduous. In Italy, especially after 2005, the institutional vision of immigrants’ integration has deeply changed. Now, the idea of integration ...