Abstract
In the past decade, South Tyrol, a peripheral Italian province with a German-speaking minority and an extensive political autonomy to protect its diversity, has witnessed the arrival of increasing numbers of migrant from foreign countries. Despite its extensive legislative, administrative and political powers in matters concerning the integration of the migrant population, in the past the local government has tended to avoid dealing comprehensively with migration issues, leaving space to the actions of the civil society and alternative actors, and only in 2011 it has enacted a provincial law on the integration of the migrant population (one of the last Italian province to take such initiative). At the same time, South Tyrol presents one of the highest score regarding the index for the integration of the migrant population in Italy. Combining political science and law approaches, the paper aims at offering a genealogy of the measures and policy actions taken in South Tyrol to manage migration and pursue the integration of the migrant population in South Tyrol society, including a legal analysis of national and international judgments on decentralized competences on migration and integration in South Tyrol. The analysis of the South Tyrol case will reveal the contradictions and problematics of dealing with the management of immigration at the local level in territory characterized by robust but at same time feeble decentralized system of competences.