This article publishes the results of a research project that investigated the processes whereby foreign inmates adapt to life in prison. The study was conducted by means of a period of direct observation, during which the researcher worked as a penitentiary educator in a penal institution in northern Italy. The results on the one hand confirm that, with rare exceptions, migrant foreigners are excluded from access to the penitentiary benefits of the system of alternative measures. This exclusion is practised primarily by all those who are involved in executing sentences, who share the image of the foreigner as an untrustworthy individual to whom it is impossible in practice to apply the penalty’s function of resocialisation. On the other hand, the researcher observed survival strategies that enable some to endure the period of detention without suffering anything worse. Lastly, the attitude to the prison system adopted by the migrant population is illustrated by three models whose purpose is to describe the relationship between penitentiary practices in the new millennium and resulting forms of resistance
Keywords: Sociology of criminal law - Migrants detained - Prison ethnography - Qualitative research