Il voto dell’Italia su chi diventa italiano

Insaf Dimassi arrived in Italy from her native Tunisia in 1997 at the age of only nine months, reuniting with her migrant worker father. She thrived in the Italian education system — graduating from a demanding scientific high school — and was active in student politics, while her father worked in agriculture then construction. Some two decades after his initial arrival, Dimassi’s father managed to fulfil the strict criteria — and navigate the bureaucratic labyrinth — to acquire Italian citizenship, also granted to his two younger, Italian-born daughters. But Dimassi turned 18 just 20 days before their formal oath-taking ceremony and so was barred from naturalising with them. 

Instead, on the cusp of finishing high school, Dimassi had to reapply as an adult and demonstrate earnings of €8,200 for three consecutive years. “I was excluded from the transmission of citizenship,” she says. “I had to ask to start from scratch.”  Today, Dimassi, 28, is studying for a PhD at the University of Bologna. Her pursuit of higher education — instead of working full-time — means she has not earned enough to seek citizenship. As a result, she remains a foreigner, unable to vote in the country where she has lived virtually all her life. “I became aware of what it meant to be a person without citizenship, a person without rights, or, as [political philosopher] Hannah Arendt told us, the right to have rights — because that is what citizenship is,” she reflects over a plate of passatelli, a typical pasta from the Emilia-Romagna region, at an osteria near her university.    Dimassi’s case is hardly unique. Of Italy’s population of 59mn people, around 9 per cent (or 5.4mn) are legal foreign residents. A significant chunk of these are the Italian-born, locally educated offspring of foreign migrants, struggling to complete the arduous — and lengthy — naturalisation process, while many others arrived as young children. Now Italian voters are wrestling with the contentious issue of whether the country should ease its restrictive immigration rules and give its long-term, legal migrant workers — and their children — a faster path to citizenship.

It is a question with profound implications for a rapidly ageing society, where nearly a quarter of the population is over 65 and just 12 per cent below the age of 14. The debate comes as politicians’ preoccupation with curbing irregular migrant inflows has dominated public discourse, not just in Italy but across Europe as a whole, seeping into attitudes towards migrants more broadly. In a forthcoming national referendum initiated by a grassroots petition, voters will be asked whether non-EU migrants should be allowed to apply for Italian citizenship after just five years of continuous residency, instead of 10, bringing the country in line with Germany and France.  While people from within the EU can seek naturalisation in Italy after just four years, the referendum could permit up to 2.5mn long-term legal residents — many from eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East — to apply for citizenship immediately, though the process would still take years to complete. But Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing coalition — steeped in ideals of Italian identity as stemming from blood ancestry — opposes faster naturalisation for non-European migrants. Her Brothers of Italy party, and its allies the League and Forza Italia, have urged people to avoid the vote on June 8-9 to keep turnout below 50 per cent, above which a “yes” victory would be binding. “I will campaign for people to stay home,” senate president Ignazio La Russa has declared. Meloni herself has hardly acknowledged the looming vote. She said this week she would stop by the polling station, but not pick up or cast a ballot. The referendum’s backers are infuriated by what they see as the government’s refusal to meaningfully engage on a matter that not only affects the lives of millions of people, but which they also see as critical for Italy’s economic — and democratic — future. “This referendum is not only about people who don’t have citizenship — it’s about Italy as a whole and the country Italians want in the future,” says Albanian-born Kejsi Hodo, 27, who moved to Italy aged 10 to join her mother, a domestic worker. Neither has been naturalised yet. 

“Do you want Italy to be the picture of discrimination, racism and dehumanisation?” asks Hodo, a University of Bologna graduate and activist with Dalla Parte Giusta Della Storia, or The Right Side of History, which advocates for reform of immigration laws. “Or do you want a country that can actually recognise reality, and welcome people who are willing to live here and contribute to Italian society?” After sending millions of its impoverished citizens to the US and Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries, Italy has struggled to reconcile with its current status as a magnet for foreign migrants, lured by its widening labour shortages.  Its citizenship policies historically sought to sustain ties with Italian emigrants — not to integrate foreign arrivals into society. But Hodo says that “anachronistic” framework needs an overhaul. “People are coming to stay with their families, their children, or they have children here,” she says. “But it seems like institutions don’t want to accept this reality.”   Italy’s official statistical agency does not make public any details of the country’s 5.4mn legal foreign residents, their origins, birthplaces or ages. But more than 914,000 of Italy’s 8.1mn school children — 11 per cent of the total — are foreigners, while 13.5 per cent of last year’s new births were to foreign parents. In total, Italy has had 1.4mn foreign births since 2002. Yet previous efforts to legislate easier citizenship rules for such children through parliament have stalled in the face of fierce resistance or deep apathy. 

Insaf Dimassi is an Italian even though her papers say she isn’t, whereas there are other people whose papers say are “Italians” even though they aren’t.

There are people from Argentina who get Italian citizenship without knowing a single thing about Italy, whose last known connection with Italy was their great grandparents, who don’t know a word of Italian etc. A lot of these people just get Italian citizenship just in order to move around the EU, they have no plans or desire to live and stay and work and pay taxes in Italy.

It would be good if this pass, sadly because of how the mechanism is designed it is really unlikely.

I think the current treatment of those who were born here from foreign parents is unacceptable and should be addressed as soon as possible. Someone suggested making it automatic after the 8th grade exam and I find it perfect reasonable.

However, isn’t 5 years too little to become naturalized? I’ll be voting yes to the other 4 questions, but this I’m very torn on.

Any other Italians in a similar situation?

me as an argentine who got the citizenship through his grandparents:

dude how can you give a citizenship to someone who doesnt speak the language??

European go five minutes without devolving into fundamentalist racial rhetoric challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

I will be voted negatively, and that’s fine with me. For me, an argentine, brazilian or american with Italian ancestry who emigrated 100 years ago has more right to citizenship than one who landed in Lampedusa 10 years ago. This referendum will never pass….

Only 54€/year

It seems to me that there are two different discussions here: One is regarding migrants who arrive in Italy in their adulthood, another is children who grow up in Italy but due to regressive citizenship laws are functionally foreign or stateless for a long time. I would expect most people to be favourable to give italisn citizenship to someone who arrived at 9 months and spent its full youth in Italy, going to Italian schools and speaking Italian. The reform does not seem to tackle this, to me, more pressing issue.

Otherwise I would say 10 years for citizenship seems fair, although a system to fast-track cases of significant contribution could be thought of