Among the walls decorated with children’s drawings of the Grazia Deledda primary school, in the peripheral neighborhood of Chiesanuova, in Brescia (Lombardy), a new Italian generation is growing up that has little to do with the vision of the future in which the nationalist projects itself. . the chief executive, Giorgia Meloni, and his vice-president of the council, Matteo Salvini, with openly racist connections. “Our students are almost all of foreign origin, predominantly from Pakistani, Moroccan and Senegalese families. They were mostly born in Italy and represent the second generation. But very few have Italian nationality”explains the director of the establishment, Adriana Rubagotti.
The fate of these children and all those who, like them, are born to foreign parents and grow up on Italian soil, is the subject of an episodic national debate that has recently been reactivated with the Olympic Games. The success of the women’s volleyball team, led by the Italian of Nigerian origin Paola Egonu, has returned the issue of access to citizenship to the public spotlight.
When practicing the law of blood, Italy asks itself – without considering an evolution towards the law of the soil – about an intermediate formula designated by a Latin expression: the ius scholae or right to education. A bill along these lines was prepared by Forza Italia (center-right), the moderate component of a majority dominated by the extreme right, without receiving the support of Giorgia Meloni and suffering criticism from Matteo’s Salvini League.
Aimed at the 914,860 foreign students educated in Italy (11.2% of the total, according to figures from the Ministry of Education), the reform would allow minors who have completed a cycle of studies to obtain Italian nationality. At the same time, a citizen-initiated referendum on the issue could be held in spring 2025. “Citizenship or not, here we train Italians and we do it in accordance with the current reality of the country.” says mme Rubagotti, faced with another vision of identity, fixes and turns to the past.
“The legislation of a country of emigration and not of immigration”
“The current system generates anger among generations of young people who, as they grow up, see that they are not recognized by the country where they have always lived”denounces Laura Castelletti, center-left mayor of Brescia, during her visit to the Grazia Deledda school. A quarter of the approximately 200,000 inhabitants of its city, where 143 nationalities are represented, do not have Italian citizenship. At the heart of a very dynamic industrial basin that has attracted generations of migrant workers, Brescia is at the forefront of a more diverse Italy, in the face of which the rules governing access to citizenship seem inadequate.
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