The 10.3% of the students of our country do not have Italian citizenship. Over 876 thousand out of a total of 8,484 thousand boys and girls who attended the 2019/2020 school year. This was revealed by the latest report published by the Ministry of Education, highlighting a significant fact: in the entire school population, most of the students without Italian citizenship are boys and girls born in Italy: 65.4%. The second generations, or the children of immigrants born or raised in our country but still without the legal status of Italian citizens.
«Next year they will be 30 years since the law governing citizenship in Italy is in forcea »he comments Marwa Mahmoud, founder and activist of Italians Without Citizenship and municipal councilor in Reggio Emilia. “This issue of citizenship reform comes up cyclically. It is a law that was born already incomplete because it referred above all to Italian citizens residing abroad and had little reference to the new generations. It was especially specific for those who came as an economic migrant, therefore as an adult, not taking into account the new generations. The data of the schools are a litmus test of this lack of reform ».
Within primary and infant schools, the presence of boys and girls with foreign citizenship is close to 12%. In total these students they come from 200 different countries around the world: 45.4% from a European one. “When I think of rights and opportunities I think of Article 3 of our Italian Constitution, I think of schools, students, children”, continues Marwa Mahmoud, who obtained Italian citizenship at the age of 22, after living in Italy regularly with his family for 18 years. “Having grown up here, I experienced firsthand the condition of being a student without citizenship. It is an experience that you carry inside, over the years, it hardens your character, and you would like it to no longer happen to the children who are born and grow up here today. Instead, the data shows the opposite. And I wonder: what is their fault for the fact that at a certain point the pink or blue ribbon hanging on the door of the hospital room where they were born turned into a residence permit? ».
The inscriptions have suffered a drop of almost 96 thousand visitors but if on the one hand Italian students have decreased, those with non-Italian citizenship increased by 23.4% (+ 166 thousand subscribers). It is above all the northern regions that register the highest presence: 65.3%; the region with the largest number of members without Italian citizenship is Lombardy.
“It is not true that you do not realize it up to the age of 18, you live it, because you do the long queues in front of the police station with your parents, you are told that you will not be able to take part in the trip because you do not have an Italian passport or that perhaps you don’t have the same health coverage as your classmates ».
And the significant drop in attendance, especially by males, is probably also linked to the citizenship law. “TO some point they have to choose, they are in limbo, either to finish their studies or to demonstrate that they can stay in this country because they have an adequate income. I know of several cases of young people whose citizenship application was rejected because they did not have enough income. Furthermore, if you decide to study you are refused access to Erasmus programs, you cannot participate in public competitions, you cannot enroll in a faculty where registration in the national register is required andAs if that weren’t enough, you can’t vote when you reach the age of majority. “
In Veneto 71.7% of students of foreign origin were born in Italy. “Finally, these figures do not consider the more than 200,000 people who have passed school age. All together they reach one million boys and girls that Italy still struggles to recognize as children of this state. If we don’t recognize them as legitimate children of this state, at an identity level they will always perceive themselves as foreigners and we will find ourselves with many young people who will decide to go elsewhere. It will be an enormous wealth that will be lost ».
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