Italy
Several legal tools, starting from the Italian Constitution, address citizen or civil rights: they all reaffirm social equality and fundamental rights and principles to everyone, both women and men, native and immigrant.
Department for Civil Liberties and Immigration at the Italian Ministry of the Interior: functions and duties that this Department performs within the Ministry pertain to the protection of civil rights, including those relating to immigration, asylum, citizenship, historical ethno-linguistic minorities, and religious groups; subdivided into offices and units, the Department includes the Central directorate for civil rights, citizenship, and minorities.
In Italy, entry, stay and regularisation of non-EU nationals fall among main issues addressed by immigration laws. In order to regularise their legal status in the Country by getting stay documents, immigrants must meet a row of requirements, basically reasons for immigration, livelihood, employment status and family composition (where applicable). Immigration laws address both residence and citizenship:
- Law 40/1998 (Turco-Napolitano): the main goal of this Law was to regulate immigration by favouring regular/legal immigration and discouraging illegal immigration; besides, the Law introduced a permanent residence permit, and regulated naturalisation process aimed at achieving Italian citizenship;
- Security Sets or Packages (Pacchetti sicurezza) affected the processes of residence and citizenship acquisition: the Law 94/2009 (relating to public safety) established that legal immigrants married to an Italian must wait two years in order to get Italian citizenship; the Decree law 113/2018 (known as Salvini Security Decrees), and the following 2019 Security Decree further modified the acquisition of Italian citizenship: in particular, the time limit for granting or rejecting the status civitatis (citizen status) had passed from 2 to 4 years;
- Law 173/2020: by modifying the “Salvini Security Decrees” the Law 173 intervened on many issues, first of all, on work permits by providing for the possibility of converting residence permits for special protection, natural calamity, elective residence, acquisition of citizenship or stateless status, sports activities, artistic work, religious reasons and assistance to minors into residence permits for work; besides, subsequently to this Law, the acquisition of Italian citizenship has been eased.
Relevant Social services. Several of the migrant women interviewed in Italy remember the little and often badly organised support they had received from public administration in terms of assistance and guidance upon their arrival in Italy: they complained about difficulties in getting stay documents, which particularly affects newly arrived immigrants. Accordingly, they suggest simpler and faster procedures. In this respect, legal assistance on procedures and services, as well as support in bureaucratic procedures, vocational training, employment integration, mediation, etc. are offered by dedicated associations and NGOs, since public administration does not provide adequate nor sufficient guidance. In conclusion, improvement of the guidance services for migrants, especially at a public level, is considered a priority by the interviewed migrant women.
Good practices:
- local Immigration offices offer support in bureaucratic procedures for getting documents and permits
- legal advice is offered to migrants by social cooperatives, associations and NGOs.
Challenges and recommendations:
§ reinforce legal assistance for migrants, especially in the initial stage of their stay in the Country
§ Italian citizenship law is obsolete, and needs to be renewed: it does not recognise the principle of jus soli; besides, the right to apply for citizenship is bound to a number of requirements, and the procedure implies a long wait.
“My Life as an Alter.NATIVA” https://viw.pixel-online.org/case_view.php?id=Nzc=: the protagonist of this story lives in an identity dimension characterised by resistance and dualism: while enjoying her dual cultural belonging, she refuses to be assimilated into the Italian culture, hence she does not want to take Italian citizenship.
References/Online Resources
Mantovan C., 2007, Immigrazione e cittadinanza. Auto-organizzazione e partecipazione dei migranti in Italia, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
(https://www.academia.edu/19658677/Immigrazione_e_cittadinanza_Auto_organizzazione_e_partecipazione_dei_migranti_in_Italia_FrancoAngeli_Milano_2007)
This book is dedicated to the phenomenon of immigration in relation to citizenship and citizen particpation od immigrants in Italy.
Altin R., Virgilio F. (eds.), 2011, Ordinarie migrazioni. Educazione alla cittadinanza tra ricerca e azione, Kappa Vu, Udine.
(https://www.academia.edu/38176390/Ordinarie_migrazioni._Educazione_alla_cittadinanza_tra_ricerca_e_azione)
Result of an action-research, this book addresses the issue of citizenship as a privileged point from which the integration processes of immigrants should be looked at, and reports the results and interpretations of a three-year research project on foreign immigration and education for active citizenship.
Lannutti V., Bellinello I., Conti L., Hoxha D., Spedicato Iengo E., 2014, Politiche migratorie. Tra strumenti regolativi, autonomie operative, condizionamenti culturali, Numero monografico 1/2014 di Ratio Sociologica, Journal of Social Sciences: Theory and Application, Chieti-Pescara. (https://www.academia.edu/9251222/Politiche_migratorie_Tra_strumenti_regolativi_autonomie_operative_condizionamenti_culturali)
The complexity and the dimension of current migration phenomena calls for increasingly larger commitment to the development of adequate and effective migration policies that can safely conduct the delicate process of integration.