Italian Citizenship: The recent success of the Italian Team and the Tokyo Olympics has revamped the discussions. In fact, several athletes of Italy’s Olympic team were born abroad or have parents born abroad. Paola Egonu (born in Italy to Nigerian parents), the most prominent member of the volleyball team that won the gold medal, obtained citizenship only because she was a minor when her father obtained citizenship by naturalization (10+ years of residency). Macerl Jacobs, the double gold medal winner in Tokyo, is an Italian citizen being born to an Italian mother, but his teammate and also gold medal winner Fausto Desalu, born in Italy to Nigerian parents, had to wait until he was 18 to apply.
There are over one million second-generation immigrants who were born in Italy or arrived in the country at a very young age that have this status. Italy’s current citizenship law, in fact, set forth that a child born in Italy to immigrant parents can apply for citizenship only at the age of 18 after having legally resided on Italian territory from birth without any interruption. This makes many young second-generation immigrants a kind of “class B” citizens: they are fully integrated into the society, Italian is their first language but they are not “citizens” and are excluded from many rights.
Proposals to change citizenship law have been discussed for years without reaching an agreement due to the opposition of some political parties. In 2016 a law was approved to allow athletes younger than 18 to be registered with Sport Federations, on condition that they are legally residing in Italy since the age of 10. This exception, however, does not allow them to compete with a National Team until they turn 18 and obtain citizenship.
In exceptional circumstances, Italy allows citizenship to be granted for special merits, this includes sports achievements. The athlete Yassine Rachik was granted citizenship in 2015 for sports merits. He is originally from Morocco and emigrated to Italy with his parents very young. Under the Italian flag, he won the bronze medal in the Men’s Marathon at the 2018 European Championships. Other athletes who were granted citizenship are the Cuban wrestler Abraham de Jesus Conyedo Ruano and the US ice hockey player Chelsea Marie Furlani.
Said that however, the above exceptions would not solve the problem of a hundred thousand VNP (very normal people). After several failed attempts to change the law, one political party that is in the Government coalition, has refreshed the proposal to include in the citizenship legislation the so called “ius scholae” or “ius culturae”, which translated from Latin meaning “right deriving from school’s attendance”. If the proposal is approved, citizenship would be granted to those that have attended school in the country for a certain number of years (5 or 10, timing is still under discussion).
Despite the support of many parts of the society, the proposal is still giving rise to strong opposition by some parties. The proposal is not new and if we look at previous attempts we can see that when the previous draft bill was presented, many amendments were filed mainly for the purpose to delay the final discussion on the draft and many others were kind of bizarre, such as (i) conditioning citizenship adjudication to having obtained a diploma with a minimum score of 90/100, or (ii) to passing an exam on odd subjects like showing adequate knowledge of Italian traditional food products, knowing the most popular traditional festivities or (iii) even requesting to prepare a written excerpt of a popular folk song.
A comparative overview of the frameworks in place across the Member States of the European Union (EU) on access to national citizenship for new migrants from third countries, through naturalisation can be found in this study prepared in 2020 by the European Migration Network.
In this regard, you may also check: Pathways to Citizenship for Third-Country Nationals in the EU
This article was written by Marco Mazzeschi and Giuditta De Ricco
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