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EDITORIAL. Immigrants or foreign residents?
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On 1 March foreigners in Italy are organising a 24-hour strike to underline their role in the country and to protest against recent episodes of racism and discrimination. Inspired by a similar protest in France on the same day, the event is being coordinated by a network of local committees with the support of social networking sites such as Facebook. In early February the group “Primo marzo 2010 sciopero degli stranieri” had over 45,000 members.
There is currently much talk about how to integrate foreigners living and working in Italy and the language used to frame the debate is all-important. Many foreigners are referred to as immigrati, often with a negative connotation of people who live on the margins of the host society, performing menial jobs and finding themselves at the centre of social conflict of the kind that led to the race riots in Rosarno, Calabria, in January. The term straniero residente, foreign resident, with its more positive connotation of someone who plays an active part in the life of the country, is rarely used.
But what makes a person one rather than the other? It seems that the answer often depends on country of origin and skin colour. This magazine’s readers from the United States, Canada and Australia, like their counterparts from western Europe, have probably always considered themselves – and been treated as – foreign residents and may feel that most immigration issues don’t really apply to them. But what about the people labelled as immigrants? The domestic workers from Romania, who are in fact members of the European Union? The factory workers and small-scale entrepreneurs from Ghana? The pizza chefs from Egypt? The retailers from China? All may have lived in Italy for years, put down solid roots and have families. What must it take to call these people foreign residents too?
For the two categories the push-pull factors that lead to migration are often very different. For those known as foreign residents the motivation is often sentimental or professional: the call of a special relationship, an overseas job posting or the desire to experience a new culture or country. For so-called immigrants the stimulus is usually only economic: the need to secure a better future for themselves and their family back home, and eventually to return to their country of origin.
But the end result is often the same. Over time those who come to Italy as “immigrants” carve out a niche for themselves and make their own contribution to the political, economic and cultural life of the country. They marry Italians (23,560 mixed marriages were celebrated in 2007, or roughly ten per cent of the total number of marriages, according to the 2009 Caritas/Migrantes immigration report) and buy properties; they work and pay taxes; they send their children to Italian schools. In short, they become foreign residents in all but name.
But integration is also a question of the host country recognising certain rights and responsibilities that are currently denied.
For years politicians on the left have been insisting that non-EU residents be allowed to vote in local elections like their EU counterparts, and recently Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of parliament and co-founder of the right-wing party Popolo della Libertà, has taken up the call. There is also a bipartisan bill before parliament to reduce the number of years from ten to five before non-EU foreign residents can apply for Italian citizenship and to grant automatic citizenship at birth to children born in Italy of foreign parents who have been living in the country for at least five years. The same proposal also reduces the number of years from four to three before EU citizens can apply for citizenship. Should the bill pass, it would mark an important departure from the principle of ius sanguinis, or citizenship based on descent, which is currently favoured by Italian law, towards that of ius soli, or the acquisition of citizenship by birth in a given country. It would also have positive consequences for the integration of members of the second generation, who speak and feel Italian. It may have been in this spirit that Italy’s education minister, Mariastella Gelmini, climbed down over a recent controversial proposal to cap at 30 per cent the proportion of foreigners in classes in public schools, stating that this figure would not include foreign pupils born in Italy.
Foreigners in Italy
On 31 December 2008 Italy had a legal resident foreign population of 3,891,295, or 6.5 per cent of the total population, according to the 2009 statistical report on immigration produced by Caritas/Migrantes based on figures from the national statistics agency ISTAT. The same report says that there are a further 438,000 or so foreigners who are in the country legally with a valid permit of stay but who have not registered as residents.
The largest resident foreign community is made up of Romanians with 796,477 members or 20.5 per cent of the total, followed by Albanians (441,396 or 11.3 per cent) and Moroccans (403,592 or 10.4 per cent). The largest western European community is from Germany (41,476 or 1.1 per cent), followed by France (32,079 or 0.8 per cent) and the United Kingdom (28,174 or 0.7 per cent). There are 15,324 residents from the United States, or 0.4 per cent.
In the 2008/2009 school year, the foreign student population stood at 628,937, or seven per cent of the total number of enrolments; of the foreigners attending Italian schools 37 per cent were born in Italy.
In 2008 39,484 foreigners gained Italian citizenship, in 40 per cent of cases as a result of long-term residency rather than marriage.
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