A few days ago, the Prime Minister announced at her party’s youth festival that three sets of measures regarding schools would soon be introduced: a) A strict 30% cap on the number of foreign students in classrooms; b) Mandatory Italian language courses for the parents of foreign students within the national educational system (including primary and secondary schools) experiencing academic difficulties; c) A ban on the Burqa and Niqab in any national school. The announcement has inflamed public and political debate in Italy.

Following the politically charged proclamations, the process of translating them into actual legal provisions – which is still ongoing – appears to be moving towards significantly softening the initially harsh nature of the measures. The quotas do not apply to foreign students as such, but only to those who were not born in Italy or who have not previously attended school in Italy. The focus of the measure appears to have shifted from nationality to language proficiency. With this shift in focus, another point emerges clearly: the inadequacy of Italian citizenship law in reflecting social reality. Meloni could and should have addressed this fundamental issue. Instead, she chose to sidestep the problem by defining the group affected by desegregation according to a criterium other than citizenship. The suspicion is that, in reality, her interest in genuinely implementing policies for better integration in schools is entirely secondary, and that upcoming elections alone are her main concern.

Same Old, Same Old

Let’s start with part a) of Meloni’s announcement (the introduction of quotas of foreigners in classrooms). In certain Italian contexts – with a strong industrial or agricultural vocation – the combination of increased migrant settlement and declining birth rates among citizens and long-term residents leads to realities where the vast majority of children enrolled in public schools come from a migratory background. Indeed, a growing number of areas have very dense migrant populations, and their classrooms are predominantly filled with students holding non-Italian citizenship. Often, these are areas with a strong industrial presence, such as Monfalcone and Mestre, which are tied to the Fincantieri shipyards.

Following Meloni’s announcement, and her truly worryingly violent and persecutory tones, the Head of State Sergio Mattarella also intervened with very clear statements, recalling the core DNA of the Italian school system which, as directly stated by the Constitution, “is open to everyone” (Art. 34 of the Constitution). Admittedly, the concentration of foreign students is perceived as a potential problem by the native population, as it is associated with probable linguistic difficulties and, therefore, an unfavorable learning environment. It is also reasonably perceived as an issue regarding the difficulties it creates for integration prospects, which are hindered by the creation of “ghetto classrooms”. There is no doubt that in a legal system inspired by the principles of pluralist constitutionalism, the school is a fundamental vehicle for the principles upon which liberal-democratic and pluralist constitutionalism is founded. And there is no doubt that ghetto classrooms are an obstacle to the dissemination of that heritage.

But how is this achieved in practice? The history of the United States teaches us how difficult it is to desegregate. In fact, school segregation is not solely an Italian problem, nor is it a new one: a constitutionalist’s mind immediately races to the jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court, to Brown v. Board of Education, which put an end to legal segregation, to the desegregation busing policies that followed, and to the associated protests, riots, unrest, and attacks on buses, as well as to the 1971 Swann ruling, with which the Supreme Court endorsed the constitutionality of desegregation busing measures.

The challenges faced by Italian legislation are not so different. In various areas, the number of foreign students far exceeds the 30% cap targeted by the Italian Government’s intervention. This phenomenon is further exacerbated by the flight of the native population, who seek out schools slightly further away precisely to distance themselves from “ghetto schools” (schools with a high number of non-native Italian speakers), thereby making them even more ghettoized. What is to be done, then? Repeat the desegregation busing experience more than 50 years later, risking the same dangers of a further exodus of native families, as well as the risk of total paralysis in the context of a floundering native birth rate? The Italian Government has chosen a different path, with an intervention characterized by certain peculiarities, both in form and substance, that deserve attention.

Meloni’s Move

Turning first to the form. The Government, in office since October 2022, has just set the record for the longest-lasting government in the history of the Italian Republic since 1948 (not even Silvio Berlusconi managed to reach the duration achieved by Meloni). This said, new elections are on the horizon. Accordingly, it seems that the respective change directly addresses the wide-spread concerns of new and emerging political forces calling for remigration and the adoption of harsher anti-immigrant policies in Italy.

Meloni used the constitutional instrument of the law decree (decreto-legge). Under Article 77 of the Italian Constitution, law decrees serve as a mechanism for immediate executive action in situations where the standard parliamentary legislative process would be too slow, acting as a derogation from the principle that legislative power belongs to the Parliament. In the law in the books, it should be adopted only in “extraordinary cases of necessity and urgency”, but in the law in action law decrees are being used in an increasingly unscrupulous manner. This decree makes no exemption.

But let us move on to the substance. The first circulated drafts of the legislative provisions (an official text is still missing, while the government issued a precise press release) has articulated the measures announced by the Prime Minister, translating them into legally much more palatable acts compared to the muscular intervention announced personally by President Meloni in a political setting a few days earlier. The maximum cap on foreign students in classrooms (set at 30%), in fact, is based on nationality only in theory. Essentially, the rule has a series of highly eloquent exemptions. For example, students without Italian citizenship but born in Italy are not counted as foreigners, nor are those who have already completed a significant cycle of studies. These students are not considered in the application of the cap, even though they are 100% foreigners according to the rules on the acquisition of citizenship in Italy.

The point is interesting: it is precisely the rules on the acquisition of citizenship – which in Italy are inspired by completely anachronistic criteria – that force the Italian Government to introduce the aforementioned adjustments. Italian citizenship might be acquired by descent (ius sanguinis), by residency, by marriage and by birth on the Italian soil in very exceptional cases. However, the acquisition by residency requires applicants to reside in Italy for a continuous 10 years before applying (with shorter terms for EU citizens, stateless persons or refugees, or descendants of Italian citizens). The acquisition by birth on the Italian soil is strictly marginal, as it only applies to children born in Italy to stateless or unknown parents, or if the parents’ home country does not permit the child to inherit their nationality. The acquisition by descent is still the main channel: Anyone with an Italian parent is automatically an Italian citizen. Until recently, this right could extend indefinitely to ancestors who emigrated after the formation of the Italian state in 1861, provided the line of citizenship was never formally renounced or broken. Meloni’s Government introduced limitations on this front, by limiting the transmission of citizens to children of third generations emigrants (see Chiara Gentile on the constitutional controversies following this move).

Despite widespread recognition that the law on citizenship acquisition no longer reflects the country’s social fabric, deep political divisions over immigration have repeatedly stalled comprehensive reform.

Against this background, Meloni’s new proposal on school desegregation is then effectively the certification of the dysfunctionality of Italian citizenship legislation. The current normative framework considers as foreigners youths who, in the Government’s own logic, are not to be considered as such (since they were born in Italy or have already completed significant periods of schooling in Italy). In fact, the newly presented 30% cap on foreigners explicitly excludes this group of foreigners, formally so called.

Henceforth, would it not be easier, but above all right, to amend the rules on the acquisition of citizenship rather than resorting to these legislative acrobatics?

But let us go further: if the cap, set at 30%, is not respected, what is to be done? The rules introduced by the government place the burden of finding a solution on the school system, providing general guidelines. The schools ought to “adopt the organizational measures necessary to ensure a balanced presence” of actual foreigners. However, if it may not be possible to adopt measures allowing the numbers to fall below the cap, the state will provide an additional funding to increase the number and quality of language courses and thus strengthen the knowledge of Italian language.

The Sins of the Fathers

The second set of measures announced by Meloni concerns the mandatory Italian language courses for the parents of foreign students experiencing academic difficulties. Language is the core focus of the Government’s emergency intervention. The measures introduce a reporting channel to social services in cases where the linguistic difficulties of foreign parents prevent effective collaboration between school and family, which should be followed by the parents’ attendance of Italian language courses free of charge.

In the event of non-participation, following a formal warning, the announced measures foresee a pecuniary administrative sanction (and not the removal of children from their parents, according to a hypothesis that had initially circulated). Beyond the enormous moral, even before legal, perplexities arising from a measure that imposes an obligation on parents to compensate for their children’s academic difficulties, this measure seems fatally destined to fail in a system of social services that already struggles to guarantee much more essential services (even to natives, let alone to foreigners). Above all, it is a measure that decidedly departs from the constitutional code of the Italian school system, which is – as recalled by the timely and decisive intervention of the Head of State – “open to everyone” (Art. 34 of the Constitution). Indeed, the school system is characterized as the mission to intervene where the family cannot reach. Hence, I may be permitted to doubt whether it will be possible to implement the announced measures with appropriate social and educational services, which are, on the contrary, generally in serious decline throughout the Country

Lautsi Reloaded

Finally, the third set of measures announced by Meloni introduces the ban on the Burqa and Niqab in every school (including primary and secondary schools). This is a measure that is highly likely to meet with the support of a vast majority of Italians. Including the author of these lines.

After the Lautsi decision of the Strasbourg Court and the 2021 decision of the Italian Court of Cassation, assigning a larger role to schools’ autonomy in this matter, the crucifix still hangs on the walls of the vast majority of Italian school buildings. Henceforth, how can be a measure that forbids students from wearing what in their value system regards as a religious symbol reconciled with that practice?

If this were to be an opportunity to find a modern interpretation of the relationship between religion and schools in Italy, it would be good news. If, on the other hand, the aim is to counter other religions by promoting the indigenous religion as a means of identity, it must be pointed out that this would be a measure in direct contradiction to the objective of promoting the principles of liberal-democratic constitutionalism, which appears to underpin the other measures introduced in the same legislative package.