Brubaker in his aforementioned examination says the debate’s key cleavages revolve around what type of system a country has in place to determine its citizenry –jus soli or jus sanguinis. Jus soli, as found in places like France and the United States, determines an individual’s right to citizenship on the basis of territory while jus sanguinis, as found until recently in Germany, does it purely on the basis of descent.[5] Brubaker avers that jus soli systems like the one used by France tend to be more assimilative, have members whose self-identities are political and state-centered, and have a mindset that is far more accepting of the process of naturalization.[6] Jus sanguinis systems as employed by Germany, on the other hand, tend to be differential, have an ethnocultural mode of identification, and be more obdurate towards the prospect of naturalizing its immigrants.[7]
In his discussion Brubaker further lays out two distinct “modes of self-understanding” that are emblematic of the different systems of ascription – a “state-national” perspective and an “ethnonational” one. The former he defines as a point of view where the nation and its state apparatus and boundaries are one and the same, each inseparably imbedded in the other. This worldview is characteristic of jus soli systems, he says, and is a mindset that feels
there is nothing
intrinsically objectionable about basing membership on territorial rootedness.
Birthplace alone, in an increasingly mobile age, might well be an accidental
fact, and a poor indicator of enduring ties. But the same cannot be said of
birthplace in conjunction with other indicators of attachment, such as
prolonged residence, parental domicile, or parental birthplace…From a
state-national point of view, it is the strength of attachment that is
decisive.[8]
[Italics original.]
This passage acknowledges one of the central concerns of the other side of the debate – the “accidental fact” clause – but states that even were it to be true, certain characteristics can supercede it in importance and warrant the issuance of citizenship. Ethnonational points of view, however, accept no such logic. Characteristic of jus sanguinis systems, they are defined as a mindset where an ethnocultural understanding is separate from the state apparatus and its territorial boundaries.[9] Brubaker says this way of thinking is prone to higher rates of nationalism and xenophobia and is based on the presumption that
jus sanguinis is preferable to jus
soli because descent creates a more substantial community than the
“accidental fact” of birthplace. Descent binds the individual more closely to
the destiny of the state…From an ethnonational point of view, jus sanguinis
preserves, while jus soli might undermine, the identity and the
substance of the nation…From an ethnonational point of view, it is the kind of
attachment that matters.[10]
[Italics original.]
These differing ways of viewing the world dictate policy and determine how accepting a state and its population are of outsiders, including whether they can ever be incorporated into the collective body. Italy, according to Brubaker’s thesis then, should have a national identity and correlated policies that fall squarely into the latter category since it employs a sanguinis system akin to the Germans -- citizenship is ascribed automatically only to those born to an Italian parent and naturalization requires the svincolo, or renunciation of previous citizenship, in addition to ten years of legal residence.[11] Thus we’d expect a national mindset rife with ethnocultural identification and strong nationalism, xenophobia, and resistance to naturalization. As noted earlier, though, this is not the case. Italy, despite having growing numbers of illegal immigrants from North Africa and a large population of foreign workers, has relatively low levels of differential, nationalist identification and xenophobia and a high acceptance and implementation of naturalization. The extent and root of these conditions shall be discussed in the following four sections.
Italy’s poor adherence to the expected ethnonational classification of Brubaker’s model is due, in large part, to where most Italians center their self-identification – at the local, national, or global level. According to Livianna Tossutti’s recent article on Italian identity in the era of globalization,[12] Italians typically have strong “local, regional, continental and global orientations” in comparison to their “relatively weak levels of state nationalism,”[13] a result directly opposite what Brubaker leads us to expect. Tossutti, culling data from dozens of Eurobarometer surveys since 1973, finds that Italians have been
consistently shown to be as
or more likely than other Europeans to positively evaluate the country’s membership
in the EC, and to concur that continental integration does not threaten
national identity. On average, 65 percent of Italians favor European over
national decision making, while the corresponding figure in other Union
countries is 12 points lower.[14]
Further analysis of these surveys reveals other compelling statistics that reiterate Italy’s pronounced global attachment. Over the same time span,[15] Italian support for the Common Market didn’t fall below 60 percent until January 2001 and had approval rates of 68 percent or higher in 50 of the 60 surveys,[16] in comparison with German rates that have been under 60 percent since May 1995,[17] French rates that have been since April 1992, and the EU average, which barring an eight-year span from November 1985 to April 1993, was never above 60 percent.[18] They show that a minority of Italians (39 percent) said they were dissatisfied with the EU’s democracy while a majority of Germans, French and average EU citizens did (47, 42, and 41 percent, respectively);[19] a wide majority of Italians said they were unafraid of the diminished use of their language, the disappearance of their country into a greater European entity, and the loss of their national culture and identity by continuing to be a part of the EU (59, 77, and 67 percent, respectively) while lower quantities did in Germany, France, and the EU. 59/65/58, 61/69/59, and 61/68/58, respectively.)[20] By and large, Italians rank among the highest in these categories and consistently above the EU-average – Brubaker leads us to believe they would be middle of the pack at best on these surveys, as distrusting and unsupportive of the EU ideal and its correlating institutions as the Germans are. But reality again defies theory with the Italian case -- they seem to be far more comfortable with the prospect of being identified as Europeans and participating as such than most of the other member countries do.
Case in point is the Eurobarometer data showing the ratio of people who feel they are part European, part their respective nationality (or totally European) to those who feel they are only their native ethnicity. 71 percent of Italians agree with the former characterization, while only 26 percent consider themselves exclusively Italian, putting Italy second only to Luxembourg in terms of overall support for a non-nationalist identity. Contrast this with the ratios found in Germany, France, and the remainder of the EU– 49:48, 59:39, and 52:45, respectively[21] -- and you’re about as far from an ethnoocentric point of view as you can get. This data unequivocally indicates just how ambivalent the rest of Europe is on the issue of amalgamated national identities and again reveals the uniqueness of Italy’s situation.[22]
Yet having a broad global outlook does not automatically preclude a strong national affiliation. French citizens had higher than average scores for international identification, after all, to offset their beefier scores of strictly national identification. (Despite the latter scores being 50 percent higher than the corresponding Italian ones.) In Italy, though, it appears to do just that. Tossutti points out the results of Guido Martinotti and Sonia Stefannizzi’s analysis of the same Eurobarometer data as proof. Their study found that the majority of Italians were “skeptical” of their national system of governance while being positive about that of the European Community and discovered conversely that almost none of those who were positive about the Italian system fell into the authors’ “nation statists” categorization.[23]
And while this litany of statistics presents a strong numeric rebuttal to Brubaker’s thesis, we must also consider where this unusual detachment from the state comes from. What are the roots of this abnormally strong global and regional identification and conversely low national identity? Tossutti unleashes a laundry list of causes to explain – delayed consolidation of its autonomous territorial administrations into a centralized state;[24] consolidation not coming as a result of a popular uprising;[25] the limited geographic dominance, historically, of the Italian language;[26] the delayed political participation of the masses.[27] Italy wasn’t unified until 1861 – the result of a political decision, not a revolution – the language wasn’t spoken by a majority until after WWII, and universal suffrage didn’t exist until 1945, all reasonable sources of Italian disunion and fracture.
Taken either individually or in concert, each of these presents a cogent, if somewhat abbreviated, explanation for why Italians have formed local and global identities in lieu of a unified national conception and why they continue to believe international cooperation and involvement are more palatable strategies than nationally dominated politics.[28] In short, the state has never served the needs of the majority particularly well and is thus held in less than the highest regard. But Italian scholar and judge G. Frederico Mancini, in an article discussing Italy’s place in Europe, sums it up best with the following:
The reason why Italians do
not long for a new patria – and are keen on Europe precisely because it does
not aim to become one – should now be clear. Italy’s experience with nationhood
was far from happy: 60 years of goading and pushing by a nominally liberal but
basically authoritarian ruling class, followed by 20 years of tyranny and
bravado, and at the end a disgraceful implosion.[29]
As a result Italians are just more comfortable at the local level – more “snug,” he says -- and more trusting of the government’s effectiveness at the global level rather than the national one.[30] A large portion of this comes from how the Italian identity was formed – a process that will be discussed more in subsequent sections – but Mancini’s reasoning and this cursory examination, along with the wide range of Eurobarometer data documented earlier, show how far the Italians diverge from Brubaker’s ethnocentric delineation. And while their detachment from the state may bear some superficial similarities to his ethnonational mode of understanding, for Italy to fully hold to that category they would also have to be differential, even xenophobic, towards foreigners and phobic of naturalization, two points that we will explore further below.
According to Brubaker’s model, since Italy employs a system of jus sanguinis and since there is a detachment of the state from the national identity (although it is devoid of the insularity and exclusionism typically correlated with those schemes), we would expect to find higher levels of nationalist xenophobia and a prevalence of differentialist attitudes. What we encounter, though, is something entirely different. An analysis by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia of the 2000 Eurobarometer surveys[31] found that Italians were often far more accepting of outsiders than average and much more so than Brubaker’s archetypal cases of the Germans and the French.[32] Consider the following data – in a cross-country comparison that separated the EU population according to their tolerance of foreigners, Italy was below the EU average for its levels of intolerance and ambivalence and above it for its tolerance score, while Germany and France were over the average in the first two categories and below it in the last.[33]
When looking at how accepting the countries were of Muslim immigrants seeking employment in the EU – a particularly important question in Italian politics as the most frequent countries of its immigrants’ origin are Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco -- the EUMC found that Italians were more than twice as supportive of accepting them without restrictions (T-2nd overall; 30 percent in favor) than France, Germany, and the EU average (14, 6, and 17 percent, respectively.) They also found that the number of Italians saying these immigrants should not be accepted at all (10 percent) was half that of the French score (21) and a third of the German one (30 percent; the EU average was 18.)[34]
Similar scores were found in response to the question asking about prospective Eastern European workers.[35] 31 percent of Italians said they should be admitted without restriction, while only 17 and 10 percent of French and Germans, respectively, did. (The EU average was 20.) The number of those saying that they should not be admitted at all again shows a pattern of higher Italian tolerance – only 9 percent of their population said they should not be permitted, while 13 percent of French and 21 percent of Germans did. (The EU average was 14.)[36]
When looking at whether citizens of other EU countries should be able to settle in the respondent’s particular country, the survey found 54 percent of Italians were in favor of admitting them without restrictions, while only 3 percent said they should not be admitted at all. Compare this to the German scores (26 for, 14 against), the French ones (38 and 6, respectively), and the EU average (39 and 8)[37] and you again find Italians to be well above the curve in the EU. Furthermore, when asked whether these people should have the right to vote in local elections – again, an indicator of particular importance in the Italian case since we know the emphasis they place on local level functioning – 55 percent of Italians said they should be permitted to while only 47 percent of Germans did.[38] In survey after survey, the opinions of average Italians seem to largely support the acceptance of outsiders much more readily than their counterparts on the rest of the continent, especially those in Germany.
Yet modern day acceptance does not necessarily imply an identical historical correlate. Haddock and Bedani, in their wide-ranging book on Italian national identity, address this issue and actually find that exclusivist nationalist rhetoric has never been a key component of Italian society, even during the dark days of Mussolini’s reign when it would be most expected to exist. “Italy, like Germany, had a tainted political tradition,” they said, “yet…in the 1950s the language of nationalism, even in its benign forms, was conspicuously absent from public discourse.”[39]
All of this adds up to another deviation from the expectations derived from Brubaker’s model. Italians should exhibit scores and underlying attitudes that are more similar to the Germans’ – an implication of a more exclusive society bent on maintaining the differences between its citizens and its visitors, one that is more intolerant of outsiders and unsettled by the presence of the Other – and yet Italians consistently trumped them.[40] They were more accepting of foreigners, of their right to work, to vote, and of their right to eventually assimilate into the Italian state, all characteristics that belie the implications of Brubaker’s jus sanguinis and ethnonational categorizations.[41] This last topic – the eventual incorporation of immigrants into the Italian national body – is the final key characteristic of sanguinis systems to confront in Brubaker’s model.
A Concrete Assimilation: Italian
Naturalization
The formal mechanism for incorporating foreigners into the state system is naturalization, and according to the last part of Brubaker’s thesis we should expect to find an Italian system defined by its resistance to the process.[42] Yet again the reality we encounter is entirely different than anticipated. Imbedded in the aforementioned Italian citizenship laws are two options that are strikingly like the ones employed by the French. One deals with the issuance of citizenship upon reaching majority – 18, here – and states that those “born on the Italian territory…will acquire citizenship by legally and uninterruptedly residing in Italy from his/her birth to adulthood.”[43] This is similar to the mechanism the French use, the only difference being that in this case it is not automatic, but rather must be applied for. This provision deals with the offspring of immigrants, but does nothing to deal with the more prevalent foreign worker population their parents are a part of.
The second method is for the more traditional immigrant and deals with these people, those that were born in another country of origin and are seeking citizenship on the basis of time spent living and working in a new country and their desire to make this change permanent. Contrary to the expectations of their structural setup, Italian law permits this solidification to happen rather easily, provided the applicant has lived in Italy legally for ten years, has sufficient funds to support themselves, no criminal record, and is willing to renounce the citizenship of their current country.[44] Barring the last clause, this system holds much closer to the French model, structurally, of jus soli than it does to the emblematic German case of jus sanguinis Brubaker speaks of.
This administrative openness, coupled with the higher rates of public tolerance discussed earlier, is reflected in the higher numbers of people who actually complete the process each year. According to 2001 census data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics, just under 286,000 people naturalized that year with over 4,000 coming from Morocco (22,000 total from Africa) and over 159,000 from Europe.[45] This is compared with wider annual immigration flows from these areas of 3,800 from Morocco (10,900 from Africa total) and 70,600 from Europe,[46] which means that people are being assimilated into Italian society faster than they can come over from these regions, an amazing indicator of their society’s openness.[47]
Compare this with the German case – whose structural similarities are supposed to yield similar environments -- where, as Brubaker notes in his book, this requirement of renunciation, coupled with a general public disdain for immigrants naturalizing, had led to a situation where hardly anyone can gain citizenship despite having spent inordinate amounts of time living and working in the country. Germany has a system that is four to five times slower in naturalizing its migrant workers[48] and over ten times slower overall than France,[49] one where Turks in particular have a difficult time naturalizing. Brubaker states,
Of the 1.5 million Turks in Germany, over one million of whom have resided there ten or more years, and more than 400,000 of whom were born there, only about 1,000 acquire German citizenship each year. Even if rates increased tenfold, naturalizations would still be far outweighed by the 25-30,000 new Turkish citizens born each year in the Federal Republic.[50]
And this recalcitrance is not reserved solely for citizens from the lesser-developed countries of the world either, but extends to citizens from more innocuous places like Spain and Italy, as well, who are accepted at rates ten and five times slower, respectively.[51] Despite changing their policies recently in 2000 to be more inclusive of their disproportionately large population of foreign residents – an estimated seven million people, half of whom had lived there for over 20 years[52] -- Germany still naturalizes less than 2200,000 citizens each year,[53] which is over a third less than the Italian rate despite having over 24 million more people in the country.[54]
And so the expectations derived from Brubaker’s model of jus sanguinis systems have yet again failed to hold up in the Italian case. Italy does not exhibit ethnocultural, differential, or xenophobic tendencies towards foreigners in their midst. They are open to naturalization and have a much more global, assimilationalist mentality than Brubaker’s model implies they should. There is one final area to further explore and confront that helps explain why Italians act and think the way they do and builds upon the earlier discussion of causation, an area that serves as the basis for all of Brubaker’s assumptions and the source of all the characteristics he affixes to France and Germany – the national identity.
In Brubaker’s book, the issue of identity was the source of and solution to all problems. For him, France’s citizenship policies and attitudes towards the outsider could consistently be traced back to the formation of its national identity, and the same applied to Germany. For the former, their identity was formed violently, all at once, and from the bottom up.[55] This led them to their culture of assimilation and inclusion and an amalgamated identity. The latter’s, however, was formed gradually, in an ad hoc, piecemeal fashion, and from the top down.[56] This led to a German culture of differentiation and exclusion and a fragmented identity. Brubaker asserts that these differences in timing, direction, and tenor were instrumental in understanding the attitudes and actions discussed above.
Contrary to the previous parts of Brubaker’s model, in this arena Italy’s identity actually does hold closer to the German case in terms of its history and construction despite behaving more like the French. (Actually far surpassing them, as we have repeatedly seen thus far.) Italy’s identity evolved slowly, non-violently, and largely as a result of state-led initiative, as amorphous, scattershot, and timid as it has been, which led to the range of thoughts and feelings indicated above. As seen elsewhere in this paper, though, the interesting ways Italy diverges from Brubaker’s theory bear further examination, for they are not what were to be expected.
Historically, the key events that formed the Italian identity were the same ones that were influential throughout countries of Western Europe –independence (the Risorgimento, in this case), the Depression, the world wars.[57] Each of these pushed and pulled at the nascent Italian identity, but none formed a lasting hold on what the final product was – none were as immediate and overriding as the Revolution was in France, for example, but rather like the German case of dissipated accumulation. They were in essence signatures on an ever-growing petition – each undoubtedly important in its own right, but with the true power coming from their aggregation.
This is why the Italian case bears so much similarity on the surface to the German one in Brubaker’s model. German identity underwent a slow journey from the decentralized local rule of the Prussian empire to a gradual unification of independent states under a centralized nation, all the way to the era of the Third Reich and beyond.[58] It was a process of slow aggregation and modification, not a violent, complete overhaul as in the French case. Italy’s course plotted a similar path, going from a decentralized system under various foreign administrations to the gradual unification of its city-states under a single national entity, Fascism, and beyond. Yet while this led Germany to a more firmly held, Volk-centered definition of identity, in Italy it did not. As shown repeatedly in the previous sections, Italy has a national mindset that diverges drastically from that of its neighbor, one that is open, assimilating, and tolerant instead of exclusive, resistant, and intolerant. And this might be the most interesting thing about the Italian case – just how amorphous and fluid their identity really is,[59] and how much it ends up affixed to the global and local level,[60] as shown earlier. Haddock and Bedani characterize the unique dynamic this way:
“It is nevertheless clear that the contested nature of national identity has been reflected in the ambivalent conceptions Italians have often formed of the state. From the earliest national stirrings of the Risorgimento, through the liberal regime, Fascism and, finally, the post-war Republic, there has never been a settled view of the character of the state or the role it should play in relation to culture, economy and society.”[61]
Dario Biocca, in his article on the death of the Italian identity,[62] also hammers on this ambivalence’s deleterious effects in determining a strong Italian identity, stating that even in the crucibles of the major world wars, Italy was unable to create a firm conception of itself after initially heading down the path to doing so. WWI was a key example, he says. Biocca starts out by calling it “a crucial turning point in the making of the Italian national identity, when local and religious resistance subsided,” public support coalesced, and the country “embarked on the war with a newly created spirit of unity.”[63] After the unbelievable carnage of those years, though, he states that “many who had shared patriotic enthusiasm in the early days of the conflict were transmuted by war into silent and detached observers of postwar chaos,” adding that the idea that it is responsible for creating a cogent identity is, at least in part, “an illusion.”[64]
The experiences of WWII were largely the same – Italy began the war with immense popular support for the endeavor, its citizenry rallying around the idea of defending fascism and the Patria[65] as crucial to the Italian cause before becoming disenchanted with both the notion of war and fascism as a whole. Thus the need to continually distance themselves from these potential cradles of lasting identity formation – typically a requirement as the result of repeated losses and not a voluntary disavowal,[66] but achieved nonetheless – leads to an Italian identity where no single characteristic holds all the explanatory power or appeal and one that is never too firmly held, undergoing a constant state of modification and recalibration. Their abysmal experiences of the two world wars and their inherent distaste for the state and its handling of them leads to Italians’ detachment from it, instead identifying more with global and local structures as shown before. Their slow, labored course towards unification and gradual consolidation of rights, rules, and territory leads them not to a strongly held ethnocultural self-conception, but rather to a disparate, diverse one instead. And so despite experiencing similar historical events in its formation, Italy wound up with a drastically different identity than Germany did, one that not only created the above attitudes and behavior, but also reinforced them along the way.
The Test of Immigration
So what does all this mean; what purpose has this journey served? Besides proving an interesting refutation of Brubaker’s theory – indeed a national identity of tolerance and inclusion appears to be nothing more than an arbitrary accident and not the result of a determinative decision on citizenship ascription as he argues -- it is important to examine the Italian case in such detail because it currently faces a crucial challenge, that of increased immigration. Brubaker states that a key period in both French and German history in terms of its development was when they made the switch from being a country of emigration to a country of immigration. For Germany, it happened around 1913[67] while France made the switch a few years later.[68] Italy, on the other hand, despite being the first country in southern Europe to do so,[69] didn’t experience the transition until rather recently – right around the time of the first oil crisis in 1973.[70] Since then it has experienced growing numbers of illegal immigrants from North African countries like Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia, including several thousand rafters from these countries over the past few years.[71]
This type of swing tends to exacerbate xenophobic feelings and lead to increasingly restrictive policies – immigration quotas are scaled back, new restrictions are imposed, borders are shut down, patrols are increased, and rights are suspended as aliens are rounded up and repatriated in growing numbers.[72] Graziella Bertocchi and Chiara Strozzi state in their article that this tendency has been telling in how the long term policies towards immigrants changed as countries made the switch from emigration- to immigration-dominant after WWII:
“The historical experiences of immigration and emigration gradually affected the original set of rules, with a tendency toward convergence which accelerated after WWII. Weil’s main thesis, based on a survey of 25 nationality laws, is that most jus soli countries became slightly more restrictive while jus sanguinis countries have moved towards soli.”[73]
Having already established that Italy thinks and acts more like a jus soli country than their sanguinis label implies, this means that the country is facing a severe challenge right now that will determine whether it can stay like this in the future. Will the country be able to maintain its culture of openness and assimilation in the face of waves of immigrants, or will they cave to the pressures of instinctive insecurities and begin implementing more restrictive, insular policies characteristic of Brubaker’s model? To find answers, we must look at both where they have come from and what exactly lies in front of them today.
Italian immigration policies, like its national identity and the state itself, were rather delayed in forming. Somewhat unbelievably, Italy had no formal immigration policies until 1986[74] and its unwritten stance towards immigrants up to that point “lacked comprehensiveness”[75] and “encouraged administrative discretion and arbitrariness.”[76] This meant the state could act with virtual impunity, illustrated by these totals from 1984 – 26,684 immigrants rounded up or arrested, 13,645 expelled, and 12,500 completely denied entry.[77] This merely pushed the problem underground as people came in covertly and worked under the state’s radar, gravitating towards seasonal, non-union jobs, self-employment, and the underground economy.[78]
Legislators recognized this fact and began a series of abortive attempts towards immigration reform, typified in general for being reactive in their approach to the subject rather than proactive[79] – Bill 694 in 1980 attempted to make legal residence contingent on employment, but failed after passing the Senate;[80] Bill 1812 in 1982 sought to punish employers who hired or smuggled in illegal workers and to deal with the regularization of the large pool already in the country, but failed after passing through parliament when the government changed.[81] Legislation was finally passed with Law 943 in 1986, which dealt with the illegal immigration flow by introducing an amnesty policy, tied future legal admissions to openings in the labor market, and granted existing foreign workers the same rights as their Italian counterparts.[82] This bill was a mild success, naturalizing approximately 105,000 immigrants, yet this was less than half the estimated total and did nothing to deal with things like the right of immigrants to vote in local elections.[83]
It wasn’t until 1989 with the passage of the Martelli law (Decree Law 416 and its addendum, Law 39, a year later) that these rights were expanded upon. This law did a range of things to clarify the immigrant situation – it codified the legal rights of asylees, clarified the expulsion process and the powers of border police, extended the existing amnesty program, expanded the acceptable reasons for entry (to tourism, health, and education from strictly around employment), and set the annual budgets and staffing levels for the pertinent government agencies.[84] This bill was more successful in the aggregate, naturalizing over twice as many (216,037) as in 1986, but this was only a third of the total number living in Italy (635,131)[85] and still did nothing to deal with the definition of the immigrants’ political rights.
The Turco-Napolitano law of 1998 sought to directly address the issue of rights and integration by further reducing illegal immigration (it set stiff prison sentences of 4-12 years for traffickers and/or employers of illegal immigrants, while also clarifying entry requirements and expulsion procedures) and by granting access to education, health, and other social assistance programs.[86] The Bossi-Fini law of 2002 expanded on these provisions and tightened its controls, ballooning the amount of documentation required for anyone planning to do more than vacation in the country and freeing the government and border police to expel anyone deemed in violation of the myriad hurdles.[87]
These policy considerations are important in light of the increased flow of immigrants, which numbered roughly 300-400,000 in 1977[88] and have been on the rise ever since, reaching a total of around 1.5 million registered immigrants, or 2.5 percent of the total population living in Italy today.[89] (The number of illegal immigrants living in country ranges from an estimated 250,000[90] to a more robust 500,000[91] with nearly 50,000 having come in the first five months of this year alone.)[92] Admittedly, when compared with gross totals in Germany and France – 7.3 million[93] and 4.31 million,[94] respectively – this doesn’t seem like much. Yet when you consider the growth rates -- 7.2 percent a year from 1981-5, over twice that amount (16.7 percent) from 1986-1990,[95] and a rate a decade later that was all but the same (15.3 percent a year)[96] – these trends are nothing to sneeze at.
With the prominence of Muslims among the groups of people coming over from African countries – 560,000 are thought to now live in Italy,[97] not including the tens of thousands that have come in the last five months -- and the touchiness this subject historically creates internationally, Italy is at a crossroads. Silvio Berlusconi’s government alliance with the Lega Nord, an extreme right wing party that is notoriously xenophobic, and his response to the recent waves of rafters, sending them back immediately en masse rather than grant them asylum, has caused some concern among the international community regarding which direction the country is headed.
It would seem inconceivable that the country would undergo such a violent swing towards ethnocentrist closure and exclusion in light of the numerous strong indicators discussed before. Yet policy and the predilections of those in power have a persuasive ability to nullify popular opinion and could start the pendulum swinging the other way. Therefore what Berlusconi and his government decide to do in the coming year will be crucial in determining the country’s momentum and its stance towards its immigrants. Their actions will dictate whether his Forza Italia becomes the Fallimenta Italia instead and whether his country remains the uncharacteristically tolerant, assimilating jus sanguinis state Brubaker should have hoped it to be.
[1] Estimates from several European news reports around this time, including the Associated Press, Xinhua General News Service, and UPI (United Press International), citing Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini and Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu put the total number of Africans landing on Lampedusa in the last week of September at just under 1,800 (Lyman, Eric J. “Italy Draws Fire for its Immigration Rules.” UPI. October 13, 2004.) and just over 9,800 entering the country overall, regardless of their origin, thus far this year. (9,853 – Agence France Presse. “Italy Tells Libya to Crack Down on Illegal Immigration. September 13, 2004.) Most of the immigrants during that span (roughly 1,200) came from Libya and landed on the shores of Lampedusa, a tiny island directly south of Sicily and close to the eastern shores of Tunisia that, along with similarly diminutive Pantelleria and Linosa, are the closest parts of Italy to the African continent. (Rizzo, Alessandra. “As Repatriations Resume, Berlusconi Prepares to Travel to Libya for Talks on Immigration.” Associated Press, October 6, 2004.)
[2] The total number of people repatriated by Berlusconi in the first five months of the year was just over 27,000 according to ANSA (Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata), an Italian news agency, a move that was extremely unpopular among human rights groups and many in the international community who said this violated the country’s asylum and refugee laws. (ANSA. “Italy Illegal Immigrants up 13 Pct. Jan-May 2004.” June 29, 2004.)
[3] Members of the xenophobic Lega Nord (Northern League), a participating member of Berlusconi’s government alliance, have likened many of the rafters to terrorists and made calls for the amending of the Italian Constitution to reiterate certain “special” rights of Italians while stiffening the prison sentences of those arrested for traveling there illegally. (BBC Worldwide Monitoring, from Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “Italian Minister says 2m Migrants Ready to Set Off from Libya.” July 23, 2004.)
[4] Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.
[5] Brubaker states that the French system is actually a hybrid of the two systems, based on jus sanguinis but with “substantial elements of jus soli” to supplement the former system of descent. (81) He goes on to say that “although the citizenship law of the United States is based on jus soli, while that of France is based on jus sanguinis, the result – as far as second-generation immigrants are concerned – is similar: almost all persons born in France and residing there at majority have French citizenship.” (82)
[6] Brubaker 1-17
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid 123-4.
[9] Brubaker, 123. Being German is more than simply living within its borders and paying taxes to the state, it is a feeling -- an essence; something intangible and immeasurable, yet wholly compelling and describable. Brubaker describes it as a Romantic notion stressing “the celebration of individuality [and] uniqueness…of depth and inwardness as over against surface polish; of feeling as over against desiccated rationality; of unconscious, organic growth as over against conscious, artificial construction; of the vitality and integrity of traditional, rooted folk cultures as over against the soulnessness and artificiality of cosmopolitan culture.” (Ibid., 9.)
[10] Ibid 123-4
[11] Migramedia Italia website, Italian Citizenship laws and documentation subsection. (Official site for Italian migration information; home of Informed Migration in Italy project, run in conjunction with several state universities and associations.) http://www.migramedia.it/mie_cartelle/ducumenti/informated_migration/5_IT.pdf Germany’s age of majority is also 18, but the legal term of residence is fifteen years. Further, the renunciation is a huge detractor from naturalizing even when permissible by the state. Brubaker states, “The required renunciation of their original citizenship has already deterred, for both material and symbolic reasons, many otherwise qualified candidates from seeking naturalization; there is every indication that it will continue to do so.” (Brubaker, 173.)
[12] Tossutti, Livianna. “Between Globalism and Localism, Italian Style.” West European Politics, Vol. 25:3, July 2002.
[13] Ibid, 51.
[14] Ibid 52, taken from Commission of the European Communities. Eurobarometer 53: Public Opinion in the European Union. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, Spring 2000:18; Eurobarometer: Public Opinion and Europe. Brussels: COMC, June-July 1989: 9; Mancini, G. Federico. “The Italians In Europe.” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 46 (2000): 2.)
[15] The span of data runs from September 1973 to April 2004
[16] Ibid 53. It fell below this threshold of 60 percent briefly in January and May 2001 (dipping to 59 and 57 percent, respectively) before regaining its footing in November and continuing its growth to May 2002. (The rates jumped to 64 and 69 percent, respectively.) The latest survey from April 2004 found that support had again waned, falling to 54 percent of the population stating membership was “a good thing.” Of the 60 surveys from April 1974-April 2004, Italy had 50 with approval rates of 68 percent or higher. (European Commission Public Opinion Analysis (EUROPA) website. “Eurobarometer Time Waves: 1973-2004, Question 4 - Membership to the EU.” http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/cf/index_en.cfm)
[17] Only 20 of the 46 surveys before this point were at or above 60 percent.
[18] Surveys from October 1974, 1975, and 1978, all reached over this total as well, but were largely ephemeral. (They reached 60, 63, and 60 percent, respectively before promptly falling below the threshold in the subsequent survey.) (Ibid.)
[19] European Commission. “How Europeans See Themselves – Looking Through the Mirror with Public Opinion Surveys.” Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001: 15, Graph 8. (Data from October-November 1999.) 40 percent of Italians were satisfied, while only 35 percent of Germans and 39 percent of French were. (The EU average was 40 percent, as well.) http://europa.eu.int/comm/publications/booklets/eu_documentation/05/txt_en.pdf
[20] EUROPA website. “Eurobarometer Time Waves: 1973-2004, Question 20 – Fears regarding the building of EU, subquestions “(Our country) not really existing anymore,” “Our language being used less and less,” and “The loss of our national identity and culture.”” Data from April 2001 survey; the subsequent survey (April 2004) had no data on this topic. This data contradicts Eric Hobsbawm’s assertion that language was a major part of the Italian national identity and the predominant reason behind the need to create a unified nation state. “For Germans and Italians, their national language was not merely an administrative convenience or a means of unifying state-wide communication…or even a revolutionary device for bringing the truths of liberty, science and progress to all, ensuring the permanence of citizen equality and preventing the revival of ancien regime hierarchy…It was more even than the vehicle of a distinguished literature and of universal intellectual expression. It was the only thing that made them Germans or Italians.” (Hobsbawm, Eric. “The Rise of Ethno-Linguistic Nationalisms.” in Hutchinson, John; Smith, Anthony D. Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994: 179.) Whether or not this assertion was valid at the time of state formation in Italy, it appears to have since diminished quite definitively in importance even assuming its original veracity.
[21] European Commission, 13: Graph 6.
[22] Tossutti in her article found that this type of support was typically stronger in younger, more divided states (Italy, Belgium) (Tossutti, 55) and in those whose casualty rates in WWII were the highest. Interestingly enough, she includes Germany in this assessment towards the former, too, an inclusion that is contradicted somewhat by the longitudinal Eurobarometer data from the past three decades. The latter explanation regarding wartime casualties is backed up by Mattei Dogan in his 1994 article, which found that the effects of WWI and II on a country were important determinants of lower levels of national pride and faith in the army. (Dogan, Mattei. “The Decline of Nationalisms within Western Europe.” Comparative Politics, Vol. 26, No. 3. (Apr., 1994): 287-8; Tossutti, 55. Taken from Gabel, M; Palmer, H.D. “Understanding Variation in Public Support for European Integration.” European Journal of Political Research. Vol. 27 (1995): 3-19.) Manners and Whitman also discuss the lack of faith in the army and the effect on its structure. (Manners, Ian; Whitman, Richard G. The Foreign Policies of European Union Member States. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000:97.)
[23] Tossutti, 55. Taken from Martinotti, G; Stefannizzi, S. “Europeans and the Nation State,” in Niedermayer, O; Sinnot, R. Public Opinion and the Internationalized Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.)
[24] Ibid 56 “Italy was politically and economically divided under the rule of France, Spain, Austria, and the Pope” until 1861. (Ibid, 57)
[25] Ibid, 57
[26] Ibid. This was limited primarily to Tuscany and Rome, she says. Bruce Haddock and Gino Bedani reiterate this assertion, saying that the problem stems from the time of unification when “literary language was accessible to only a small section of the population,” a split that survives today between “the reasonably unified ‘national’ language and the dialects that vary from region to region.” (Haddock, Bruce; Bedani, Gino. The Politics of Italian National Identity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000: 5.) They go on to say, “This is not to say that the Italian language…did not exist before the unification of Italy or was not known by people throughout the Italian peninsula and on the islands. The problem was that this language was not known by many people.” [Italics, original.] (Haddock, 99.) This dominance was still non-existent even as late as the end of WWII, when a meager 37 percent of the population was considered “regular speakers,” (Haddock 110, taken from De Mauro, Tullio. Storia Linguistica dell’Italia Unita. Bari: Laterza, 1970.) a rate that has since grown to 90 percent today. (Haddock, 110.) Further, a 1991 law recognized 13 “minority languages” in use – “Albanian, Catalan, Franco-Provencal, French, Friulan, German, Greek, Ladin, Occitan, Romany, Sardinian, Serbo-Croat, and Slovenian” (Haddock, 98) – of which the CIA Factbook says German, French, and Slovenian are the top three. (CIA. CIA World Factbook 2004, January 2004. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/it.html)
[27] Tossutti, 57. Only 500,000 of Italy’s 22 million people were able to vote until 1913, thanks to property disqualifications. Near-universal male suffrage extended that year alleviated this problem.
[28] Another telling indication of the extent of this belief comes from similar Eurobarometer surveys where Tossutti states, “When asked whether decisions concerning economic, cultural and social policies should be made by the national government or by joint EU-national decision-making processes, a majority of Italians preferred European involvement in the fields of environment, currency, health and social welfare, immigration and asylum, regional development, education, foreign affairs, Value Added Tax rates and culture.” (Ibid, 61.) This was regardless of class, generation, region, age, sex, income, education, and town size. (Ibid., 64.)
[29] Mancini, G. Frederico. “The Italians in Europe.” Foreign Affairs. New York: Mar/Apr 2000. Vol. 79:2:122-35.
[30] Mancini cites the voracity of Italians’ ties to their city’s soccer team and of Sienans to their quarter of the Palio as proof of the local connection. Towards this his assertion that, “In the minds of its people, Italy has been so poorly run from Rome that almost any alternative would be acceptable” is particularly apropos. Manners and Whitman add that the Tangentopoli scandal of 1992, a massive corruption scandal that wracked Italian government and led to a purge of the majority of high officials, exacerbated this lack of faith in the state and strengthened Italy’s pro-European outlook. (Manners and Whitman, 90-93.)
[31] European Monitoring Center on Xenophobia and Racism; SORA. “Attitudes Towards Minority Groups in the European Union.” Vienna: March 2001. http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_138_analysis.pdf
[32] The report states, “In Germany, the level of acceptance of immigrants, especially of those who wish to work in the EU, is low. More respondents in Germany favor the repatriation of immigrants than other Europeans.” (Ibid, 10.) The report also states that French attitudes are more towards the EU average.
[33] Italy had rates of 11 percent “intolerant,” 21 percent “ambivalent,” and 69 percent “tolerant” (either “passively” or “actively”); the EU averages in these categories were 14, 25, and 60 percent, respectively. Germany had scores of 18, 29, and 53, respectively, while France had levels of 19, 26, and 56. (Ibid, 23.)
[34] Ibid, 30. All had relatively similar numbers of people saying they should be permitted with restrictions – 55-61 percent.
[35] This is another important consideration as Italians received a sizable number of Eastern Europeans each year, specifically coming from Albania, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia.
[36] Ibid, 31.
[37] Ibid, 34.
[38] The French score was 57 percent for, 36 against. Italy only had 31 percent of the population vote against the prospect altogether. (The EU average was 52 percent for, 35 against.) Germany had 38 percent vote no. (EUROPA website. “Eurobarometer Time Waves: 1973-2004, Question 42 – Opinion on key topical issues, subquestion “Any citizen of another European Union country who resides in (your country) should have the right to vote in local elections.”” Responses were from last survey collecting data on the subject, November 1997.)
[39] Ibid., 281. They go on to say that this was possible because of the strong influences of Communism’s “residual ‘internationalism’” and Catholicism’s “peculiar ‘universalism,’” the Italians’ ability to disassociate themselves from Fascism and focus on its “artificial foreign nature,” and the way they were able to focus on “family, region, class, or religion,” “richer sources of personal allegiance.” (Ibid.)
[40] The French scored closer to the Italians than the Germans did, but were still several rankings behind in all of the categories examined.
[41] An interesting topic for further examination comes from the same survey and shows that despite all the aforementioned indicators of acceptance and assimilation, Italians showed higher scores for criminalizing immigrants than others. A 2000 census report showed that 74.9 percent of Italians believed there is some relationship between immigration and crime, but most of them (70 percent) later qualified those statements by saying that the perceived link is caused by their poverty or their victimization by crime groups or employers. (Caciagli, Mario; Zuckerman, Alan S. Italian Politics: Emerging Themes and Insitutional Responses, Vol. 16. New York: Istituto Cattaneo, 2001: 200.) Asale Angel-Ajani finds in his 2003 article on criminalization and policing in Italy that their rate of imprisonment for immigrants is one of the highest in Southern Europe behind Spain and Greece (Angel-Ajani, taken from Melossi, Dario. “In a Peaceful Life: Migration and the Crime of Modernity in Italy, E.U.” Punishment and Society, vol. 5:4, 2003.) and that “although immigrants represented 23% of the total arrest population, they represented 57% of the population against whom complaints had been brought.” (Ibid., taken from Palidda, Salvatore. “La Construction Sociale de la Deviance et de la Criminalite Parmi les Immigre: Le Cas Italien.” in European Commission. Immigrant Delinquency: Social Sciences. Luxembourg: European Commission: 231-266.) (Though with such a limited group of case studies and the well-known rates of crime in those societies, saying that Italy is second only to that pair in criminalizing its immigrants is like saying that Italy is second only to Iraq and Sudan in terms of violent societies.) Angel-Ajani’s article brings up other interesting statistics, though – one in seven male immigrants get stopped by police while walking while only one in ninety Italian men do; of the 49.2 percent of the prison population in 1998 that was foreign, 90 percent were undocumented cases (Ibid., from Melossi) – and reconciling these trends with the vastly different public opinions exhibited over the past three decades in the Eurobarometer surveys would be fruitful. (Angel-Ajani, Asale. “The Racial Economics of Criminalization, Immigration, and Policing in Italy.” Social Justice. San Francisco: Vol. 30: 3: 2003, 48-63.)
[42] As he states, “The barriers to naturalization lie not only in the restrictiveness of legal provisions but equally in the political culture of naturalization.” (Brubaker, 79.)
[43] Migramedia Italia, Italian citizenship laws documentation, 3.
[44] Ibid
[45] Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica). 14th Censimento della Popolazione e delle Abitazione, 2001. (Subsection on foreign residents – “Gli Stranieri Residenti in Famiglia e in Convivenza: Dati Definitivi,” Table 16.)
[46] Ibid. (Subsection on non-resident foreigners – “Le Persone Che Vivono in Convivenza al Censimento della Popolazione 2001,” Table 7, 8.)
[47] This means that the net balance of assimilants comes from the already large population of foreign residents living in Italy, which the census has numbering 180,100 from Morocco, 386,500 from Africa, and 586,400 from Europe. (Ibid. Subsection on foreign residents, table 5.)
[48] Brubaker, 78.
[49] Ibid., 82.
[50] Ibid., 78.
[51] Ibid.
[52] German Embassy (London) website, Legal and Consular subsection. “Reform of Germany's Citizenship and Nationality Law.” http://www.german-embassy.org.uk/reform_of_germany_s_citizenshi.html
[53] 178,100 in 2001, which was down from 186,700 the year before. (Federal Statistical Office of Germany website. “Naturalization of 178,100 foreigners in 2001.” http://www.destatis.de/presse/englisch/pm2002/p2120025.htm)
[54] CIA, Germany subsection.
[55] For further discussion on the history of France’s identity formation, see Brubaker, 35-49; 85-113; 138-164.
[56] Similarly, for further discussion of Germany’s path towards identity formation, see Brubaker, 50-72; 114-137; 165-178.
[57] Haddock 278-9. The authors posit that Italian identity, like that of so many other countries, was strongly tied to events affecting the national state, and those events were the ones that affected all of Europe. “Key dates [in Italy’s development] have a European resonance: 1789, 1815, 1848, 1914, 1917, 1929, 1945, 1956, 1968, 1989.” (Ibid., 279.)
[58] Brubaker, 10-17; 50-72.
[59] No identity, be it national or personal, is ever truly fixed, granted, but some display a much more static nature (Germany, for example) than others do. Italy, with its endless string of incarnations, none ever held too rabidly, is far from this type of characterization.
[60] Haddock reinforce this claim as well, which they characterize as “a distinguishing feature of Italian culture” that has stretched from unification to today “to be dominant in people’s perceptions of who they are, despite the best efforts of government-sponsored propaganda, civic education of various kinds and the mass media.” (Haddock, 278.)
[61] Ibid., 277.
[62] Biocca, Dario. “Has the Nation Died? The Debate Over Italy’s Identity (and Future).” Daedalus, vol. 126:3 (Summer 1997).
[63] Ibid., 225.
[64] Ibid.
[65] He states that “after two decades of intense and carefully orchestrated ideological manipulation, Italians in the early years of World War II could make no distinction between fascism and the Patria.” They only began to separate the two when “catastrophic news from the war fronts” came in and military defeat seemed “imminent, indeed inevitable.” (Ibid., 227-8.)
[66] To this Biocca says, indeed, “fascism did no collapse because of widespread popular opposition. Fascism fell because the Allied military forces defeated Mussolini and his Fascist Italian armies.” (Ibid.)
[67] Brubaker, 124-5.
[68] Embassy of France website, France From A to Z subsection. “Immigration in France.” http://www.ambafrance-us.org/atoz/immigration.asp
[69] Martin, Philip L. “Comparative Migration Policies.” The International Migration Review, vol. 28:1 (Spring 1994.)
[70] Veugelers, John W.P. “Recent Immigration Politics in Italy: A Short Story.” West European Politics, vol. 24:2 (April 1994): 34.
[71] Official statistics from 2000 show there were 150,000 legal immigrants from Morocco, 130,000 from Albania, and 62,000 each from the Philippines and Ecuador. This is up from populations of 92,617 from Morocco in 1994 and 40,714 from the Philippines (Caciagli, 190), and also does not take into account illegal immigrants, the populations of which are substantially higher and will be discussed shortly.
[72] Bertocchi Graziella; Strozzi, Chiara. “Citizenship Laws and International Migration in Historical Perspective.” WDI/CEPR Conference on Transition Economics, Hanoi: 3-5. Ilya Prizel, citing Liah Greenfield, reiterates this point and states, “Ultimately, the indigenous culture reacts to, and partially rejects, the alien culture” after its initial and/or sizeable insertion. (Prizel, Ilya. National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998: 17. Taken from Greenfield, Liah. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.)
[73] Ibid.
[74] Martin, 1.
[75] Veugelers, 35
[76] Ibid. Caciagli reiterates this point quoting Kitty Calavita, who said there was “a marked gap between the law ‘on the books’ and the law ‘in action.’” (Caciagli, 194. Taken from Calavita, K; edited by Cornelius, W.A.; Martin, P.L.; Hollifield, J.F. “Italy and the New Immigration” Controlling Immigration. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994: 319.) This gap between the rules and reality is a common criticism of Italian society, with Crouch and Streeck leveling the same condemnation in their examination of Italian businesses. (Crouch and Streeck, Chapter 5. Political Economy of Modern Capitalism. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 1997.)
[77] Veugelers, 36.
[78] Ibid, 35.
[79] Caciagli, 191-2. The first round of legislation was sparked by the death of a migrant worker (Ibid.) and fears over terrorism (Veugelers, 41), with later rounds similarly following suit – the Martelli law’s inception coinciding with the murder of a South African immigrant in 1989(Ibid.), calls for the tightening of legislation and border controls occurring with flood of Albanian refugees to Bari in 1991. (Ibid., 44-6.)
[80] Veugelers, 36
[81] Ibid, 36-7.
[82] Ibid, 38-9
[83] Ibid, 39.
[84] Ibid, 42-3. For the latter, 20 billion lire went towards processing refugee applications, 30 billion went towards information and support centers for immigrants and asylees, and 19-29 billion went to various police agencies. (19 billion in 1990, 29 in 1991 and 1992, respectively.) This latter group was also to create 1,000 new openings while the Ministry of Labor was to create 300 (for “social workers, sociologists, and psychologists.) (Ibid., 43.)
[85] Ibid., 40.
[86] Caciagli, 194.
[87] The law
implemented a fingerprinting system for all people staying over 90 days,
required all prospective workers to have a permisso di soggiorno (stay
permit), good for two years and renewable for only 30-90 days after that,
required each of these people to have secured housing before arrival, and
increased the fines and prison sentences for violators. The law was met with
some criticism by those fearing Berlusconi’s government would overstep its
bounds and take advantage of the expulsion procedures, but those fears have
been largely unrealized until lately. (Original legislation, Italian
government. “Pubblicata nella Gazzetta
Ufficiale n. 199 del 26 Agosto 2002.” http://www.meltingpot.org/articolo502.html;
University of Trento website, International Cooperation and Mobility
subsection. “Law No. 189/2002.” (Summary of law’s provisions.) http://www.unitn.it/en/internazionale/189/law_189_2002.htm.)
[88] Veugelers, 34.
[89] Ibid. Numbers seem to vary depending on the source and the time – the Economist Country Profile from October 2002 had the total at 1.4 million and Stephen Jewkes’ article from November 2001 had it at 1.7 million. Slight variation, but all in the same ballpark. (Jewkes, Stephen. “Italy’s Immigration Quandary.” Europe, No. 411 (Nov 2001): 12.)
[90] Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). “Italy: Country Profile 2004.” Population subsection: 17.
[91] Ibid.
[92] 46,825, according to the aforementioned ANSA reports, an increase of 13 percent from the same period in 2003. (ANSA article.)
[93] According to the German Embassy and census data, this is the total of foreign nationals as of December 2000. (German Embassy (London) website, Government, Foreign, and EU Policy subsection. “Foreigners in the Federal Republic of Germany.” http://www.german-embassy.org.uk/foreign.html)
[94] According to INSEE and the 1999 Census, 4.31 million immigrants were living in France at the time, or 7 percent of the total population. (French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) website, France in Facts and Figures subsection. http://www.insee.fr/immigration_statistics.html
[95] EIU, 17.
[96] Ibid.
[97] Caciagli, 201. Taken from Fusani, C. “Solo 560 Mila Immigrati Ecco l’Islam Italiano.” La Repubblica, October 19, 2000: 23.