A True Italian: Ghali’s Story and Multicultural Identity in Contemporary Italy
Between prejudices
What does it mean to be a citizen? What are we really saying when we state we are from a certain country?
Is it the food, or the language? Maybe the blood?
When asked what a citizenship is, we may be thinking about a piece of paper, something written that tells us not only a country, but a whole story.
During the fourth evening of the 2024 Sanremo Festival – Italy’s most important musical contest, whose winner represents the country in Eurovision – a young singer took the opportunity to make history on Italy’s most important (and televised) stage.
Dear Italy
Ghali Amdouni, born on the 21st of May, 1993, is an Italian-Tunisian rapper and record producer.
He decided to bring “a unique mix of sounds, cultures and words as part of his story, which also represent the stories of millions of other people”, as he sang a cover mix of three important songs: “Bayna”, an half Italian half Arabic song named after the rescue boat the artist donated to help humanitarian associations that save lives in the Mediterranean Sea; “Cara Italia” (Dear Italy), another one of his songs about his origins and a critique of right-wing political views;“L’Italiano” (The Italian), a song by Toto Cutugno about being un italiano vero (a true Italian).
With this mix, Ghali opened a window for us to see what really means to be a citizen with multiple origins and cultural backgrounds that may conflict with one another. Second and third generations are a hot topic at the moment in the country. For decades, Italy has been a country of emigration, but now it finds itself on the other side of the spectrum. According to ISTAT 2022 report, the foreign population in Italy amounts to about 5 million people. 1,3 million of them are minors, but only 300.000 have Italian citizenship, due to the country’s laws (more about them later). Ghali himself only became a “true Italian” (meaning, an Italian citizen) at 18 years-old, like many of his peer in similar situations. The face of the country is undeniably changing, but Italy does not seem ready to deal with these changes yet. The majority of the population still struggles to accept that someone who does not look stereotypically white may be born and raised in Italy.
What does it mean when we say home? And what happens when we have two of them? Or maybe even more than two? Does having Tunisian parents, like Ghali, make you less Italian? Or maybe, if anything, does him having Italian citizenship make him less Tunisian?
Let me sing, I am an Italian, a true Italian
“Let me sing, because I am proud of it, let me sing I’m an Italian, a true Italian”, these are the powerful words of the song “L’Italiano” that describes that alien feeling people with multicultural background know about and that it’s still hard to voice it out loud. However, we cannot generalize such experiences. First and second generations have different perspectives on their condition.
For first generations, the very act of migrating can have a negative impact on mental health. This is known as Ulysses syndrome, and is a side effect of the stress modern migration processes can bring upon people. On top of having to leave their loved ones and their homeland, many migrants unfortunately have to face uncertainty, long bureaucratic process, discrimination and the constant fear of being detained or repatriated. These issues can affect them for long periods of time, leaving them with the impression that their miserable condition is never going to end, and therefore producing symptoms of chronic and multiple stress. Ulysses syndrome is not a mental disorder, but rather a byproduct of “intense stress and mourning related to suffering relevant difficulties during migration such as loneliness, helplessness or lack of opportunities and that is expressed in the form of tension, nervousness, recurrent worries, sadness, difficulties sleeping, headaches and other stress-related somatic complaints.”
Furthermore, they can experience what Sayd describes as “double absence”: they are not integrated (nor recognized sometimes) in the society of their arrival country, but at the same time they are not part of their original society anymore.
On the other hand, this does not represent the condition of secondo generations. Born and raised in Italy, they technically completely integrated in the society. However, they may not have citizenship, which means they are not legally recognized by the country they were raised in. At the same time, they have their parents’ culture to take into consideration
More often than not, Italian media tend to describe immigrants as illegal wrongdoers that are there to commit crimes and steal jobs from Italians: they are perceived as thieves – of what, we have yet to understand – and they are not wanted and not welcomed, often because of the prejudices people have against the color of their skin or the religions they profess.
Since Italian media may be biased, we don’t want to erroneously fall into the traps of stereotypes and/or prejudices.
A 2017 survey by the Pew Research Center, showed that Italians were amongst the least tolerant people in Western Europe, with frequent nationalist, anti-migration, and anti-minorities attitudes.
In 2023, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) found out that Italian politicians and high-level government officials have used in different occasions hate speeches and racist statements against minorities in the medias and on social networks.
In this scenario, an Italian-Tunisian singing and claiming that Italianness was not only powerful, not only liberating, but also necessary.
Finally, for those who have their pieces scattered around countries, someone like them raised his voice and told them they are Italians, true Italians, that they were born in Italy, they speak Italian, they will get married in Italy and they will raise their children in Italy.
Italy is their country, and nobody should ever say otherwise.
Half of my identity
“Mediterranean, between me and you the Mediterranean. The familiar face of a stranger, orphan like a new atheist. Imagine the Koran on the radio, they speak badly about us in the news. […] Second mom, you are my second mom. There is no son that commits no mistakes, no. You dream about America; I dream about Italy. The new Italy”
Ghali sang about that double strangeness that second generations may feel when they find themselves born in a country and then feel rejected by it, while also be rejected by their parents’ country of origin: not enough to be Italian, not enough to be Tunisian.
Second generations often fail to value their “double faceted” identity and “bilingualism” as an asset and often experience a strong sense of “not belonging “strengthened by society which may lead to marginalization and even self-marginalization.
Luckily, projects like ColorY* can help us all understand the perspective of second generations. ColorY* is an online community founded by Tia Taylor in 2020. Taylor is not second generation herself; she is an American who immigrated to Italy many years ago. However, after George Floyd’s tragic murder, she felt like Italy was in need of space where racialized people could tell their experiences living in the country. And she was indeed right. ColorY* is a breath of fresh air on the Italian media landscape, as it centers racialized and second-generation people, giving them the opportunity to share their stories and their different point of views, instead of having other people speaking on their behalf.
Citizenship laws
The right to participate in the everyday life, to vote, to be recognized: that is the meaning of a citizenship. The “right to have rights”, as Hannah Arendt said.
But how do citizenships work?
There are three main models: Jus Sanguinis (right of blood) in which citizenship is determined by having one or both parents being citizens of a certain country; Jus Soli (right of soil) in which citizenship is determined by being born in a certain country; Jus Culturae (right of culture) in which citizenship is determined by passing a cultural test or attending public schools for a certain period. This is perhaps the most problematic one, because is very hard to determine how much culture one needs to have in order to be recognized as a part of a country.
Italy currently abides by the Jus Sanguini model, a legacy of the country’s emigration past, a way of keeping ties with the Italian Diaspora. But one cannot get keep looking at the past, the face of the country is changing and citizenship laws need to follow. Jus Sanguini allows for paradoxical situations, as it makes it easier for an American who had an Italian great-grandfather to get an Italian passport compared to a child born and raised in the country. It doesn’t matter that the American may not even be able to point Italy out on a map, according to this law, as long as their ancestor was born in Italy after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy (1861), they have more right to Italianness than a person who lived there all their lives, but just happens to have foreign parents.
Said people are only able to apply for citizenship once they turn 18. They have a one-year window to submit their application and provide proof of uninterrupted residency in Italy. If they manage to do so within the year, the process can be more streamlined, but if they miss the window, it becomes a lengthy and costly bureaucratic process.
A new model was initially discussed in December 2015, called Jus Culturae. According to it, children born it Italy or that had entered the country before turning 12 and had attended at least 5 years of school on national territory could be granted citizenship. Children born outside of Italy, but who entered the country between the ages of 12 and 18 could also apply for citizenship but after at least six years of school. The law was approved by the Lower House, but it never passed in Senate.
The law was discussed again in 2017 and 2019, always sparking heated debates. One would think that a country that had such a strong emigrational past (both internal and external) would be a little more lenient towards people who are now choosing it as their destination, that it would understand the struggle of looking for a better life, a safe place to grow roots and future generations. Unfortunately, in 2024, someone like Ghali singing that they are a “true Italian”, is still controversial.
Just recently, the Parliamentary Intergroup for Fundamental Rights discussed the topic once again during a plenary session. They stated that keeping on ignoring the need for a citizenship reform is a form of institutionalized racism, as it heavily affects the lives of millions. As they pointed out, with the current situation, an Argentinian may be able to vote for Italian elections, therefore having a concrete impact on the country, and yet so many people who actively live there are not granted the same privilege. Once again, one the paradoxical situations that Italy’s Jus Sanguinis allows for.
It seems clear that Italy is staring to feel the need for official validation of all the “limbic” situations that co-exist on its territory, and we hope it’s making the right steps forward. In case Ius Culturae was adopted, Italy would then be the first European country to grant citizenship through recognition of course of studies.
The right to exist
Ultimately, the real questions would be: what is the root of living together? Specifically, what is the relationship between each citizen? Is citizenship just a status? What makes us stranger or familiar with each other? On what premises do we grant protection and respect?
Some may think these are trivial questions, but around those concepts orbit the freedom of people, the right to exist within boundaries, to be heard, to be respected, to be Italians.
Hannah Arendt explained this whole situation well in her book The Origin of Totalitarianism (1951), which described the conditions of Jewish people during and after the Holocaust, without rights and identities: «[…] Here is the crux of the problem. The deprivation of human rights manifests itself especially in the lack of a place in the world that gives opinions weight and actions an effect».
And that place in the world may be written on a piece of paper many deem unimportant or take for granted: a citizenship.