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SCHOOLS

Italy citizenship reform to affect 400,000 children

More than 400,000 school children will be eligible for Italian citizenship under planned reforms, based on new government figures.

Italy citizenship reform to affect 400,000 children
The number of children with foreign parents in Italian schools rose by 2.1 percent in a year. School photo: Shutterstock

Of a total of 802,785 foreign pupils studying in Italian schools over the past academic year, 51.7 percent of the children were born in the country.

They are currently not allowed to apply for Italian citizenship until they are 18, although under government proposals Italian-born pupils will have the opportunity to become citizens as children.

READ MORE: Immigrant kids may get swifter Italy citizenship

Pupils without Italian citizenship represent just 9.0 percent of the total, although the overall number of foreign children in schools grew by 2.1 percent in a year. The number of foreign pupils born in Italy jumped by 11.8 percent, according to the education ministry figures.

The children’s parents are predominantly from Romania, Albania, Morocco and China, while families from the Philippines, Moldova, India, Ukraine and Peru also feature among the top nationalities.

Schools in the northern region of Lombardy teach the most foreign pupils, with 30 percent of students in Pioltello, Milan province, having non-Italian citizenships.

The central regions of Emilia Romagna and Umbria also host a high proportion of foreign students, the education ministry said. 

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DISCRIMINATION

Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

Parents with Arabic-sounding names get a less friendly response and less help when choosing schools in Sweden, according to a new study from the University of Uppsala.

Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

In one of the largest discrimination experiments ever carried out in the country, 3,430 primary schools were contacted via email by a false parent who wanted to know more about the school. The parent left information about their name and profession.

In the email, the false parent stated that they were interested in placing their child at the school, and questions were asked about the school’s profile, queue length, and how the application process worked. The parent was either low-educated (nursing assistant) or highly educated (dentist). Some parents gave Swedish names and others gave “Arabic-sounding” names.

The report’s author, Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh said that the study had demonstrated “relatively large and statistically significant negative effects” for the fictional Arabic parents. 

“Our results show that responses to emails signed with Arabic names from school principals are less friendly, are less likely to indicate that there are open slots, and are less likely to contain positive information about the school,” he told The Local. 

READ ALSO: Men with foreign names face job discrimination in Sweden: study

The email responses received by the fictional Arabic parents were rated five percent less friendly than those received by the fictional Swedish parents, schools were 3.2 percentage points less likely to tell Arabic parents that there were open slots at the school, and were 3.9 percentage points less likely to include positive information about the municipality or the school. 

There was no statistically significant difference in the response rate and number of questions answered by schools to Swedish or Arabic-sounding parents. 

Taghizadeh said that there was more discrimination against those with a low social-economic status job than against those with an Arabic name, with the worst affected group being those who combined the two. 

“For socioeconomic discrimination, the results are similar, however, here the discrimination effects are somewhat larger,” he told The Local. 

Having a high economic status profession tended to cancel out the negative effects of having an Arabic name. 

“The discrimination effects are substantially important, as they could potentially indirectly influence parents’ school choice decision,” Taghizadeh said.

Investigating socioeconomic discrimination is also important in itself, as discrimination is seldom studied and as explicit discrimination legislation that bans class-based discrimination is rare in Western countries including Sweden, in contrast to laws against ethnic discrimination.” 

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