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Italian Committee for UNICEF Case Study: Working to prevent social exclusion of
immigrant children.
Italy did not become a country of net immigration until the mid-1970s to the mid 1980s but
nowadays the country ranks 16th among countries in the number of immigrants within its borders
and the total number of immigrants in Italy is about 2.5 million1.
‘ Children in immigrant families in eight affluent countries’, a recent study released by the UNICEF
Innocenti Research Center, presents data on the situation of immigrant children in Australia, France,
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States - that
together include almost 40 per cent of all persons in the world living outside their countries of birth.
As regard to Italy children in immigrant families account for a large share of the overall child
population (10 per cent)2, which means that in Italy one child in ten is living with at least one
immigrant parent.
In Italy more than three children in five in immigrant families (63 per cent) are in the second
generation3. Second generation children are likely to have a strong commitment to the country of
settlement of their parents not only because they were born in this country, but also because they
will likely spend most or all of their lives there, attending school and learning the local language
and traditions. In Italy they can become Italian citizens by virtue of their birth only under certain
conditions. About one half of children in immigrant families are Italian citizens.
The study found that there is considerable diversity in education outcomes among children in
immigrant families relative to children in native-born families. A recent research by Italian Ministry
1
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Children in immigrant families in eight affluent countries,
August 2009;
2
3
Ibidem;
Ibidem;
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of Education4 finds that students in immigrant families experience less success in school than
students in native Italian families. Moreover a study carried out in nine cities found that overall
scholastic achievements were influenced by social class among students in native-born families and
students in immigration families, and the social class explains part of the differences in educational
outcomes between the two groups.
The example given above is just one among the many, but the example itself tells a lot about the
condition of children in immigrant families and it is because one of the greatest sources of
inequality lies in education disadvantages.
Children in immigrant families often differ from the native population in cultural, religious,
linguistic and ethnic background, thereby posing important challenges and opportunities for civil
integration and social inclusion, but prominent as citizens over the coming years that is why social,
economic and civic integration of these children is of critical policy relevance.
Both non-discrimination and social inclusion to happen require not only Government’s intervention,
but also a positive attitude toward immigrants. In presence of discrimination it will be more likely
that policies to foster civic participation or to promote access to education will not be effective
because people who find themselves in a hostile environment will not feel confident enough to
claim for their rights.
In fact an immigrant who finds himself in a hostile environment could activate a self-categorization
and then he will act according to the script invoked by that categorization. In other words, if the
prevalent stereotype is that an immigrant is a criminal who doesn’t deserve the integration in the
Italian society, due to the normative and empirical expectations embedded in that script the
immigrant would not trust the Italian Institutions and then he will not refer to them to claim his
rights. Moreover this re-categorization could work as a self-fulfillment prophecy according to
Mencarini Letizia, Emiliana Baldoni, Gianpiero della Zanna, ‘The situation of children in
immigrant families in Italy: Changes and Chalenges’, Innocenti working paper, n° 2009-15,
UNICEF Innocenti Research Center, Florence, 2009;
4
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which immigrant people can actually isolate themselves or even commit law offence because they
don’t see any other chance.
Thus, even in presence of positive social policies toward immigration the presence of discrimination
could lead to the social exclusion of immigrant people. That is why for an effective social inclusion
of immigrant people and their children is necessary to apply the human rights based approach to the
immigration policies and to change negative social norms toward immigration.
In recent years the Italian society has seen a re-categorization of the group ‘immigrant people’
mainly through the medias and the political propaganda and this has led to a polarization of Italian
society often resulting in episodes of racism against immigrants and their progressively social
exclusion. So the challenge in front of us it is how to re-establish a positive attitude toward
immigrants resulting in a climate of social justice and in the respect of the immigrants’ human
rights to non-discrimination and dignity.
This paper tries to address the dynamics of discrimination toward immigrants through the lent of the
Social Norms Theory and according to it to find innovative solutions to set the human rights based
approach in the policies toward immigration and to effectively integrate immigrants and their
children in the Italian system and society.
The changing legal norms
In 2008 the Italian cabinet agreed on the adoption of a complex set of legislative measures that are
referred to as the ‘security package’. This package is composed of a series of laws broadly covering
those categorized as EU citizens, third-country nationals and most particularly, Roma.
The approval of the ‘security package’ is a matter of concern for the Italian Committee for UNICEF
because it will have an impact not only on the foreign adult population but also on that of foreign
children living on the Italian territory.
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Following the presentation of the ‘security package’ the Italian Committee for UNICEF has
promoted a technical working group composed by associations dealing with the promotion and the
implementation of the rights of children and adolescents including those of foreign origins.
The documents and the proposals of the working group went out after a reflection on the principles
of the Convention of the rights of the child, particularly on the general principle of nondiscrimination.
Since the approval of the Security package the main issues of concern for the Italian Committee for
UNICEF have been the following:
the main legislative acts that have been adopted allow, inter alia, for facilitated expulsions, the
transformation of irregular immigration into a crime and an extension of the period of detention for
irregular immigrants. In this way foreign children, with illegal immigration status, will be extremely
marginalized and will avoid contact with the Italian institutions and will not have access to the
social and educational services. Moreover this new set of legal norms could produce the risk that
the illegal staying population will avoid health services with high negative impact on children’s
health.
The approval of the ‘security package’ is a matter of concern for the Italian Committee for UNICEF
because it will have an impact not only on the foreign adult population, but also on that of foreign
children living on the Italian territory.
The changing social norms
Italian society has made, over the years, the obvious expression of racism undesirable and social
norms have increasingly dictated the acceptance of members of different racial and ethnic groups.
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But the situation is changing and overt racism is becoming socially acceptable and for many
individuals a ‘new racism’ has been driven by society’s expectations and standards.
It appears that societal norms have been altered allowing racial animosities to be expressed. One
example of these shifting norms is the proliferation of discriminatory statements on Internet and on
Social Networks and recent wave of racism and xenophobia against the Roma. These episodes are
leading to growing social exclusion of the immigrant population.
Some examples:
An online petition against Romanian people:
http://www.petitiononline.com/norumeni/petition.html
A documentary showing the living conditions of Roma people in Italy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtDgye5otw4
Racist comments in a forum hosted by an online newspaper:
http://www.padania.org/community/discussioni-padane/32.html
Consequently social exclusion and discrimination of groups of immigrants, including children, are
producing denials or violations of their rights. Discrimination is working explicitly, through
institutions, norms and values and it can also have invisible impacts, where values and ideas affect
the self-perceptions of excluded people and their capabilities to claim their rights.
Let us try to apply Bicchieri’s (2006) Social Norm Theory to explain why discrimination is
becoming so prominent in Italy and which are the possible solutions to this new wave of racism.
Bicchieri’s social norm theory tell us that there are some conditions for a social norm to exist:
Conditional preference: people prefer to follow the social norm when the following expectations
are satisfied;
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Empirical expectations: the individual believes that a sufficiently large part of the relevant
situations conforms to the social norm in a given situation;
Normative expectations: the individual believes that a sufficiently large part of the relevant
population expects him/her to conform to the social norm in a given situations. (Bicchieri 2006)
Are there in the Italian society empirical and normative expectations about discrimination and so a
conditional preference to discriminate?
My answer is that in the Italian context the political leaders are acting as the powerful leaders that
can change positive social norms toward immigrants by enforcing a law that criminalizing the
immigrants could reinforce people’s normative and empirical expectations for discrimination. The
normative expectations of a large part of the Italian population could be based on the following
assumption: if the majority of the people voted for this Government and if the Government
approved a law against immigrants maybe the majority of people expects me to be against
immigrants as well. One argument could be that people who didn’t vote for the Government will
not change their normative expectations, but the role of the media in spreading negative images
related to immigrants can indeed affect their empirical expectations and so producing a clash
between personal beliefs and empirical expectations which results in the individual’s preference to
follow the empirical expectations.
The mass-medias are changing the empirical expectations toward immigrants because they are
showing only bad episodes related to immigration and this is changing the perception of the Italian
people about immigration.
In other words, what is happening according to the Social Norm Theory is a re-categorization of the
group ‘immigrant people’. Even if a person has never been offended by an immigrant ha can
actually think that every immigrant might be a law offender because is what the mass-medias and
the political leaders he trusts are saying.
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Two examples from the Italian Newspaper:
The title in the newspaper blames the fact that the Municipality of Rome wastes its money in
investing in the education of Roma children.
In this example the former President George W. Bush blame the US (the Statue of Liberty) to have
cheated on him with an African descendant person (President Obama). The word he uses to refer to
Obama is a racist one.
This is an example on how the language is changing allowing racist words to appear in the
newspaper.
So the attitude of the Italian society toward immigration has shifted from a situation in which
people didn’t even think to question about the legitimacy of the non-discrimination principle to a an
intermediate situation in which people were reminded about this principle to an ultimate situation in
which people finally find some justifications to accept discriminatory policies and acts of racism
committed against immigrants.
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That said, there are normative and empirical expectations toward discrimination that are changing
for the worst, so to address the problem of discrimination we have to reverse these expectations.
How to prevent that legal norms will not affect negatively positive social norms?
In this context the challenge for the Italian Committee for UNICEF is to promote a rights-based
approach emphasizing non-discrimination, inclusion, and empowerment, particularly for vulnerable
or marginalized groups of children.
The emerging stereotype of immigrant as law offender influences children and adults’ perspectives
alike and undermine social norms rejecting discrimination against immigrant people.
In this context to contrast social exclusion of immigrant children is necessary to work at the civil
society level and to involve children and young people to advocate for the non-discrimination
principle to be respected.
The reflection is thus on how to foster, at civil society level, positive social norms rejecting
discrimination to promote the rights of immigrant children and how to avoid instead that a culture
of intolerance will spread threatening the rights of immigrants population, including children.
From the Social Norm theory we have learned that when a behaviour is driven by a social norm, we
can predict a change in people’s behaviour if their empirical and normative expectations change.
Before to define a strategy to change empirical and normative expectations we should consider
whether or not the pluralistic ignorance phenomena is in place. When there is pluralistic ignorance
private normative beliefs diverge form behaviour. In other words a social norm could survive even
if a large part of the population dislikes it. In fact, normative beliefs don’t usually affect behaviour
because when a social norm is in place the majority of people before changing their behaviour want
to be sure that other people will do the same (Bicchieri 2006). So applying this concept to this case
study we can assume that even if a large part of the population thinks that discrimination is bad they
will not change their attitude until the normative and empirical expectations will decay.
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Common knowledge on what the majority of people think is not sufficient to change oneself
behaviour. To abandon a norm is necessary a change in the empirical expectations: the individual
will not change his attitude until he sees other people changing their behaviour. We learn form the
Social Norm Theory that when there is a clash between normative and empirical expectations
people prefer to follow what other people do (that is, their empirical expectations). So an effective
strategy aimed to change negative social norms has to work on the empirical expectations.
But how to change the empirical expectations at national level especially when there is a legal norm
that sustains them? We learned from theory that education itself on the negative effect of a bad
social norms is not sufficient, so we have to show people that the behaviour of the majority is
changing.
Setting the Human rights based approach at national level and changing negative social
norms against immigrants people
To start our strategy to overcome the re-categorization of the group ‘immigrant people’ we need to
build a new consensus on human rights principles and especially on the principle of nondiscrimination. In other words we have to set up a new script, based on Human rights approach,
defining the behaviour toward immigrants and to generate explicit support to that.
So we have to define a strategy that combines the review of law and policies to comply with human
rights principles with the generation of a positive social movement to sustain the non-discrimination
principle.
The idea to implement this strategy would be that the Italian Committee for UNICEF promotes a
national awareness campaign on the non-discrimination principle building it on strategic alliances
with civil society and with Institutions and media to reach as many people as possible, putting in
place an organized diffusion of the information.
The architecture of the Campaign could thus be the following:
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Promotion of the human rights based approach
In a national context the promotion of the human rights and democracy curriculum requires a close
cooperation with the State educational agencies to assure that the curriculum will spread uniformly
across the country and that it will be a meaningful instrument to start sharing a common knowledge
about the non-discrimination principle. This approach is not a new one, in fact the Italian
Committee for UNICEF has been promoted human rights education in the schools for a long time.
What can actually be new drawing on this reflection about the social norms is the approach that we
can use to promote human rights in schools. In the case of the promotion of the non-discrimination
principle instead of having modules dedicated to explain the badness of discrimination we can
invite students to laboratories through which they can experience what does it means to be
discriminated against. To give sustainability to these laboratories in each school students’ leaders
should be identified, both among Italians and among students of foreign origins. Those peer-leaders,
after being trained, should promote group discussion on the non-discrimination principle that should
lead to the public declaration of the ‘Discrimination free school’.
So the attempt is to try to translate the Tostan approach into a formal education system to change
young people behaviour through public deliberations on human rights and non-discrimination
principle.
Build up networks with Institutions
An effective strategy to change attitude toward discrimination, implies political lobby to change law
that could have as ultimate effect the spread of discrimination in the population and to endorse new
law promoting social inclusion. We know that relations between legal and social norms are often
complicated: enforcing a law which content is against the prevalent bad social norm can backfire.
So, even if changes in the present Italian law on immigration are needed we have to work at the
civil society level to assure that those changes would not been disregarded by people because we
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know that when a social norm is in place could not be sufficient having negative sanctions to assure
that people will respect the law.
To ensure that people will abide the law the State has to ‘teach’ people on the advantages of the
law. For example, the merely introductions of sanctions against discriminatory behaviour doesn’t’
lead necessarily to a behaviour change, because as we have learned from Antanas Mockus
experience as Mayor of Bogota’ the success of the measures promoted by the Government often
depends largely on the citizenry. So, as Organization that advocate for children’s right UNICEF has
to lobby the Italian Institutions to change those legal norms that could have as ultimate effect the
discrimination of immigrant children but as Organization that promotes positive behaviour change
UNICEF has to work at civil society level to create those expectations that will guarantee
effectiveness to the non-discrimination principle stated in the law.
Social mobilization
Social mobilization is crucial to change people’s empirical expectations and so to change people’s
behaviour. At national level an effective social mobilization strategy requires a coordination efforts
among different organizations that share the same objective to reach as many people as possible.
Learning from Mockus’ experience in Bogota a social mobilization strategy requires also innovative
tools that can capture people’s emotions and make them feel that the path they have taken is the
right one. What is important it is to define a strategy to mobilize people against discrimination in a
positive way, in a way that make them feel rewarded for what they are doing. The social
mobilization also must have visibility to show other people that feelings and behaviour against
immigrants are changing and to build up the critical mass of people needed to reach the tipping
point that makes the shift from the old social norm (discrimination) to the new social norm (nondiscrimination) automatic. To assure visibility to the social mobilization at the national level a
media strategy is needed.
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National media campaign
The national media campaign should follow the same principle that drives the social mobilization:
‘we are not acting against something, we are acting for something’.
In the highly polarized Italian context a media campaign condemning discrimination could backfire
and could have as ultimate result to strengthen people’s argument for discrimination.
So the aim of the campaign should not be to show the bad effect of the discrimination or to
condemn it, but it should show positive example of people acting against discrimination and should
give the sense that the majority of people is acting in that way.
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