Executive summary

• Author: Chiara Favilli
• Pages: 5-11

5

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. Introduction

Italy is a country made up of 20 regions, each with its own traditions and history. The main

differences, in terms of working conditions, job opportunities and the quality of public

services (education, healthcare and transport), are between the northern and southern

regions. The family is at the centre of the structure of society and of social welfare, with

extended families still living together, in particular in the south. Organised crime,

corruption, the black economy and tax evasion are structural scourges that still hinder the

full development of the country, with the complicity of a political class that has never been

able to tackle them adequately.

Some relevant data on the Italian population are provided by Istat, the Istituto nazionale

di statistica (Italian National Institute for Statistics). According to the most recent surveys,

in a population of 60 391 000,1 there are about 2 500 000 people with disabilities, which

represents about 4.2 % of the total population.2 Pupils with disability number 150 000, or

3 % of the total number of students. One million people identify themselves as homosexual

or bisexual.3 There are 5 234 000 foreign nationals, but no data are available on the racial

or ethnic origin of the population. With regard to religion, 76.5 % of the total population

have been baptised into the Catholic Church, although only around 25 % declare

themselves to be practising Catholics. Muslims represent around 2 % of the population;

the same percentage as Orthodox Christians. The Jewish community has a historical

presence in Italy and has about 35 000 members.

The majority of judgments in the field of discrimination law are still based on the ground

of nationality, although the application of anti-discrimination law on other grounds is

increasing. However, discrimination law is still not perceived as a specific sector of the law,

and is ignored even in databases that are commonly used by judges and lawyers. Both on

political platforms and in the social sciences, discrimination is still a low-priority issue. The

marginalisation of the activity of the Ufficio Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni Razziali (UNAR)

(National Office Against Racial Discrimination), an office of the Government that is

supposed to be the equality body, is both a cause and an effect of this lack of awareness,

at least among politicians.

Surveys about perceptions of discrimination are very rare, so it is difficult to provide

accurate estimates of the frequency and magnitude of discrimination in all fields – and

media reports are often very inaccurate. Certainly, hostile attitudes can be observed

towards different groups of people, mostly in relation to the recent waves of immigration

and asylum seekers. Moreover, hostility against the Roma is becoming an increasingly

heated issue, with several politicians openly supporting policies of segregation in housing

and education. School drop-out rates among Roma pupils are an issue of serious concern.

They may be a direct consequence of housing segregation, with camps based far from

schools and sudden transfers of people from one camp to another.

Racial and ethnic discrimination often overlaps with discrimination on the ground of religion

and belief, mostly in the case of ethno-religious groups such as ‘Arabs’ and ‘Muslims’, when

discrimination occurs without any distinction being made between the two terms.4 The

large influx of refugees and asylum applicants has worsened the general picture still

further. With regard to religious minorities not linked to immigration (Jews, Waldensians

1Istat statistics for 2019, available at: http://dati.istat.it/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=DCIS_POPRES1.

2Istat (2010), Disability in Italy (La disabilità in Italia), available at:

https://www.fabi.it/public/documenti/salute-e-sicurezza/7286ISTAT_DISAB_2010.pdf.

3Istat (2012), The homosexual population in Italian society – 2011(La popolazione omosessuale nella

società italiana –2011), available at: http://www.istat.it/it/files/2012/05/report-omofobia_6giugno.pdf.

4See the extensive and up-to-date press record on hate speech edited by Associazione Carta di Roma,

available at: http://www.cartadiroma.org/.