Italian citizenship by descent: blood, ties, and a change of course

A recent commentary by Andrea Molle in Italia Oggi asks a simple but uncomfortable question: who is really Italian today? For more than a century, Italy had one of the most “generous” citizenship regimes in the world, based on ius sanguinis. In practice, this meant that millions of people, sometimes many generations and continents away, could claim Italian citizenship mainly through ancestry, with little or no real connection to Italy.

Molle argues that the latest reforms do not amount to a revolution, but to a clear change of course. Citizenship is no longer treated as an automatic inheritance; it is increasingly framed as a relationship that requires continuity, presence, and at least some degree of participation in the life of the country. The aim is to move away from producing “on paper” citizens who lack any concrete link with Italy, a system that had historical reasons but has become difficult to justify administratively and symbolically.

This shift, recently endorsed by the Constitutional Court, brings new tensions. On one side, there is the risk of weakening the historical bond with Italian communities abroad, which have long played an important cultural and economic role and have reacted harshly to these changes. On the other, Italy is trying to be coherent with what it asks of immigrants within its borders: citizenship as a real, not merely formal, belonging. In the background, Molle notes, lies the broader question that politics has largely avoided: is a genealogical link enough to be “Italian”, or do we now expect something more?