Collaborative on Global Children's Issues

The topic of unaccompanied minors (UMMs, or minor migrants who are alone) in Italy is a controversial issue that concerns not only political and governmental circles but all of civil society and the Catholic Church. There are several studies on the migration phenomenon that attempt to explore the issue of unaccompanied minors from multiple points of view, both to come up with best practices in terms of social welfare and shared commitment to their protection, as well as at the level of proposals for decisive ways forward undertaken by governmental authorities. In this blog post, starting from a general overview of the UMMs in Italy, I want to mention an ethical model I consider virtuous and already proposed elsewhere: subsidiary cooperation for development. Inspired by the social teaching of the Church, this approach calls for a person-centered reflection on the UMM as the center/focus in protection systems.

UMMs in Italy

As of November 30, 2023, there were 24,215 UMMs in Italy, of which 88.72% were male and 11.28% were female (Ministry of Labor and Social Policy). The distribution of UMMs by age group was as follows:

• 0-6 years: 425 minors or 1.76%

• 7-14 years: 3,368 minors or 13.91%

• 15 years: 2,907 minors or 12.00%

• 16 years: 6,597 minors or 27.24%

• 17 years: 10,918 minors or 45.09%

From this data, we see that the majority of UMMs arriving in Italy are 16- and 17-year-olds, whom the Italian system by law must integrate, especially in terms of schooling.

Tied to these obligations are some issues:

1. The recognition of educational qualifications: in Italy, children without formal status in the European Union are not recognized with higher education degrees. In fact, by law, once they arrive in Italy, they must return to the school benches to earn the title of Licenza media, usually attended by 13-year-olds. So, these 15- to 17-year-old UMMs, sent to Italy primarily to work, must instead go to school with boys several years younger than themselves.

2. Immigration legislation: Once a person reaches the age of majority, there are two options. Either there is a work contract as a condition to remain in Italy regularly, or he or she must be repatriated. In the latter case, looking at minors who have arrived at almost 18 years of age and are obliged to attend school despite being in Italy to work, there are  resulting social problems. The children go to work irregularly even under exploitation, drop out of school, and end up contributing to delinquency circles.

Among the countries of origin are Egypt (4,851 minors; 20.03%), Ukraine (4,184 minors; 17.28%), Tunisia (2,490 minors; 10.28%), Gambia (2,123 minors; 8.77%), and Guinea Conakry (2,064 minors, 8.52%). In this regard, we can certainly take up some theories of migration scholars. In "A Theory of Migration," Everett Lee paved the way to detect the push and pull factors, which help to explain some of the reasons why UMMs leave their countries and choose Italy or other European countries as their landfall.

Push factors are elements that push minors to leave their countries, such as war, poverty, environmental disasters, corruption, and discrimination. The main reason UMMs separate from their families, when there is a choice, is to arrive in Europe to accumulate money to send back home, by which they help their families and prove their success. 

Pull factors, on the other hand, are elements that attract minors to a particular country, such as Italy. These include:

1. The voices of peers, who have already arrived and describe their experience as very positive and successful, choose to lie in order not to tell relatives and friends about their potential failure.

2. The presence of a community of fellow citizens in their destination country.

3. Italian legislation in terms of UMMs which state that UMMs in Italy must be treated as "Italian minors in a state of abandonment" and have the right to access all services in the country, from health to schooling (compulsory education), family fostering, and adoption. If, at the border, a migrant is identified as a UMM (thus "alone" and under 18), he or she has the right to be directly placed on a "fast track" and benefit from all the rights given by the Constitution to citizens.

An Ethical Model: Subsidiary Cooperation for Development

Once they arrive in Italy, UMMs meet police officials, quaestors, doctors, nurses, migrant center operators, cultural mediators, lawyers, guardians, and civil society volunteers. Each of them has a role that the reception system cannot disregard because it involves several stages that must be entrusted to specialized operators who are directly in touch with the UMMs, and it is the rich contribution of all the operators involved that contributes to successful guardianship and functional integration. Despite all the logistic and practical problems related to the high number of migrants in Italy, officials are committed to safeguarding UMMs.

The ethical model mentioned here, subsidiary cooperation for development, has as its foundation three principles of the Catholic Church's social teaching:

1. The dignity of the human person: according to the Church, the dignity of the human person is based on the relational nature of human beings, such as being part of a "body" (society or community) for whose development each person and all persons are responsible. The Church's definition of development is the "transition from less than human conditions to truly human ones."

2. The principles of subsidiarity and solidarity define the responsibility of every social agent, tied to their scope of application and without invading that of others, to contribute to the protection and development of the most vulnerable by virtue of human dignity. They protect the person and the community from all forms of paternalism that would imply the social annihilation of the most vulnerable ones.

3. Cooperation: Pope Paul VI affirmed that "nations are the architects of their development, and they must bear the burden of this work; but they cannot accomplish it if they live in isolation from others." It is not possible to protect human dignity and vulnerable people, and contribute in a subsidiary way to the development of peoples, without healthy cooperation that enables each person and all people to act responsibly for integral development.

So subsidiary cooperation for development, as an ethical child/person-centered model, can be defined as having as its foundation “the principle of the dignity of the human person of the ‘minor alone’ (UMM), and all social agents acting together, in their field, according to their possibilities and integrating to obviate their limitations, so that the UMM sees his fundamental rights recognized and is protected (safeguarded), welcomed, and integrated into the society where he lands."

It is thus in the construction of a virtuous network of the agents mentioned above around the child that each person in the community, within their field of responsibility, contributes to the minor’s integral development by also allowing the child to become active and proactive in this process. In Italy, there are some virtuous contexts in which this happens, albeit without any real awareness of the definition and importance of such a model. In others, unfortunately, it is still completely absent.

Following such an ethical model, it is possible to put in place best practices with the possibility to cooperate among an international network for the sharing of the same best practices that can be adapted to particular contexts and places and keep as an objective the safeguarding of the child (UMM or vulnerable person) for their integral development.

Angela Rinaldi is an associate lecturer at the Institute of Anthropology for Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. She holds a Ph.D. in social teaching of the Church and public ethics from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Pontifical Gregorian University. She is the author of the books Una migrazione che dà speranza. I minori non accompagnati in Italia (2020), Hacia una Iglesia que proteja a los más pequeños (2020), and Dalla parte dei piccoli. Chiesa e abusi sessuali (2018).