Religion for the political rights of immigrants and refugees? An empirical exploration among Italian students

Abstract

This article focuses on the support, or lack of support, for political rights of immigrants and refugees. Confronted with relatively big groups of migrants and refugees in the Southern part of the country, Italian youth is a highly relevant population to ask the following question: whose rights are human rights? Are political rights the property of all people residing in a country, or can they only be claimed by its citizens? This question is not merely an academic one; it touches the lives of more than ten thousand migrants arriving on the Italian shores every month while risking their lives. This burning issue engages intensely political voices and actors in civil society. One among the latter, the Catholic Church, has become more vocal in the last years in advocating an extension of the rights of immigrants and refugees, sometimes even creating a public clash between bishops’ statements and the voices of those politicians who express populist and xenophobic ideas. This contribution concerns the role of the Catholic Church in Italy’s debate about the political rights of foreigners; not only at the level of public statements and official teachings of the Catholic hierarchy but also at the level of Italian students’ opinions on these matters.