The assimilationist drift of the Italian jurisprudence on integration in the years of the ‘refugee crisis’

The coexistence of different cultures in the same legal system is a given fact of contemporary ‘Western’ societies, produced by structural migratory phenomena that are not realistically reversible and that brought about the advent of the so-called ‘multicultural state’. In a multicultural state, a cultural majority lives side-by-side with one or more cultural, ethnic or religious minorities, who sometimes identify themselves with a set of values and principles that could be regarded as incompatible with those of the host country’s legal system, thus generating what has been described by scholars as a ‘meeting’ (or a ‘clash’) of cultures. This chapter documents the shift in Italian legal rulings on specific issues of migrant cultural practices in Italy towards a more assimilationist stance, reflecting the wider political dynamics of migrant and refugee arrivals in Italy.