I have been in Italy since I was two years old, after 25 years I am still not an Italian citizen

I found myself in Italy almost unconsciously.It's as if I've always lived there:like those born there, I have never had a choice to make.I had not yet turned two when I was catapulted to the outskirts of Naples, to escape the economic and social devastation of post-Soviet Ukraine.

I grew up hearing myself called Andrew, in kindergarten as well as by my parents.When my mother explained to me the reason for thatAndriy I struggled to understand the paperwork I rummaged around the house.I thought they were referring to my father, my namesake (common practice in Eastern European countries), but then I read my date of birth.

When I arrived it was 1999.In the same year, the Ukrainian striker Andriy Shevchenko also landed in Italy, with whom most Italians would end up associating my country, and therefore me too, at least until the political upheavals of the last decade.While I was growing up he became a star of Silvio Berlusconi's Milan, and I slowly became convinced that even Andriy It wasn't that bad of a name after all.

But in any case I preferred Andrea, they continued to call me that anyway.However, I shared the same birthday with Shevchenko and Berlusconi:on September 29th.My grandfather from Caserta by marriage, the only Italian in the extended family jus sanguinis, and early Forza Italia voter, sold it to me almost as a sign of destiny.I nodded obediently, hoping to earn a five or ten euro tip.

I had just missed the rise of Berlusconism due to age issues, but I had the opportunity to grow up immersed in his cultural references, as well as witness his normalization and posthumous beatification.When Berlusconi – the man against whom I had then shaped my fragile political beliefs – died, I sensed once again why Italy continued to make me feel incomplete.Another piece of the world I was born into had disappeared forever (except on election posters), but I still remained where I started.

After twenty-five years of residence, I do not possess Italian citizenship, and I still do not meet the requirements to apply for it today.My Ukrainian (even worse Russian) is at the same level as the Italian spoken by a Sicilian born in Germany:I speak and I fully understand it, I write it with some uncertainty, however I feel ashamed of it.How difficult it is, every time, to fill in the 'native speaker' section in the CV.

Reforming the Citizenship Law:a goal he has been waiting for for 30 years

Before becoming an adult, every year, or almost every year, I returned to my region of birth, Transcarpathia, the westernmost Oblast of Ukraine.There they remind me, in no particular order, of how: the Italian, Celentano, Andrian (sic), Berlusconi, Iglesias (?!).In Ukraine, as in other countries, giving street nicknames is a widespread practice in small communities, and during my summer breaks from Italian school my nicknames betrayed my origins.Origin?Is it possible that even there they didn't consider me like them?

Upon returning to class in Italy, I had become accustomed to the teachers' mispronunciation of my surname (Braschenko?Brascaio?) or the more banal nicknames of his football teammates (Sheva).Everywhere I went, I met someone who wanted at all costs to remind me of my double, multiple, identity.Not that it bothered me:I was probably white enough, and equally extroverted, not to notice the abuses, if there were any.When we played football in the square after school, my tight Neapolitan was the attraction of the Arenella squares.“Chillo there is Ukrainian, you write?”

The last time I returned to Transcarpathia was at the end of January 2022, a few weeks before the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.Before leaving, the war already seemed more likely than possible, but like many Ukrainians and others, I had deliberately chosen not to believe it.

Friends from Bologna, where I had been studying for five years, offered themselves as potential candidate(s) for a marriage, so as to give me the Italian citizenship that would allow me to leave the country in the event of martial law.I smiled at their jokes to exorcise the tension, but when, like other times, I said goodbye to my father on the highway that leads to Hungary and then to Italy we both perceived that this time we wouldn't see each other for a long time, regardless of our choices.For the first time, at least as an adult, during these goodbyes that I hated, I burst into tears.

Not even a month later, a message from him on Skype at five in the morning woke me up. “Let's go”, there is war in our country.It doesn't matter what language you read it in:It still sucks unspeakably.And in fact the identity overflowed.That country which I had kept in the drawer for years, disappointed by the political betrayal of the Euromaidan revolution, and which I only dusted off during sporting events (don't ask me why, but I feel more Italian in everything apart from football support) was knocking on my door again. soul.It called into question, once again, my entire life.

Sleepless nights, the anguish of the noise of the planes taking off from Borgo Panigale, the Telegram groups, the hatred against the rampant pro-Putinism in Italy, the first paid articles that happened a bit by chance, the hope of a Ukrainian resistance that would have shortened the war:for months I didn't feel present anywhere.Physically in my room in Bologna, with my mind in the bombed places, where in reality I had never set foot.The easternmost point of Ukraine that I have seen remains Kyiv, practically in its centre.

Or perhaps the anger stemmed from this:Russia was razing places I had never seen to the ground, forever precluding the possibility of visiting them, while in the meantime I had built a parallel life for myself and to see Odessa, Kharkiv, Mariupol there remained only one viable choice:abandon everything in Italy and return to Ukraine, with no certainty of return.What sense could all this have?The country in which I had spent my entire conscious life had chosen not to recognize me, the one in which I had never lived would probably have forced me to defend it if I set foot in it, or at least would have prohibited me from leaving it for an indefinite period.

This crossroads made me feel like a coward, and continues to do so.In recent years, some have called me a journalist, but I feel uneasy in defining myself as such without having the possibility of describing the places I write about with my own eyes.Last year, in the difficult transition from university to work, I told myself that in the absence of opportunities in Italy I could return to Ukraine to report on the war.I don't know how serious I was, but I chose to keep it as a last resort.It potentially makes me feel a bit of that courage that I don't have.

My passion for writing, with ups and downs, floats, and in the meantime I started working in the environment I always dreamed of finding myself in:I write for a European Union agency.That European Union that I had dreamed of for my country of origin since I was a child, because Kyiv's entry would have allowed me to feel less like a second-class citizen.Or, at least, to be able to travel freely without waiting twelve hours in the car at Hungarian or Polish customs.

Twenty years after my childhood dreams, and in between a revolution in 2014 in which community flags were bathed in blood, Ukraine is still outside the European Union.Likewise, I am not yet Italian enough for the country whose entire dialect kaleidoscope I can imitate, from Trento to Reggio Calabria.

My temporary contract in the European Union will end soon, and for a stable position there is one requirement above all others:be citizens of a member country of the Union.If I want to finally become Italian, however, I have no time for dreams:pursuant to art.9 of law 5 February 1992 n.91 this is only the first of three consecutive years of economic income necessary to be able to apply for Italian citizenship in the future.Having chosen to study in previous years, despite managing to support myself with occasional jobs, I was unable to reach the minimum financial threshold required, although it was not particularly high.

This means that in the best case scenario I will be able to apply in two years, and, given the estimated waiting times, hope to be an Italian citizen by 2029:exactly thirty years after my first and definitive entry into Italy.

Once again I feel oppressed by the political context that suffocates my individual path.In recent days I have read different stories but in the underlying discomfort always similar to mine.They are stories that highlight the various obstacles to integration - economic, social, political and mental - deriving from an anachronistic, classist, institutionally racist.A law which in theory allows access to Italian citizenship even to those who have not set foot there but have distant blood origins (just remember the language exam farce supported by the Uruguayan footballer Luis Suarez at the University for Foreigners of Perugia) but not those who have lived there for several decades and do not know any language other than Italian.

Among the various dimensions of marginalization that this legislation reproduces, the one that has made me reflect most often is depoliticization.I was an atypical child:at eight or nine years old, my mother says she fought to force me to go to bed when it was on I will dance, or some nightly reports from Rai3 or La7 from the conflict zones.My studies then branched out around these interests, but at the same time my civic condition led me not to really consider political commitment and activism worthy of attention.Every time in my life I have interfaced with demonstrations, protests, strikes, an inner demon asked me:who do you do it for?For a company that excludes you from its circle of beneficiaries?

The only elections I could have participated in in my life were the Ukrainian ones in 2019, in which Volodymyr Zelensky beat Petro Poroshenko, and whose Servant of the People party then won the elections, obtaining a majority in Parliament.Probably among the most important electoral rounds of this century on the European continent, in which I voluntarily chose not to participate, twenty-five already disillusioned with the system of representation to which in Italy I only had access as a spectator.

The propensity for political analysis has never abandoned me, but one of the few themes that rekindles my childish enthusiasm for concrete political participation is that of citizenship.Among attempts to bring it back to the center of the debate ius scholae and the achievement, last September 24, of the 500,000 signatures needed to present a repeal referendum that would lower the minimum requirement for citizenship from 10 to 5 years of continuous residence, people like me can once again feel part of a political process in which they have a real voice .We are millions.By conditions like mine it is now too late, but it is not to prevent many others from retracing the same infamous path, which in moments of serious personal difficulty risks leading to self-exclusion from society.

They have asked me several times in good faith:“But how is it possible that you don't meet the requirements to become Italian?”, “It seems strange to me, you should find out more”, “I suggest this assistance centre, go there”.If it's hard to believe, it means that there is something that needs to be changed urgently.