Recent stabbings involving students outside Italian schools should not be treated as isolated “youth violence” stories. They are warning signs of a deeper structural issue Italy has been postponing for years: the integration failure affecting parts of the second generation—young people raised in Italy, often educated in Italian schools, yet not fully anchored to shared civic norms.
Two recent cases illustrate the pattern. In La Spezia, a student was stabbed at school (https://tg24.sky.it/cronaca/2026/01/17/studente-accoltellato-scuola-la-spezia-indagini). In Sora (Frosinone), a 17-year-old was stabbed outside a school after an argument (https://roma.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/26_gennaio_17/sora-frosinone-studente-di-17-anni-accoltellato-davanti-a-scuola-dopo-una-lite-caccia-al-responsabile-5f48e917-30b6-4cd0-b493-d9e8bdbbdxlk.shtml). The specific criminal dynamics will be clarified by investigations, but the broader message is already clear: these episodes are happening where social cohesion should be built—at school—and among youths who are not “new arrivals.”
Why this matters to a U.S. audience
In the United States, immigration debates often focus on entry (border control, illegal immigration, asylum backlogs). Italy’s challenge, instead, is increasingly about post-entry outcomes: what happens after families settle, children grow up, and society assumes integration will occur naturally.
Italy’s political and administrative culture has often treated integration as an almost automatic process: you live here, you attend school, you will eventually “fit in.” That assumption has proven false. A segment of second-generation youths is growing up in a social limbo: legally present and institutionally included, but culturally detached and, in some contexts, attracted to alternative identity structures and conflict-driven group dynamics. When the state relies on schools alone to carry integration, it creates a system that looks inclusive on paper but is fragile in practice.
Integration without obligations is not integration
A serious integration model is not built on declarations. It requires clear expectations, measurable steps, and consequences. Otherwise, the public sphere becomes permissive, not cohesive. And when norms are negotiable, conflict escalates—often before adulthood, in the very places that should educate young people to manage conflict through rules rather than violence.
This is the central point: these incidents are not “only” security problems. They are a governance problem. Repression comes after; integration policy is what prevents the drift in the first place.
“Integrazione o ReImmigrazione” as a policy framework
This is where the paradigm “Integrazione o ReImmigrazione” becomes relevant for international readers.
It is not a slogan and it is not ethnic targeting. It is a policy framework based on a straightforward principle: long-term permanence must be tied to real integration, understood as adherence to the basic rules of civil coexistence—language, respect for the law, acceptance of constitutional values, and rejection of violence as a social code.
Where integration succeeds, the pathway to stability is strengthened. Where integration fails structurally or is openly rejected, the state must be willing to reconsider long-term residence outcomes, including return policies, in a manner consistent with legality and due process.
Italy still has time, but not unlimited time
Italy can still act—especially with younger cohorts—by restoring a clear civic pact and by supporting schools with real institutional authority and coherent public policy. But the window is narrowing. If stabbings and similar violence become a recurring feature of second-generation adolescence, the issue is no longer marginal: it becomes a direct threat to social cohesion and public order.
These incidents are not just criminal acts. They are the visible edge of a deeper problem: integration treated as optional, when it should be the foundation of permanence.
Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Lobbyist – EU Transparency Register ID 280782895721-36
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