Italy’s government has unveiled what it describes as a “Schools Decree,” introducing several measures aimed at strengthening integration. Under the rules, students would not be allowed to conceal their faces in the classroom, schools could limit foreign-born pupils to 30% of enrollment in a class, and parents who fail to attend required Italian-language lessons could be fined as much as $1,120.
The decree is scheduled to take effect next summer and is being presented as an effort to promote integration. But it has also reignited a wider debate: can a Western democracy require newcomers to adopt national norms, or do such demands come after social divisions have already become entrenched?
Nile Gardiner, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, described mass migration and what he called the “Islamification” of Europe as “the single biggest issue of our time.” He warned that developments unfolding in London and other European cities could eventually appear in the United States unless American leaders are prepared to resist similar cultural changes.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni defended the policy on X, describing the measures as “tools of common sense” that would help prevent divided, “ghetto” classrooms while giving every student equal opportunities. She said Italy’s goal was to build a school system that promotes integration, supports children facing greater challenges and maintains common rules for everyone.
Some experts argue that the decree’s basic expectations are neither unusual nor radical. Simone Rodan‑Benzaquen, senior envoy to Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said learning the national language and taking part in a child’s education are reasonable responsibilities for families.
She also said requiring students to keep their faces visible is understandable in classrooms centered on communication and personal interaction. Speaking to Fox News Digital, however, Rodan‑Benzaquen questioned whether such rules will meaningfully improve integration or merely address its most visible signs while leaving deeper barriers to participation untouched.
Italy is part of a broader European trend. Governments on both the left and right are revisiting immigration and integration policies, from Denmark’s so-called “ghetto laws” to France’s restrictions on religious symbols in schools. Germany requires language and civic education, while the Netherlands has explored testing newcomers before they arrive.
Swedish political scientist Daniel Schatz said the central political divide is increasingly less about left versus right than about the role of the state in defining membership in a national community. One side sees integration as a civic duty with enforceable expectations; the other fears that those requirements can become discriminatory or exclusionary. The debate, he said, now crosses traditional party boundaries.
Sara Wallace Goodman, a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine, described Denmark as a notable example of broad political agreement on immigration. Because the country maintains a generous welfare state designed primarily for its citizens, she said, Danish policymakers have made it more difficult for outsiders to settle and gain access to comparable benefits.
Goodman, who also works with the European University Institute’s Global Citizenship Observatory, said Denmark’s center-left government can gain political ground by taking a firm stance on immigration. That approach, she explained, can reduce the appeal of right-wing challengers by making it harder for them to claim a monopoly on border and integration issues.
At the heart of these policies is concern over the growth of “parallel societies” — communities, schools and neighborhoods where newcomers live largely apart from the broader national culture. European governments fear that language barriers, concentrated poverty and intense communal pressures can produce isolated social systems operating beside, rather than within, the country’s shared civic life.
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Goodman pointed to a report published in the United Kingdom during the mid-2000s by Trevor Phillips, then head of the Commission for Racial Equality under Prime Minister Tony Blair. Phillips warned that Britain was “sleepwalking into segregation” as separate communities developed separate lives. Goodman said integration policies seek to dismantle those divisions through government action, but cautioned that blunt measures can also become restrictive, oppressive and destabilizing.
Some critics believe the kind of separation Phillips described is already visible in Britain. A TikTok video showing shoppers at an Asian market in London waiting in a largely gender-separated line drew criticism from Gardiner, who called it troubling. He said the footage reflected what he views as the expanding influence of Islam in the United Kingdom and warned that the trend could affect the country’s future.
Gardiner told Fox News Digital that he sees the situation as evidence of Islamic cultural influence taking hold in Britain, which he described as central to Western civilization. He also pointed to what he called a “red-green alliance” between Islamists and elements of the far left, arguing that cooperation among Islamists, socialists and environmentalists is contributing to unrest in cities including Berlin, London, Vienna and The Hague.
Schatz argued that the political impact of migration is shaped less by raw arrival figures than by how visible integration failures appear to the public. Even when asylum applications decline, he said, migration can remain a more contentious issue if voters believe newcomers are not becoming part of society. The deeper question, he added, is whether Europe still feels confident asking immigrants to join the communities they have entered.
Rodan‑Benzaquen, however, cautioned that coercive policies can address only the surface of the challenge. Governments cannot expect people to feel attached to shared institutions if those institutions fail children, limit social mobility or are undermined by Islamist propaganda, she said. At the same time, she argued, authorities should not abandon basic democratic principles whenever organized groups challenge them.
She said policymakers frequently focus on the most visible expressions of social division instead of investigating the forces producing them. Where groups actively discourage participation in the wider society, she argued, officials should examine the people, institutions and funding networks involved. Clothing restrictions alone, she added, cannot resolve those deeper problems.
France has restricted prominent religious symbols in public schools since 2004, including Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and conspicuous Christian crosses. Rodan‑Benzaquen said the policy reflects the belief that children should develop their own judgment and freedom of conscience within a shared educational environment, a principle closely tied to France’s assimilation-based model.
She said the French model’s central promise — that anyone can become fully French regardless of their origins — remains worth preserving. Maintaining that promise, she acknowledged, has become increasingly difficult.
Successful integration, Rodan‑Benzaquen said, requires a clearly defined society into which people can integrate: a common language, political community, history, freedoms and responsibilities. If a society is reluctant to explain or pass on those principles, she argued, it will struggle to ask newcomers to embrace them.
Goodman said, “Europe is in a really unique situation where it has accepted immigration, but it hasn’t accepted the long-term consequences of immigration. Societies over time adapt and start to see themselves as immigrant receiving countries and as multicultural, and a lot of societies in Europe have resisted this transformation.” She said that the “society that birthed the Enlightenment and the ideas of liberalism and pluralism” must evaluate itself “and say there’s a boundary on this.”
Schatz said that any successful integration model in Europe “will not be one that is simply ‘tough’ or simply ‘welcoming.’… A state that cannot enforce its borders or its basic civic rules eventually loses the public confidence needed for a generous and sustainable integration policy.”
