The investigation by the International Centre for Studies on the Family tells about the challenge of integration
“Families facing the challenges of immigration” is the central theme of the investigation that the International Centre for Studies on the Family (CISF) made by interviewing 4,000 Italian households with respect to immigration. A portrait of the Italian family emerges that shows its “great responsibility in generating (or making more difficult) the acceptance of the culture of others, solidarity, the capacity for dialogue, debate and ‘peaceful encounters‘,” and a picture of the foreign family that risks becoming “perpetually poised between two worlds.” In this context, the school represents a great opportunity, the report says, because “the presence of the children of immigrants in the school system is an excellent opportunity for the integration of these children and their families, despite the objective difficulties that schools experience.” Among the faithful strong prejudice still emerges, and the ecclesial communities and immigrant communities, including Catholics, while living side by side, remain substantially separate and still communicate too little. Acceptation should, however, first be sown in the family, “the place of the symbolic, cultural and operational reorganization of the individual choices and social choices.”