The latest demographic projections released by ISTAT place Italy before a reality that can no longer be treated as a distant possibility. The country is heading toward a significant decline in population, accompanied by progressive ageing, a shrinking workforce, and a profound transformation of its family and social structure.

According to the published data, the resident population could fall from approximately 58.9 million people today to around 55 million in 2050 and just 45.8 million in 2080. In little more than half a century, Italy could lose more than 13 million inhabitants.

ISTAT itself considers the population decline to be a practically certain outcome, since none of the scenarios examined foresees, in the medium or long term, a return to current population levels.

This is not a political opinion, a journalistic prediction, or a simple assumption about the future. These are demographic projections prepared by the Italian National Institute of Statistics on the basis of official data concerning the resident population, families, and the workforce.

The figures do not merely describe an Italy with fewer inhabitants. They also describe a country that will become progressively older.

The average age will continue to rise, while the proportion of people over the age of 65 will increase significantly and the share of the working-age population will decline. By 2080, those aged over 65 could represent approximately 36.8% of the population, while people between the ages of 15 and 64 could account for only around 53.2% of the total.

The consequences are evident. There will be fewer workers, fewer taxpayers, less generational renewal, and increasing pressure on the pension, healthcare, and welfare systems.

It will also become more difficult to keep economically alive towns and small communities that are already dealing with depopulation and an ageing population. The future described by these figures does not begin in 2080. It can already be seen in everyday life across Italy.

There is another particularly important figure. Even the projected positive migration balance will not be enough to compensate for the losses caused by the difference between births and deaths. ISTAT expects Italy to continue receiving more people from abroad than those who leave the country, but this will not prevent the demographic decline caused by the negative natural balance.

That fact alone should be enough to trigger a much deeper national debate about Italy’s future and, above all, about who could take part in the country’s demographic, economic, and social reconstruction.

Migration pressure is already affecting the State and the justice system

Almost at the same time as the new demographic projections were released, another report helped illustrate the scale of the challenges Italy will be required to manage.

Report No. 35/2026 of the Research and Case-Law Office of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation examined the effects of the new European migration and asylum framework and the potential impact of these changes on judicial activity.

According to the figures cited, the number of border procedures allocated to Italy could reach 16,032 in 2026, 24,048 in 2027, and 32,064 in 2028. The report itself draws attention to the pressure that international protection cases could place on the work of the Supreme Court.

It is important to clarify that these figures do not automatically mean 32,000 appeals before the Court of Cassation. They refer to border procedures assigned to Italy and to the potential litigation that may result from them.

The new system provides for appeals and other forms of judicial protection in matters concerning the detention of asylum seekers, border procedures, alternative measures, obligations to reside in specific locations, and temporary detention for identification or verification purposes. In certain circumstances, the Court of Cassation itself may be called upon to rule.

None of this means that the Italian State should not guarantee legal protection to immigrants. Of course it should.

A country governed by the rule of law has an obligation to protect fundamental rights and guarantee access to justice to every person subject to its authority, regardless of nationality. Italy has constitutional, European, and international obligations that must be respected.

The question that deserves reflection is another one.

It is difficult to understand how the same State that must organise laws, administrative procedures, reception systems, and judicial mechanisms to manage today’s migration flows shows so little ability to develop a broad and coherent policy for the millions of descendants of Italians living throughout the world.

Those descendants have nothing to do with today’s migration flows. Their connection to Italy comes directly from the history of Italy itself.

When Italians were the ones forced to leave

For decades, millions of Italians left the country because they could not find the conditions necessary to build their future here.

War, poverty, hunger, lack of employment, and the absence of prospects forced entire families to seek new horizons. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, the United States, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, and many other countries welcomed Italians who left behind their towns, their families, and a homeland in which, very often, they would have preferred to remain.

They left carrying their surnames, their customs, their dialects, their traditions, and their family memories. On other continents they built communities, associations, schools, businesses, hospitals, and institutions that kept some form of connection with Italy alive for generations.

An uncomfortable historical reality must also be acknowledged. In many cases, those Italians were abandoned by the State itself.

Italy at that time was unable to offer them sufficient work, security, and prospects to remain. They were forced to seek elsewhere what their homeland could not provide.

Their children were born far away. Their grandchildren were born far away. The same happened with their great-grandchildren.

This did not happen because those families had simply decided to cut their ties with Italy. The geographical distance accumulated over generations was, to a large extent, the direct consequence of historical conditions that drove millions of Italians away from their own country.

This is precisely why it is so troubling to see that, at the very moment when Italy is beginning to face one of the most serious demographic crises in its modern history, the legislative response has been to severely restrict recognition of citizenship for some of the descendants of those very Italians who once had to leave.

The contradiction of the 2025 reform

The legislative changes adopted in 2025 were justified, among other arguments, by the need to strengthen the existence of genuine ties with the Italian Republic.

If that were truly the main objective, it would be natural to expect a national policy aimed at rebuilding, in concrete terms, the relationship between Italy and its diaspora.

One could imagine return programmes, incentives for young families, simpler procedures for recognition of professional qualifications, language training, housing policies, and measures designed to encourage settlement in municipalities affected by depopulation.

It would also be reasonable to provide specific instruments for entrepreneurs, researchers, highly qualified professionals, and investors interested in bringing to Italy the knowledge, assets, and experience they have acquired over decades abroad.

One concrete measure has indeed been adopted. Certain descendants of Italian citizens from specific countries may benefit from a facilitated route to enter Italy for subordinate employment outside the ordinary quota system.

It would be wrong to ignore this initiative. The problem lies in imagining that it can amount to a genuine policy for reconnecting Italy with its diaspora.

There is a profound contradiction in restricting recognition of citizenship iure sanguinis while, at the same time, offering descendants a route of entry that is essentially linked to their status as subordinate workers.

The message conveyed is difficult to accept. A historical and family connection with Italy may no longer be considered sufficient for recognition of citizenship, but it suddenly becomes relevant again when that same descendant can fill a job that the country needs.

That is far too little.

The descendants of Italian emigrants are not an international reserve of labour.

Among them are entrepreneurs, researchers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects, farmers, business owners, investors, professors, technicians, and professionals from every field. There are people who have built wealth, knowledge, and international experience over generations in the countries where their families settled.

It is inevitable to ask what Italy offers to the descendant who does not intend to come to the country to be employed, but to start a business.

What happens to the person who wants to open a company, invest their own capital, create jobs, restore an abandoned property, develop an agricultural business, establish a technology company, practise a profession, or invest precisely in one of the small Italian towns that loses residents every year?

Where is the policy designed for that person?

Where are the concrete tools capable of transforming knowledge, capital, and experience acquired abroad into economic development within Italy?

The problem is even greater for those who want to build a business

The issue becomes even more evident when we look at the reality faced by those who already live in Italy.

An Italian citizen who was born here, studied here, speaks the language, understands the public administration, and knows how the institutions operate already faces enormous difficulties when trying to start and run a business.

Tax complexity, bureaucracy, costs, authorisations, administrative procedures, and timelines that are often incompatible with the needs of economic activity represent permanent obstacles for anyone seeking to create and develop a business.

If even those who have always lived in Italy struggle to find a simple and favourable environment in which to turn an idea into an economic activity, it is legitimate to ask what policy truly exists for a descendant who wishes to return not to look for a job, but to create jobs.

This may be one of the greatest weaknesses in the current approach to the diaspora.

A genuine return policy cannot be limited to allowing someone to come to Italy to work for someone else. It should create the conditions for that descendant to build something in Italy.

Perhaps that person possesses precisely what the country will increasingly need in the coming decades. Youth, children, knowledge, capital, international experience, entrepreneurial ability, a willingness to invest, and the determination to begin a new life in the land of their ancestors.

Italy should be interested in identifying which descendants wish to live here, bring their families, purchase property, restore abandoned buildings, invest, produce, develop technology, open businesses, and create employment.

That would give real meaning to the concept of genuine ties.

What exists today remains far removed from that vision.

In many cases, a descendant may no longer be recognised as Italian, but may find a special route of entry if willing to take up subordinate employment.

For a country with one of the largest diasporas in the world and which, at the same time, is preparing to lose millions of inhabitants, this response is insufficient and reveals a troubling lack of strategic vision.

Italy does not have to choose between immigration and its diaspora

Supporting a serious policy for the descendants of Italians does not mean questioning the rights of those who currently arrive in Italy through other forms of migration.

They are different realities.

Italy will continue to have to manage immigration and will remain obliged to respect the fundamental rights of those who arrive on its territory. The State and the judiciary must perform their respective functions.

None of this prevents Italy from developing, at the same time, a national policy directed towards its own diaspora.

What is difficult to understand is the State’s ability to create new rules, procedures, structures, and mechanisms to manage contemporary migration while showing no equally ambitious strategy for rebuilding its relationship with the descendants of the Italians whom the country lost throughout its history.

The debate is no longer merely historical or emotional.

Today it is demographic, economic, pension-related, territorial, productive, cultural, and legal.

Official figures indicate that Italy could lose more than 13 million inhabitants. The population will continue to age and the number of people of working age will decline. Even the projected positive migration balance will not be sufficient to fully offset the decline caused by the negative natural balance.

At the same time, the State and the judiciary are already preparing to deal with a growing volume of proceedings connected with immigration and international protection.

It is against this background that it becomes even more frustrating to witness the administrative and judicial battles undertaken by descendants of Italians in order to preserve a legal relationship that arose precisely from the history of this country.

Perhaps part of Italy’s future is already scattered around the world

Naturally, not every descendant of Italians wishes to live in Italy.

Not all of them speak Italian, not all have maintained a concrete cultural relationship with the country, and not all intend to leave the places where they were born and built their lives.

That is obvious.

But this is precisely why an intelligent policy is needed, one capable of identifying and attracting those who genuinely wish to turn their family origins into a present-day life project in Italy.

There are millions of descendants around the world who could bring families, children, work, knowledge, capital, entrepreneurship, international experience, and investment capacity.

The State should create the conditions to bring those people closer, rather than first restricting their legal connection and then offering a limited route of entry mainly designed to meet the country’s need for subordinate labour.

Italy may amend its laws, establish criteria, and combat abuses. All of this belongs to the democratic debate.

What it should not do is lose its own memory.

Millions of Italians left the country because, at a certain point in history, Italy was unable to offer them the conditions necessary to remain. Their descendants grew up far away because their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had to search elsewhere for opportunities that did not exist here.

Today, it is the Italian State’s own official data that reveals the scale of the problem ahead.

Against that reality, pushing away part of that very diaspora becomes increasingly difficult to understand.

A genuine return policy is not measured by speeches, nor merely by the wording of a law. Anything can be written on paper.

It is measured by concrete opportunities to rebuild a life, raise a family, invest, start a business, work, and participate fully in Italian society.

The Italian diaspora cannot be regarded merely as a convenient source of foreign workers to be called upon when the labour market runs short of people.

It is part of Italy’s history.

And, if there is sufficient political capacity and vision for the future, it may also become part of the solution to the problems that the numbers are already announcing.

Italy is losing population and growing older. This is no longer speculation.

Perhaps the time has come to stop treating the descendants of Italian emigrants as an administrative problem to be restricted and start seeing them for what many of them may truly represent, a part of our history that still wishes to participate in building our future.

May justice be done.