On Wednesday (June 29) the city of Bologna took the decision to recognize the so-called 'ius soli' (law of the soil in Latin), which gives Italian citizenship to the children of long-term immigrants who have completed at least five years in the Italian school system. The measure that was included in the statute of the municipality of Bologna is merely symbolic and has no legal value.

However, Pamela Malvina Noutcho Sawa describes what she is feeling as a "truly beautiful emotion that gives me hope."

"The sign that my city, Bologna, is giving to the rest of the country is important," she noted. "I believe that it is possible to start from the smallest communities, from cities, and to hope -- we start from the grassoroots level and sooner or later we will get to the top."

The 30-year-old, originally from Cameroon, works as a nurse in the emergency room of Bologna's Maggiore Hospital. She is also a boxing champion, in the 64 Kg category, of Asd Bolognina. She has been living in Italy for the past 22 years and hs been waiting for the past two years for a response to her application for Italian citizenship. Meanwhile, she treats patients and boxes.

'Pity I can't compete with the national team'

Pamela has lived in Italy since she was eight years old after joining her father who had left Africa to study and work. She spent her childhood and adolescence in Perugia, where she attended elementary, middle and high school. Then she graduated in nursing sciences and took an advanced degree in Bologna.

During an internship at a hosting center for the homeless, she started training in boxing, a sport that has become a passion.

"Before then I only knew the sport thanks to Rocky movies," she said, smiling, "now it is part of my life and I have become a professional. Too bad I can't compete in the national team."

Pamela, in fact, doesn't have Italian citizenship although she has felt Italian since she was a child. "I applied two years ago and my application is still being processed, I am confident I will have it soon but I already feel Italian inside. I integrated quickly as a child, I was lucky to be in a very inclusive school, I never felt excluded for the color of my skin. Only when I couldn't take a school trip to London in my third year of highschool, I understood that something was missing."

Hope for Ius Scholae

Her life has been in Italy for the past 22 years and she feels Italian when she is fighting on the ring as well as when she is taking care of Italian and foreign patients at the ER of Ospedale Maggiore, where she has been working since 2013 after winning three selections.

She is too old now for an "honorary" citizenship in Bologna, which is awarded to minors who were born in Italy to foreign parents and who have been living regularly in the city or who were born abroad and have completed at least one school cycle in Italy. She would have loved to receive it, though.

Pamela said she believes it isn't only a symbolic act: "It has huge value, it means we are recognized by part of a community. When you are little, the city where you live is your world; for a child, Bologna for example is like a nation, so giving them honorary citizenship is like saying: you have a place where you can always return and consider home."

Now, Noutcho Sawa hopes Parliament will approve the 'ius scholae' (law of the school, in Latin), bill which would enable the children of migrants who were born in Italy or who entered the country before they were 12 and have lived and attended school here for at least five years to obtain citizenship.

"I am an adult now but I know very well what it feels like. A child who is born, grows up and studies here in Italy needs to wait 18 years to say and understand that he or she is Italian. The time has come to solve this great unjustice."