Despite the growth in immigration and naturalisation, the majority of us are, as Bryan Turner puts it, ‘born into citizenship’. As outlined in Chapter 1, a longstanding transformation towards lower birth rates – the so-called ‘demographic transition’ – has been taking place in most late-modern states (and, increasingly, elsewhere) over the last few centuries. It was for a long time assumed that birth rates would stabilise around replacement level. However, in the last four decades it has become clear to most states in the Global North that this demographic shift entails a further development – sustained below-replacement birth rates – referred to (especially by demographers) as the ‘second demographic transition’. This pattern is associated with delayed and reduced childbearing, owing to changed economic, societal and cultural circumstances. Knowledge of declining birth rates has prompted longstanding general concern in many states over the last century, giving rise to attempts to restore higher birth rates (especially before the Second World War). In the wake of growing awareness of the below-replacement birth rates that have taken hold since the 1970s, these anxieties about population decline have begun to be revisited. The spectre of population ageing and its economic consequences are highlighting the seemingly unavoidable prospect of continuing and/or increasing immigration to ameliorate the consequences of below-replacement birth rates. The issues around why continuing immigration is perceived both as indispensable, yet in some ways lamentable, are thus rooted in the longstanding anxieties surrounding birth rates. The perception of demographic decline, based on demographic awareness that ‘too few’ citizens, or at least not enough citizens of a particular kind, are born to renew the nation is at the heart of contemporary demographic governance in the West, linking issues around women's citizenship with the regulation and consequences of immigration.

This chapter first examines a case study on Italy, a state where demographic anxieties related to the birth rate are particularly acute. Italy, along with states like Germany, Poland and Japan, has experienced so-called ‘lowest-low’ fertility; that is, TFR at or below 1.3, with recent rises to levels just below 1.5. This Italian phenomenon of denatalità (‘lacking births’) is rapidly shifting Italy's demographic profile towards older age groups.