Indian Students’ Migration and Integration in Europe: A Case Study on Naples City (Italy)

This article explores the migration and integration experiences of Indian students in Europe, with a particular focus on the city of Naples, Italy. Drawing on official quantitative data and qualitative field evidence from the Neapolitan academic context, the article explores how India’s equity-driven educational policies resonate within Europe’s emerging mobility framework. It examines how structural inequalities in India, despite formal rights to education, shape student mobility, and how linguistic, cultural, and institutional barriers affect integration processes in host countries and cities. Drawing from official statistics and qualitative interviews, the study sheds light on both the aspirations and the challenges faced by Indian students as they navigate academic life abroad. Far from being a homogeneous group, these students display diverse strategies of adaptation and cultural negotiation, often oscillating between community-based comfort zones and efforts to engage with the local context. Naples, with its vibrant yet complex social fabric, serves as a significant case study, highlighting the ambivalence of urban receptivity and the shortcomings of institutional support. The article argues that integration should not be understood as unilateral assimilation, but rather as a dynamic process of reciprocal transformation – where students are not merely learners, but also agents of social and cultural change. In doing so, it advocates for more inclusive and proactive models of intercultural mediation within European universities, capable of valuing diversity not simply as presence, but as active participation.