The Week Belonging Became a Law — Meloni Bans the Veil in Schools, Germany Weighs Outlawing the Party That Won, and AI Takes the First Rung Away from the Young

One thread stitches together Rome, Berlin, Washington and Beijing this week, and it is the question of who belongs, and on what terms. On Sunday, before the youth wing of the Brothers of Italy gathered in Rome, Giorgia Meloni announced a ban on burqas and niqabs in schools, compulsory Italian lessons for foreign parents who struggle to integrate, and a cap on non-Italian pupils per class: national belonging reduced to a checklist to be satisfied. It set the tone for the week, because everywhere the line between who is in and who is out is being redrawn with the legislator’s pen.

In Germany the same question takes its most extreme form: can you outlaw the party that came first? After the AfD’s landslide in Saxony-Anhalt, a cross-party motion signed by more than a hundred lawmakers asks the Constitutional Court to weigh a ban, and even a Christian Democrat heavyweight like Hendrik Wüst breaks his own party’s ranks to call for “a first step.” Chancellor Merz pumps the brakes — banning it, he repeats, “would not solve the problem” — but the fracture now runs through the centre, not just the margins.

In the United States belonging is measured in ballots: early voting for the midterms opened on Friday, even as the administration presses on with its campaign over who counts as a legitimate voter. And in China the paradox is a generation that cannot get in at all: youth unemployment has climbed back to 18.9 percent, the highest since 2023, with a mass of graduates the economy cannot absorb and AI renders redundant before it even hires them.

Everywhere, this week, someone is rewriting the rules of belonging — to a nation, an electorate, a labour market — and almost always it is the youngest who find themselves on the wrong side of the line.