Immigration We think that…

Immigration in Italy from foreign countries is quite recent: nowadays we are all in contact with habits and cultures different from ours. We teenagers, particularly, face every day foreign boys and girls at school. The touch with other ethnic groups is lived in a different way by everyone. Some are more out-going, relaxed and without prejudices: they make friend easily and consider them normal people. Others are completely unfeeling or actually hostile: they see them as a threat probably they are just scared by what they don’t know. Unfortunately among young people too there are often expressions of racism. For instance about two years ago some shocking t-shirt were very fashionable in the north of Italy: there was “defend your fellows, destroy the rest” written on them. The “rest” is probably what we don’t know well and which is considered as a danger.

The most usual mistake is the generalisation: all the North Africans are Moroccans, all the people from the east of Europe are Romanians and those from Yugoslavia are Albanians. So when you hear about a “bad” immigrant you tend to consider “bad people” all the immigrants from that country and too often we forget that not only foreign people can be “bad” but also Italians. These kinds of conducts make us think about the uncertainty of people who think in that way but they must encourage us to know and understand before judge

Emigration

Push factors In the past Italy was a land of emigration, especially in the 19 th Century to the beginning of the 20 th. The main “push factors” are: 1. the poverty in the country-side; 2. the changes caused by the industrialization; 3. the job conditions in the new industrial centres; 4. the contrasts between the different political positions and the social classes 5. the revolts against the traditional churches and the creation of new schisms; 6. religious persecutions; 7. the military service; 8. the effected caused by the letters from the to their family; 9. the influence practised by the emigrants who have returned to home; 10. the aggregation instinct which pushes to join to the groups that leave;

Pull factors But people emigrate not only for the bad conditions of their native land, but also for the good and attractive prospectives of another country: in fact there are also “pull factors”, for example: 1. the rich and cheap lands’s hunger (especially in the west of the USA); 2. need of labour in a country; 3. the attraction of a free political system; 4. the hope of a better religious and social condition; 5. the “gold fever” (California); 6. the good advertisement made by the immigration’s offices (USA);

In the years after the Second World War the main areas of immigration were the European countries (differently than the past years, when people used to move to America) : Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, which offer better possibility of job and way of life (and are also nearer to Italy, than the USA: for this reason travel are cheaper and the return to the native land is easier). We can also call migrations the movements from side to side of the same country (inner migrations). In Italy, like in other European countries, we can distinguish between two kind of migrations: the first one, the movements toward the north of Italy, and the second one from Italy to foreign countries.

Where italians used to go: The internal migrations started to increase in 1902, and went on until 1962: from that time on they decreased. Here’s the list of the countries which the most of Italian emigrants moved to: 1. France( ); 2. Argentina ( ); 3. USA ( ); 4. Canada ( ); 5. Venezuela ( ); 6. Belgium ( ); 7. Australia ( ); 8. Brazil ( ); 9. England ( ); 10. Western Germany (72.169).

Homesickness The emigrants must confront the few possibility of communication with their relatives in motherland: they had to accustom themselves to the homesickness and the melancholy. The awareness of their return make more easily their stay and the distance: they considered their job as something temporary. The return was a sort of duty, for example, lots of emigrants came back to meet their friends, to visit the cemetery where their relatives lied, the places of their childhood. All these things helped the emigrants to find again their old life when they returned back.

Conclusions People emigrated to better their economical and social conditions. The feelings which took the emigrants conflicted: they wanted to be successful, but on the other side there was the homesickness of their motherland and their old life (friends, relatives, food, smells...). Very often the emigrants stayed abroad only for the time they need to earn enough money to have a family, a house, and to live properly. But usually happened that when the emigrants returned to their motherland they still felt as foreign people, because they had changed during their stay abroad.. Instead the contemporaneous generations decide to emigrate more rationally and live this separation more easily. In fact, for example, now we have more means of communication than in the past (telephone and internet) and the emigrants don't feel abandoned and lonely any longer. Moreover now the distances aren't so insuperable (by plane you can cross the world in 24 hours).