Berkley Center

Italy has a long history of emigration. From the 1860s to the 1960s, more than 25 million Italians left the country, mostly for the Americas, due to overpopulation. This was one of the biggest mass migrations in modern times. Since the 1980s, however, Italy has experienced mass waves of immigration, akin to what the United States experienced more than a century ago. This is completely unprecedented for Italy, and the country really doesn’t know how to handle it.

Due to the wave of revolutions taking place in their home countries, hundreds of thousands of North Africans have come to Italy in the past year. The distance from Tunisia to Lampedusa, an island of Sicily, is only 70 miles. This is 20 miles less than the distance from Cuba to Florida. While the European Union initially supported the Arab Spring, it has since refused to help Italy absorb all of these new immigrants.

Immigrants are also arriving from Eastern Europe. There are more than 997,000 Romanians living in Italy, making up the country’s largest ethnic group. Albanians and Moroccans are also prevalent. My host parents told me that many immigrants want to find jobs in more industrial countries like France or Germany, but they come to Italy because it is geographically closer. Once in the European Union, they can travel freely throughout Europe. At the start of 2011, there were 4.5 million immigrants in Italy, making up about 7.5 percent of the population. This figure does not include the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who are living in the country.

While regionally diverse, Italians are Italians, and Italian society is fairly homogeneous. Most Italians have never seen people of different colors before. Racism has its origins in the fear of change, and Italy is a country that seems to have a pathological fear of change.

Italians are fiercely proud of Italian culture, which is heavily rooted in tradition. Jobs are handed down from one generation to another, and people generally live and die in the same place where they were born. Whereas Americans tend to move from city to city on a regular basis, my host dad, Francesco, told me that his family has lived within a 25 mile radius of Florence for as long as he can remember.

Italy is also a very stratified society. People generally go into the family business, with jobs being passed from down from one generation to another. Because of this, it’s hard to enter the workforce as an immigrant, and it is extremely more rare to see immigrants in high-level positions.

Political parties in Italy, such as the regionalist Northern League, have inflamed xenophobic fears through anti-immigration pamphlets, television ads, and political rallies. They have also called for roundups of illegal immigrants and a ban on house sales to non-Europeans.

Popular resentment towards immigrants is only increasing with the current economic crisis in Europe and the accompanying rise in unemployment. Consequently, incidents of violence and intolerance toward immigrant communities are becoming more and more prevalent. Many people blame the immigrants for the increase in crime, a sentiment that helped former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi pass strict anti-immigration laws a few years ago.

Under these laws, illegal immigrants can be fined up to $14,000 and be jailed for up to six months. Those who offer them housing can be sent to jail for three years. These laws have created a climate of fear, in which illegal immigrants are too afraid to go to a doctor for a medical checkup for fear of being deported.

My host mom, Silvia, told me that many illegal immigrants are forced to work for the mafia, because it controls most of the agricultural production in the south and the majority of construction projects in the north. Illegal immigrants are not protected under Italian law, so they can be forced to work under abysmal conditions for little to no pay. Italians complain about immigrants but do not hesitate to take on immigrant labor, revealing an implicit hypocrisy in Italian society.

Much of the fear against foreigners is unjustified, especially when you think about how immigrants are contributing to the country’s wealth. When most immigrants arrive, they don’t have very many skills and can’t even speak Italian. As Silvia and Francesco explained, it takes time for them to assimilate into Italian society.

At the same time, however, Italians have to learn how to live in a multicultural society. With plummeting birth rates and an aging population, Italy needs foreign labor in order to grow. There are many things that the Italian people can learn from other cultures. Yesterday at dinner, for example, we had couscous, a typical North African dish. Things are changing, albeit slowly.