Abstract
Italy, especially in its richer regions and cities, is experiencing a profound contradiction in its relationship with the immigrant component of its population: it is becoming even more multi-ethnic in terms of the number of residents (5.3 million), participation in the labor market (more than 3 million), transitions to self-employment (213,000 business owners), and immigrant students in schools (about 670,000). In their cultural representations, Italians tend to deny this reality. They do not want multi-ethnic cities. Faced with the widespread use of a workforce of regular and irregular immigrants, in families and enterprises of the urban economy, the prevailing opinion rejects the idea of giving a place to immigration in the nation’s social organization, and this position is strengthened by political forces and media that reflect and exacerbate the reaction. Immigrants seem to be accepted, perhaps, on an individual plane, where they have a name and a definite place in society—helpful, modest, possibly invisible. They are frightening when they become visible communities, when they settle in urban settings, when they look for places and opportunities for socialization. Italian society, as a result of tensions between markets, politics, and culture on the issue of immigration, is facing a dilemma: how to reconcile interests and feelings, head and heart, individuals and communities: how to rebuild sufficient social cohesion in a society that is increasingly differentiated and heterogeneous.
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Notes
Four “amnesties” were implemented between 1986 and 1998 involving 790,000 people; 630,000 regularisations were granted in 2002 alone and about 300,000 applications are still being processed after the last regularization in 2009.
An example: in a town on the outskirts of Milan, the local government has formally granted the use of certain premises it owns to the Catholic organization Caritas for the establishment of a surgery “reserved for irregular immigrants.” An interesting example of an Italian pragmatic solution: public authorities give premises to a civil society organization, so that it achieves what they know is necessary, but cannot do officially.
In 2009, for the first time, naturalizations by residence exceeded naturalizations by marriage: 22,968 out of 40,084 (57.3%) (Caritas-Migrantes 2010).
In this case too, Parliament’s vote was almost unanimous. The center-right government of 2001–2006 marked a difference in creating the new Ministry for Italians Abroad, without providing an under-secretary for foreign immigrants in Italy.
It should be noted that the public housing stock in Italy is scarce, compared to the European average, and has hardly increased over the last 20 years. As immigrants are often housed in highly precarious and often unauthorized accommodations, it is difficult for them to prove formal and continuous residence in the territory of a given municipality.
It is worth noting that most of these measures have been abolished by the verdicts of the Constitutional Court or by the European institutions. But their rhetorical impact has remained strong: immigrants are identified as a danger to Italian society and its security. The Italian government repeatedly entered into a debate with the judiciary bench on this point, standing up for the safety of its citizens.
The local elections of spring 2011, which involved major cities like Milan, Turin, and Naples, marked a change in trend, with the victory of the Left-wing parties. However, we cannot talk about a change of attitude of the majority of Italian public opinion on the issue of immigration.
For example, in Brescia (Lombardy, Northern Italy), the local government has banned cricket games in public parks, a provision focusing on the sport practiced by Pakistan immigrants; it has granted financial aid to families who have a child, but only if they are Italian. In another municipality in Lombardy, the mayor has forbidden immigrants from passing within a few meters of the parish church. In a third, the mayor has sent city police to immigrant residents’ homes to check their residence permits. It should be noted that almost always these provisions are defeated when brought to court by immigrants’ advocacy groups, but the goal is to offer public opinion a specific image of local government. In the case of aid for families having newborns, after the verdict that struck down its decision, the local government announced that it would withdraw the provision, denying aid to Italian families, too.
It should be recalled that only half of employed Italians live in the north, 30% in the south.
It should be noted that in Italy only national citizens can be civil servants. Foreign nurses are hired by private hospitals, but they also enter public hospitals by the expedient of service cooperatives.
Again, as the employer is often public, immigrants cannot enter as officials, but they work with a variety of solutions that circumvent the law.
The two laws were promoted by a center-left government. The Turco-Napolitano law (framework law on immigration) abolished the reciprocity clause for individual companies: previously only foreign citizens from countries that grant the same right to Italians could take up economic activities in Italy: mainly, the countries of long-standing Italian emigration. Trade liberalization (Bersani Law) abolished a number of restrictions on the granting of new business licenses in the local area, such as the definition of product sectors, the distance between businesses in the same sector, the minimum size of stores.
It has been believed and repeated for years, for example, that using foreign women as domestic help was specific to Italy and south-Europe. Studies such as those of Anderson (2000), Ehrenreich and Hochschild (2001), Parreñas (2001), Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck (2010), and van Valsum (2010) have shown that this is a worldwide phenomenon, but that it is not easily accepted.
A tendency was recently noted of the return of Italian women to hourly domestic work. But not in the most crucial sector, that of continuing assistance to the elderly, and not to the extent of reversing the prevalence of foreign workers (mostly women, but increasingly also men).
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Ambrosini, M. Immigration in Italy: Between Economic Acceptance and Political Rejection. Int. Migration & Integration 14, 175–194 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-011-0231-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-011-0231-3