Sliding doors : Italy has an "in and out" migration problem - and it's not what they think it is

 

There has been a modicum of brouhaha in Italy about an interesting bit of info coming out of an European Research Council Report, available here: Namely, Italy has received most of the Grants by number, Yay! Only, it didn't.

For a country with limited investment and a smaller population than Germany, 60 mln vs 83 mln, Italy has done an incredible job....abroad. Here's the missing part: Italy ranks first by Researcher's nationality, and 8th, by a country mile, as hosting nation. Yep, we will scale up one since probably next year the UK will drop off the list.... but I don't know and I don't care about how much Italy will drop due to some of its researchers being UK based.

 

I DO have a conflict of interest talking about “Brain Drain” since I happily shipped off my daughter abroad for her Master, fully expecting her to never come back to live here. She always has been a “citizen of the World”, chafing at the stifling atmosphere surrounding her. It's also entirely possible that I'll end up going two for two and see my son going abroad as well... but they are not relevant, in a modern youth that has much more freedom of movement. The question that no one in Italy asks, in the brief intervals between lamenting “We are losing our best and brightest!”, is:

 “Why on Earth foreigners wanting to set up shop avoid Italy like the plague?”.

I live in Turin, my son before switching to another faculty went to the “Politecnico”, and it's a thriving hotbed of foreign students coming here to study in a challenging and advanced faculty. Some of the Teaching professors are friends of mine, one was at Caltech for years, he's the recipient of various technical prizes. Yet, Turin is not “Italy's silicon valley”, and neither is Milan. I also have dear friends there, but numbers lie only a little. Houston, we have a problem, and it's not our kids going out: Hans, Francois and Pablo do not come here to live and make a living. Study, yes. Stay on, no.

But concentrating on the high end is a kind of haughtiness. Let's go for what could derisively be described as the bottom of the pile.... while it is not.

Italy is the port of call of much of the EU's illegal immigration, which is a bit of a pickle since the Dublin treaty says that immigrants must be processed at the port of call. An immigrant who entered Italy then absconded to France, if caught is shipped by France to Italy.

We depict immigrants entering Italy on rickety inflatables that sinks more often than not as a desperate flow of exploited and disorganized people, but that's quite far from the truth. I know many an accomplished Italian professional who couldn't even trace their route on a map with an instruction book, let alone fund, organize and set up such a long trip, in a more or less clandestine way. An Afghan disembarking off a wooden contraption in Pantelleria may have kept his timeline flexible, but it cannot be said that he did not know what his target destination was or that he did not plan for that.

What I find totally disconcerting in the debate is a missing realization: Italy is EU's Libya.

Most of the people who escaped the shores of Tripoli are not aiming for the Halls of Montezuma, and they are not planning to come to Italy at all: they want to go to the REAL Europe, Northwest of the Alps, and they are prepared to do anything possible to cross. As an Italian and as a father, I have to trust their judgement: they have no emotional attachment to the “Bel Paese”, they have good intel from their friends and cousins who already made the trip, and they are literally voting with their feet... and sometimes dying in the process2. I grew up in the valley that Hannibal used to enter Italy, in a small town not two miles from a choke point where Charlemagne defeated the Longobards in 773 AD. The French – Italian border has seen in the recent past multiple cases of these poor people caught and immediately sent back by the French3, and there have been cases where the ever vigilant Sons of De Gaulle have been seen on the Italian side of the border4, to deter further attempts.

So.... I understand and am not bothered by the brain drain ( with the proviso that I am actually funding two instances in house). But I am bothered by the fact that  while we send bright young minds to Sweden or Holland, the reverse does not happen: even outsiders given half the chance flee Italy, tout suite. But apparently, either I am stupid as usual, or this is an hot button that one doesn't press.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE END OF MELONI?

August 9th, 2023   THE END OF MELONI? DISCLAIMER: nothing in this article is or is meant to be "financial advice" under current legislation. drink fluids, eat healthy and exercise. I had some doubts about how the new government of Italy would develop, see my previous post on the subject . But here we are, not one year into the current government, and it all falls apart in one day. First an explanation: by “fall apart” I do not mean that the government falls, loses parliamentary votes, suffers internal defections etc. If anything, the one speculative thoughts I had, that Meloni would last the legislature, is the less dented of my opinions, expectations and desires. In fact, I surmise that between declaring the experience ended and proclaiming a snap election, or the present predicament, the first was the better alternative... provided she had an inkling about what happened. What I mean is that what made Meloni "something else" is lost, and probably irretrie
Read more

Juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity

Image
  Turin, October 15 th , 2023 Juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity We have no political leaders, only intermediaries. Hence these dismiss any position in which their “employer” ends up with an advantage as unpalatable. And if you play to draw or lose but not win, end results are less than optimal for western countries and cultures.The title is a quote from “ The mote in God's eye ”, a book that I highly recommend reading. The conflict between Israel and Hamas has brought anguish and turmoil everywhere. I have been following it up close because on top of listing geopolitics and military conflict as things I am most interested in, I have friends in Israel, and I am a friend of Israel, before someone asks or implies. But that's not the main focus of a thought that dawned on me this morning. My assessment of what has happened or might happened in the theater of operation is mine to share, and I share that....sparingly. But what caught my attention, also because it dire
Read more

Milei: The only real news of the year

  Milei: The only real news of the year The year 2023 has been far from uneventful and there are scores of very good “year in review” posts. But for an Italian like me, and for the world in general, nothing in my opinion comes close to the free election of Milei in Argentina. Argentina has been a sick man of South America for longer than I have been alive. But that was not always the case, and while present day society, with its weak familial relationships and indifference of history can ignore it, It was indeed a wealthy and thriving society in the latter part of the 1800 and early 1900. For me, that's part of the family lore since of the five brothers one of which was my paternal grandfather, three emigrated to Argentina in the early part of the past century. I probably have more relations there than here in Italy. That was partly due to a federalist constitution and a series of market friendly governments which allowed the country to make the most of its advantages
Read more