Write about your interviews conducted at the Esquilino market and the Piazza Vittorio in which you asked a native Italian and an Italian immigrant several questions pertaining to their views on immigration policies and other pressing issues in Italy today.
Today’s assignment was to engage with both a native Italian and an immigrant Italian to discuss and gain understanding about how immigrants feel about government policies, Italian laws on obtaining citizenship, etc., and how some native youth (18 – 25) Italians feel about immigrants and their thoughts on immigration in Italy.
We were very fortunate in being able to successfully open dialogue with several immigrants who were willing to discuss such personal matters with our small group. However, it wasn’t exactly easy communicating with an immigrant who wasn’t fully conversational in English, in addition none of us knowing very much Italian.
One Italian immigrant we were particularly able to have a long conversation with was a man named Ahmed from Bangladesh. He has been living in Rome for seven years, and is willing to maintain a long distance relationship with his wife and seven year old son who are still in Bangladesh while trying to gain his Italian citizenship. I must note that it is especially difficult for immigrants with no native ancestry from Italy (having either one or both parents born in Italy) to gain citizenship in fewer than 10 years. However, Ahmed did not seem too disconcerted with this government obstacle. His plan is to keep applying for his working permit (when it expires) while living legally in Italy (unfortunately, living a legal immigrant status in Italy is becoming more and more rare) until he eventually receives his Italian citizenship. Once he succeeds in gaining his citizenship status (which is extremely difficult for many) he will open his own business in the international district and fulfil his dream of becoming a successful Bangladeshi businessman. He then plans on going back to Bangladesh to get his wife and son. Ahmed would also like to travel to the USA for a short amount of time a tour/explore before coming back to Rome permanently.
While discussing with Ahmed his dreams of becoming an Italian citizen and a successful businessman, I asked him his opinion concerning immigration laws in Italy. He stated that he doesn’t have any personal issues with the immigration process in Italy, nor does he find it a particular inconvenience. In my own opinion, I believe that Ahmed isn’t worried about the long and gruelling process of becoming a permanent resident because he is only concerned with the end result, which is his citizenship and being reunited with his family.
Although, I have to add that while Ahmed was pleasantly engaged in conversation about the personal details regarding his life’s story, and with complete strangers who spoke very little Italian, his struggles and worries were completely obvious to me. However, he wore them very proudly. What I mean is that Ahmed stated that he was only 27 years old but to me he looked more like 37. I believe the stresses and uncertainties of his immigrant status, his family, and his daily occupation have led to some premature aging which was foretelling by the look of exhaustion and fatigue on his face.
The second part to assignment was to engage in a conversation with a native Italian. This was particularly hard to accomplish because while is it a lot easier to differentiate a native Italian to an immigrant (based purely on skin color), Italians blend in with many other less obvious ethnicities like Ukrainian, Russian, Argentinian, Spanish, etc. In other words, most of these people are white. However, we finally managed to come by two youth university students at a local college (which we didn’t realize at that time). Their names are Alessandro, 20, who is a communications major, and Tomas, 21, who is studying several different languages including Chinese, Japanese & English (lucky for us!).
During our conversation both Minji and I directed all of our questions to both Tomas & Alessandro, however, Alessandro seemed more opinionated on the topics while Tomas (who was the one fluent in English) seemed to just agree with Alessandro’s answers and occasionally translate some Italian words to English when Alessandro couldn’t explain.
I asked them both their personal opinions about immigrants in Italy. Alessandro commented that he didn’t understand the native Italians’ hostility towards immigrants and they don’t particularly bother them. He feels they are marginalized as criminals and thieves which is a “stupid stereotype”, and that he (who obviously isn’t an immigrant) used to steal clothing from department stores and oddities from supermarkets too! They both agreed that neither feel threatened by immigrants because the jobs they will be pursuing when finished with college won’t be accessible to immigrants. Alessandro stated as an example that “they don’t give jobs like newspaper editors and firemen or policemen to immigrants. All the jobs that local and native Italians would want employers don’t hire immigrants for”. They feel confident that immigrants are only allowed specific jobs that native Italians don’t want anyways, and so “let them come here and work for us”.
I asked them why they were easily tolerant of immigrants other than their own personal sense of security in the job force. They agreed that though Italy may not be the immigrants’ native country they are still entitled to find a home anywhere they believe will provide them and their family with a better life because “we are all the same. We are all human, and we feel compassion [& empathy] for one another”.
Lastly, I asked both Tomas and Alessandro if they believed it was just their generation that was predominately accepting and tolerate of immigrants in Italy or if they opposed this notion. They both commented that their parents share the same views of immigrants as they do, and though the topic of immigration isn’t a particularly popular topic to discuss they believe that the majority of students at their college share believe in their same ideology.
However, based on my limited knowledge on the subject from readings and class discussions older generations are entirely opposed to immigration and intolerant of them. They feel there are distinct differences in family, religion, social-economic roles, and culture which they don’t want integrated into native Italian society. Therefore, no distinct conclusion can be made from these interviews.
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