August 2017
Universiteit Van Amsterdam Master in Sociology Migration and Ethnic Studies Thesis
Post-2008 crises mobility from Italy to Germany: A case study of Italian youth migration to Berlin
Supervised by: Dr. Simona Vezzoli (First Supervisor) Prof. Dr. Hein de Haas (Second Supervisor)
Giacomo Spinelli 11262540 [email protected]
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SUMMARY...... 3 1) INTRODUCTION...... 5 2) PAST CYLES OF EMIGRATION...... 10 2a) Toward Decline...... 14 2b) The 2008 Economic Crisis...... 15 3) THE RESEARCH FRAMEWORK...... 16 3a) Theorizing the formation of migrants aspirations...... 20 4) METHODOLOGY AND METHODS...... 22 4a) Methods...... 24 4b) Ethical consideration and limitation...... 26 5) THE POST 2008 ITALIAN EMIGRATION TO BERLIN...... 27 5a) The construction of an "empathic" relation with Berlin...... 30 6) THE ITALIAN CONTEXT...... 33 6a) The role of civil society...... 34 6b) Provincialism...... 36 6c) The social environment...... 37 6d) The Erasmus program ...... 42 7) CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION...... 43 8) BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 48
2
Summary In 2013 nearly 82.000 Italians left the country. The numbers are impressive, compared with the early 2000s, when the average number was 50.000 individuals.. This trend was confirmed in 2014.
Italian social and political scientists tend to characterize this fact mostly as “brain drain”, emigration of young skilled professionals (researchers, etc) who are forced to leave the country in search of better perspectives, even though only 30% of those who emigrated in 2013 are university graduates.
Intra-European migrations are a social phenomenon whose dynamics and patterns changes quite rapidly. Statistical data furnished by Italian governmental agencies show that Germany has become again in recent years one of the primary destinations for Italian migrants, and, in particular has become a very attractive destination for young migrants.
Despite the social and political relevance of the phenomenon, recent Italian emigration is still an unexplored field of studies and Italian and international scholars have called for more studies to research in depth this new type of emigration which appears to be very different from the previous emigration that, since the second part of the nineteenth century, have characterized Italian migration toward Germany. In particular what seems to be still missing from an analysis of the relevance of cultural factors as emigration determinants.
The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the mosaic of research on the determinants of the new
Italian emigration; in particular analysing under which circumstances (how, when, and why) young
Italians have developed the aspiration to leave their country.
In particular this study focuses on emigration of young Italians to Berlin. A city that, among major
European capitals , seems today to be able to offer a good quality of life, an affordable lifestyle, a more dynamic job market and relatively easy to achieve financial benefits.
3
What has emerged from this research on the cultural motivations which determine the choice of young Italians to leave the country toward Berlin, there is the fundamental rupture of the recent emigration from previous ones. Migration determinants of young Italians seems today very different from the past.
There are several reasons for this difference. The revolution in the communication system has transformed the concept of distance; Skype, Facebook, and Messanger are servers used daily to remain in touch with family and friends. The current facility to travel and its affordability allow people to move very easily across European countries: today for a migrant who goes to Germany the possibility to return in Italy is an available option since a flight can be purchased for less than 50 euro. Last but not least the absence of borders together with all the other benefits of citizens living within the European Union certainly facilitates intra-European mobility. But what emerges from this micro research and could represent another significant break with past migrations is that the desire for material wealth does not seems to represent, compared with the past, as equally significant a determinant for a generation of Italian emigrants who grew up in an age of consumerism, whilst the perception of a country in decline seems to play a determinant role.
Through an analysis of different elements and taking into consideration the Capability
Approach developed in the 1980s by Amartya Sen and the studies by Hein De Haas, this research aims to contribute to a better understanding of the logics, patterns and dynamics at the determinants of contemporary Italian migration toward Germany.
It is to be noted that from the first elaboration of the capabilities approach to the present, there has been a considerable transformation of the world we leave in: the advent of the World Wide Web, the world 2008 financial crisis and with it the crisis of liberal economic concepts. This has been accompanied by a rediscovery of theories opposite to liberal economy. The constants transformation of reality is of course accompanied by a transformation of theories.
4
1) Introduction
Historical patterns of Italian migration toward Germany date back to the formation of the Italian
State during the last three decades of nineteenth century.
The radical shift of protagonists and areas of origin started in concomitance with the global changes produced with the advent of the so-called post-modern societies, in the 1980, Surprisingly in more than 150 years, protagonists and the modalities of this social phenomenon changed only to a limited extent in their pattern and trajectories.
Italian emigration has always been analyzed as a classical case of migration from a southern
European developing country, to a Northern more developed one.
Italian emigration to Germany is historically divided into two main phases: the worldwide 1870-
1915 "great migration,” and the post War World II "guest workers" phase, officially terminated with the 1973 oil crises, when the Arab oil producers proclaims an embargo that impacted economy and politics throughout the world.
Recent studies have explored the possibility that starting from the world financial crisis of 2008,
Italy is going through a third phase of "structural" emigration (Fondazione Migrantes 2016).
Between 2006 and 2016 Italian mobility grew by 54,9%, and the official agency established for the registration of Italians abroad (A.I.R.E) passed from 3 to 4.8 million registrations. During 2015
Germany was the first choice among the European countries for many migrants, with more than
16.586 new registrations (Huffington post.it). In Berlin among intra-European migrants, Italians figured as the second largest group after the Polish community. In 1990 the Italian community was officially composed of 12.858 individuals and in 2014 the numbers doubled, with more than 31.276 registrations (Amt fur Statistik Berlin Brandenbourg, 2015).
However, despite the relevance of the phenomenon the literature on intra European migrations has concentrated its attention mostly on the East-West migration that occurred during the European 5 enlargements of 2004, 2007 and 2013, partially ignoring the mobility of Italians,. In this sense, what appears evident is the necessity to enrich the body of literature on the determinants of the current migration from Italy. And it is in this framework that this thesis is developed: this research analyses the dynamics and the factors that are considered important to the cohort of Italians aged
20-30, while they were making their decision to migrate to Berlin.
The possibility that Italy is going through another phase of emigration, has remarkable theoretical interests and has recently been introduced in the academic debate as valuable topics for further theorization of determinants of migration. A recent research by Stazio (2017:155) on Italian migration to Berlin, indicates the expanding propensity to expatriate of young Italians as an unexplored category of analysis whose importance has been underestimated from studies that research the cluster of reasons behind the ongoing Italian migration. The study of young people propensity to migrate highlights the unexplored argument that leaving Italy is not motivated by economical personal improvement but could be considered as a suitable solution in order to escape from other fundamental problems (e.g.: existential, relational, occupational) (Stazio, 2017: 115). A point of view adopted also by Sanguinetti (2016), who in his research on post 2008 Italian migration in a southern Lander of Germany highlights how the necessity of flight/escape from Italy was a fundamental driver in determining the decision to migrate.
In order to better understand Italian post 2008 migrations to Germany it is fundamental to consider factors that played an essential role in reshaping the very same idea of mobility among young
Europeans.
The generation of Europeans born between 1985-1995 is the first one that grew up with the new technological possibilities linked to the ICT revolution. It is the first 'Schengen generation', that grew up in a Europe without borders and no restrictive residence permits and with a daily choice of low cost flights available to go back. Moreover is a generation that has had the possibility to enjoy
European study mobility through programs like Erasmus, Erasmus+ and Erasmus Mundus. All 6 these factors change the perception of living abroad, which seems to be much more affordable, feasible and less difficult nowadays than in the past.
Another aspect that seems relevant in understanding post 2008 migration from Italy is the perception young migrants have of their country of origin.
Some scholars have advanced the idea that the young generation of Italian migrants has a symptomatic distrust in the future of the country, which is perceived as hopeless not because the economic indicators do not sign positive trends in the near future, rather because of a specific cultural attitude, or mentality, which is seen as one of the main causes of the Italian stagnant socio- political and economic situation (Gjergji, 2015). Without underestimating the importance of economic factors, including the ability of young Italians to overcome structural constraints that prevent the entry into the labour market and social mobility, what should be considered in an analysis of recent Italian migration is the role played by the way young people perceive the country and its future developments.
This research has approached the topic through the theorization of migrant capabilities and aspirations, in order to develop a deeper understanding of the relation between the Italian context and people aspirations.
Originally the concept of capabilities has been developed as an alternative theory in for welfare economics (Sen, 1999), and only lately it has been applied to other branches of social sciences.
Among them, it has been applied and expanded to migration studies by de Haas, who developed a framework to theorize the concept of migrant aspirations with the one of migrant capabilities (De
Haas, 2003).
Relying on previous elaborations of migrants’ aspirations and capabilities the idea this research aims to demonstrate is that in Europe young people move according to their personal capacity of mobilizing and making an efficient use of the socio-economic resources available in their country of
7 origin. The accessibility and availability of these resources is based on the level of freedom that people enjoy in the place where they live. The concept of capability "the ability to lead the life in which people have reason to value and to enhance the substantive choices they have" (Sen, 1999), has been used as a cornerstone concept to operationalize the formation of migrants aspirations.
The main guiding question on which this research is:
'Which factors and dynamics have shaped the migration aspirations of Italians aged 20-30 who migrated to Berlin in the period 2008/09-2016/17?'
And more in details:
- ' what has affected migration aspirations among young Italians migrating to Berlin?' and
- 'which constrictions have contributed to the decision to migrate?'
The methodology used to investigate these questions involved the use of semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and the use of statistical data on Italian emigration (published by Italian agencies) and on Italian population resident in Berlin (furnished by the Municipality of Berlin).
The thesis is structured as follow:
The first two chapters aims is to give an historical overview of Italian emigration phenomenon by approaching the topic through the most influential literature on the argument and through figures and data related to the past and current Italian emigration.
We will see how Italy was a country of emigration for nearly 80 years, with the only exception being during the two decades of fascism. With the transformative process of the world economy that occurred during the 1970s, Italy ceased to be a country of emigration becoming for the first time a country of immigration. In the same period the country reached a substantial level of growth, in terms of livelihood and welfare distributions. Even though Italy witnessed in the same decade a
8 reduction of inequalities, the socio economic cleavages between the north and the south remained the source of many structural problems.
The following chapters are focusing on the main topic of this research: the post 2008 emigration. A trend nowadays confirmed by many quantitative studies. However the relevance of numbers is not enough to capture the complexity of this new phenomenon. The relation between the perception of the Italian context and the decision to leave is the central aspect analyzed by this thesis.
Methodologically , a constructivist approach has been used in order to evaluate the subjective relevance of cultural features, an approach that asserts how cultural and social phenomenon are constantly created and re-created in relation to circumstances. Data have been collected through 15 semi structured interviews and participant observations. Interviews have been made to young people in their twenties; the provenience has been diversified as much as possible in order to represent perceptions and discourses from different parts of Italy.
What has emerged from the analysis of these data, are four main elements: the provincial attitudes and dynamics as cultural issues felt as oppressive by the young people consulted; the role of the family in generating and modifying migrants aspirations; The role of the Erasmus program in shaping people views and perceptions over their aspirations and, last but not least, the perception of the role of the state and its credibility as an actor able to bring major changes.
Two are the main conclusions reached. The determinants of Italian emigrations, despite objective regional differences and subjective perceptions, have some common features in how the Italian context is perceived: the majority of people who leave do not see a future in which they can fit back in Italy, despite the fact that they may go back often to Italy to visit friends and family. The feeling and the idea of these young individuals is that they have abandoned a country in an irremediable path of decline.
A feeling that has caused some resentment in some parts of the Italian ruling apparatus, in particular after the press argued that the ones who left were the brightest. “I know people who left and it is 9 fine that they left because surely this country will not suffer from not having them anymore. " said the Italian labour minister, Giuliano Poletti,in a statement on December 19, 2016, reported widely on newspapers and television.
The second conclusion is that the perceived decline of the country of origin that most of the young migrants interviewed have is the most direct outcome of more than 20 years a cultural decline. The generation of which this unit of analysis is composed of has grown up in a period of cultural decline. This thesis acknowledges and convenes on the necessity of more studies on Italian emigration, encompassing perspectives that were considered not relevant up to the present.
2) Past cycles of emigration
For approximately one century, Italy was one of the main European countries of emigration and only in the second half of the 1970s, the country started to receive immigration flows: first from the
Third World and later from Central and Eastern Europe.
Italy witnessed the first, most intense, phase of emigration in the decades following the 1861 unification of the country reaching its peaks during the first 15 years of the nineteenth century. The peak lasted until the First World War, when it was impacted by disruption of travel routes and by restrictions imposed by receiving countries.
During the first phase emigration came mostly from the North-East regions of Italy but by the end of the century there was an increase of emigration from the southern regions. During emigration at the beginning of the 1900s, almost 600,00 people emigrated from Italy every year, with the highest number, 873,000, in 1913 (Bonifazi et al, 2009, 3). During this period, transatlantic migrations accounted for 60% of the total emigrations, while Italians emigration within continental Europe headed for industrial developing counties such as France, Germany or Switzerland. When the first 10 cycle occurred Italy was a nation in the making and migration was characterized by rural to urban mobility. Characteristic of this first cycle was the return of migrants to their homeland, perhaps to leave again afterwards (Trincia 1997).
With the takeover of fascism mass emigration came to a halt as a result of both the 1929 economic crisis and the regime's obstructive policies toward international migration, favouring programs of internal (forced and not) migrations, organized around land reclamation projects and the construction of new urban agglomerates in the most depressed area of the peninsula.
Another important emigration flow occurred after World War II, between 1950 and 1960, with a
European rather than an intercontinental dimension. From the aftermath of the Second World War up to 1965 the outflows of Italians amounted to 6.5 million. Non-European destinations declined substantially during the second half of the 1950s (Bonifazi et al, 2009, 3).
This cycle of mass migration from Italy occurred during a phase of social transformations, characterized by the necessity to reconstruct materially and morally what the war had destroyed.
European industrial economies recovered quite fast and Western Europe experienced one of the fastest growths that the world had ever seen up to that moment. Economic growth and enhancing well being conditions spread throughout the old continent. Italy was one of the states whose growth, among the other things, was fostered by emigration of low skilled and semi-skilled manual workers.
It is interesting to note that even if the circumstances and the dynamics were quite different, throughout the second cycle of emigration migrants’ determinants would have remained quite similar to the ones of the first cycle (Maciotti and Pugliese, 1999); also trajectories and patterns were retraced by post-war migrants, on national and international destinations (De Clementi, 2014).
What differed radically from the first to the second cycle of emigration was the role of the state, from being a passive actor in the first cycle to being a main promoter and guarantor of emigration in the second one (Gjerji, 2015).
11
For those states of Western Europe in search of temporary manpower, the Italian government played a crucial role not only in terms of numbers, but also by selecting and recruiting workers.
Emigration was strategically chosen and implemented by the Italian Government through numerous bilateral agreements in Europe (France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden,
Luxemburg and Great Britain), and overseas (Argentina, Brazil, Australia). The prevailing model of emigration was the one defined mainly by migrations in Switzerland and Germany: the "guest worker", who worked for short-medium periods of time abroad and then returned to Italy. As
Pugliese (2006) noted migrations in this period were caused by the economic conditions in both sending and receiving states, and the recruitment of Italian low and semi skilled workers was a substantial contribution to many countries in Europe.
During the second cycle of migration, the number of Italian agricultural workers declined from
43.9% in 1951, to 16.6% in 1973 while the number of industrial workers increased from 29.5% to
38.3% within the same period. The economy grew by an average rate of 5.8% per year between
1951 and 1963 reaching an average of 6.5% between 1958-63, while growth remained stable around
5% from 1963 up to the oil crisis of 1973 (Bonifazi et al, 2009, 75). Despite the relevance of those numbers, the structural problems such as unemployment, socio-economic regional cleavages or infrastructural flaws, remained unresolved issues throughout that period that is recognized as a period of growth and development.
To sum up, Italian emigration was characterized as a form of work mobility relying mostly on legal frameworks established to orient and organize the movement of Italians. Through the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) workers were allowed to freely move between Italy and Germany, until the end of the “guest worker” period which could be symbolically represented with the German recruitment halt called "anwerbestopp" in 1973.
Internal migration is a topic outside of these sphere of analysis, but it is however important to point out that internal migration from southern to northern Italian regions never letup as, despite the 12 degree of development and social transformations in the 1960s and 1970s, the social and the economic imbalance between the north and the south did not diminish. It needs to be also noted how internal migrations from the economic backward area of the south, toward the North-West and the city of Rome grew in the same period as international migration occurred (Bonifazi and Heins,
2000). Internal migrations has never ceased to be an extremely relevant issue in Italy. Indeed, despite ongoing progressive improvements, the south of Italy remains an area characterized by serious structural problems from the first post unification periods up to the present..
After the oil crisis of 1973, and the far-reaching transformation of modes of production in western
Europe, migrations trends in Europe changed again. In the mid-70s Italy experienced for the first time a net immigration rate. From being a country of exclusively emigration Italy shifted to a country predominantly characterized by immigration (Pugliese, 2015). At the beginning of the
1980s, the presence of foreigners was documented throughout the country. Some common features of the new immigration flows toward Italy were: the high presence of female migrants; the employment of the majority of migrants in the third sector; and a high rate of unregistered, thus illegal, migrants throughout the nation (Pugliese, 2015).
The reasons and the processes through which Italy between 1970-1980 shifted from an emigration to an immigration country are complex. However, it is worth to at least itemize some of the main factors that pushed Italy to become an immigration country:
1 - Two decades of economic growth and increased livelihood expectations.
2 - Shrinking channel of entrance from the mid-1970s in other Western European countries.
3 - The absence in Italy of legal frameworks and migration policies (the first one dates 1986).
4 - The existence of extensive informal "shadow" economies throughout the country.
5 - An initial attitude of tolerance toward migration from the government and public opinion
(Bonifazi et al; 2009). 13
2a) Towards decline
The 2008 economic and financial crisis that erupted in the United States hit extensively the already weak Italian economic and social structures. However despite the harshness of the 2008 crisis, it would be a major mistake to consider the crisis as a moment of ruptures with pre-crisis trends. In
Italy the economic and political situation was already starting to deteriorate. Historians and sociologists commonly aknowledge that in the last two decades Italy has started a path of decline and decay (Barbagallo, 2017;- Gentiloni 2015;- Pugliese, 2015). The crisis of 2008 is considered in this thesis in its symbolic value: the disruptive power of the financial breakdown has weakened the structural social and economic assets of Italy, increasing the pace and the dimension of an already existing phenomenon.
The Italian shift from emigration to immigration coincided with a crisis of legitimacy within the
Italian state structures. The political system of the Republic was shaken to the foundation by the collapse of the traditional political parties, after the "Tangentopoli" scandal in 1992. The scandal, also called “Mani pulite” (clean hands), an investigation of corruption within the Italian political structure, brought to the end of the so-called First Republic.
The two years between 1992 and 1994 represent the beginning of the Italian symbolic "Transition" from the first to the second republic, a period in which structures and protagonists of the first fifty years of government after the end of World War II collapsed (Gentiloni 2015). With the election of
1994 a new bipolar political system emerged: a centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, which dominate Italian politics for more than twenty years and an opposition of centre-left parties guided by PDS (Democratic Left Party) which then changed its name to PD (Partito democratico).
The decade of global economic crisis, represents for the Italian economy - differently from other developed countries - an acceleration within the very political and economic crumbling process started in 1990s. Giannola (2015) argues how the key factors to understand the involution of the
14
Italian economy were: the growing integration of global markets in national economy; the loss of a national currency usable to foster competitiveness when required; and last but not least, the lack of any industrial state-driven strategy when the liberalization of the market allowed many privatizations of key sectors of the national economy.
2b) The 2008 economic crisis
Acknowledging the past two decades decay in Italy allows us to frame the new emigration not as an immediate response to the 2008 crisis, but more as the result of a longer process of social transformation in which the values and the structures of the so called "First Republic"(1946-92), slowly deteriorated, losing their legitimacy and moral authority over a large part of the population.
The dramatic aspect is that Italians started to question the credibility and the reliability of the Italian
Republic, as a system, as a representative democracy. In 2016, the "5 Stars” movement, an anti- establishment movement that gathers consensus through the vehement attacks of Beppe Grillo, the leader of the group, against the "rotten Italian political system", represented the second political force in Italy.
As we have said, the structural flaws were clearly evident even before the world crisis and before the austerity measures imposed by the EU. From 1994 up to 2014, the growth of the Italian GDP was 19 points below the Euro zone average, with a peak of -6.3% in 2009. The 2014 official ISTAT
(Italian national statistical agency) data revealed how from the outburst of the crisis in 2008 up to
2014 the individuals in Italy living below the poverty line passed from 8 to 14 million, among which 4 million live in absolute poverty. The main structural problem that affected Italy remained unemployment: in 2015 it reached quota 12.5%, of which 38% concerning young people. Not surprisingly, much more dramatic is the situation in the south: youth unemployment touched quota
55%; during 2015 the Italian GPD grew by 0.8%, while in the south it grew only about 0.1%
(Barbagallo, 2016, 333). This even though Italy still figured as the most industrialized European country, behind Germany, although between 2008 and 2015 industrial production dropped by 38%, 15 mostly in its most valuable hi-tech niches. Moreover, between 2008 and 2013 around 134.000 historical enterprises shut down in Italy, and among those 90.000 had more than 50 years of activity. For those that remained, property transfer was the only means of survival: historical enterprises such as Edison electrics, Pirelli, and Ansaldo Breda, were all sold during 2015
(Barbagallo, 2017, 334).
The statistical data gives us a framework to contextualize the third cycle of Italian emigration. The significance of those numbers, which represent the macro context, needs to be evaluated in relation to how individuals perceive those numbers, and how they consequently decide to act (or not). For example, unemployment can signify less competition for those who start from privileged positions, or can represent an extra challenge for those who suffer from a situation of already relative deprivation. Statistical numbers do not represents a social reality, they need to be disentangled from each personal micro context and "put aside". This doesn't mean that numbers and statistical data are not important as they are useful to frame a situation; showing analogies or connections between two or more macro events. But, for those who embrace a qualitative approach and method of analysis, macro data represent a starting point useful to give a general overview of the situation. For the sake of this thesis, statistical data are used only for descriptive purposes.
3) The research's theoretical framework
The literature on post 2008 migration from Italy is divided in two: on one side structuralist authors, which see Italian migration as a new cycle of emigration caused by inherited and new structural problems, on the other a functionalist, or utilitarian, literature which frames Italian migration as an internal (European), circular form of mobility, in which people move from state to state while pursuing economic and non-economic benefits.
16
The first approach looks at Italy as a country affected by structural socio-economical problems, as a country that due to its odd socio-political conformation and historical circumstances is facing serious problems in the attempt to make a clear shift from a developing to a developed country. The most recent collections of publications on the new Italian emigration (Gjergji, 2015;- Bonifazi and
Livi Bacci 2015) show how the recent emigration is a social phenomenon triggered by structural factors such as shrinking channel of entrance in the job market, infrastructural flaws, scarce and disorganized networks of public services, and a complex functioning of the public administration apparatus. The evidence furnished by the statistical data elaborated by the Italian (ISTAT) and
European (EUROSTAT) statistical agencies, are approached as objective realities used to demonstrate the relation between the statistical socio economical data and emigration. The worsening material conditions and possibilities for people in Italy after the crisis of 2008, stand not as concurrent but leading factors that pushed Italians to migrate. These studies are somehow problematic for a number of reasons. They assume, for instance, that Italian migration is a direct response (as it was in the past) to a cluster of external stimuli that constrict people material possibilities. This could lead us to think that in a situation in which the regional rate of unemployment is particularly high, such as in Sicily, for example, people migrate because of the
series of problematic structural circumstances which constrict or obstruct directly their professional self-realization.
One of the interviewee, Giovanni, a 24 years old person from Palermo (Sicily), left his city to move
first to Rome, and after two years to Berlin. The economic consideration in Giovanni's migration trajectories seems to play a minor role if compared with his desire to find a more proactive social environment, which of course is among the other things influenced by economic factors, The determinants of Giovanni's would probably have been "covered" by reading it's migration trajectory as economically driven, which play instead a minor role in the subjective decision to migrate.
Migration determinants are formed by a cluster of very different and very subjective motivations,
17 and quantitative studies very often miss the reciprocal influence between the micro and the macro consideration while a qualitative research attempts to find out the deeper meanings of particular human experiences that can generate observations that are not easily reduced in numbers.
By relying almost exclusively on the relevance of numbers the risk is to overshadow the subjective dimension of migration: unemployment for example could became an instrumental measure which results in a reduction of the complexity of concurrent determinants important for migrants.
The second of branch literature, tend to frame Italy in the European landscape of neoliberal developed states within which migration represent one of the main means through which states loose or gain human and financial capital. Differently from the first more structuralist approach, this one value intra-European migration as a positive phenomenon through which states attract capitals, and individual get benefits from the liberalization and the unification of the European market.
According to this second approach, from the creation of the European Coal and Steal Community in
1952 up to the present, the European institutions have pursued the idea of gradually enhancing states to cooperate in a beneficial win-win situation for both private and public actors, while reaching the full applications of the so called "four freedoms", movement of goods, people, services, and capitals over borders
In countertendency with the view that Italians are leaving due to objective structural constriction, this second branch of literature has approached Italian post 2008 migration as a phenomenon of internal European mobility. With the creation of a European Single market in 1986 and the abolishment of borders in 1995, the classical way of defining and categorizing migration through the lens of the exclusionary dichotomy internal-international, became somehow inadequate to describe the new Intra-European flows.
The definition and categorization of migrants is generally considered as a leftover of classical theories, applicable only to international migrations; more consistent with the new situation is the term free movers or mobile Europeans (Recchi, 2013). Intra-European migrations are characterized, 18 mostly by highly skilled individuals who freely move in a framework where nation states are in competition with each other in pursuit of human capital (Docquier, Rapaport, 2012. Milio et al
2012). This approach theorizes that migration of skilled migrants occurred in a sort of enclosed network of possibilities in which migrants can chose where to move in relation to the different form of capital that they own. According to this views, intra-European such as the migration of young
Italians in Germany, are phenomenon which need to be studied and understood as an experience that has a symbolical rather than an economic value. The economic considerations play a minor role among the determinants of those who migrate across Europe (Recchi, 2013); from this follow the second assumption: that people move chasing a certain kind of lifestyle, one that is multicultural and European (Verwiebe, 2011).
This second point seems to be very similar to what de Haas (2014, 24) has called the intrinsic value attached to the experience of migration. In such a framework, the main destinations became the
Eurocities, places characterized by a "vibrant" cultural and social life (Favell, 2013).
The problem that emerged from this second branch of literature is that by focusing on the stock of resources that migrants could gain but not lose through migration; we are unable to process decisions based on uncategorized thus irrational behaviours through which migrants can make a different use of the resources accumulated up to that moment Among Italian immigrants interviewd in Berlin, for example, a 30 years old man, with a rising career expectation in Italy who decided to move to Berlin without having any relevant offers (wage) comparable with what he was earning in
Italy; nor he was moving for lifestyles or cultural reasons, but just for the sake of radically changing its life experiences and expectations.
The other problematic insight in human capital theories, of interest for this thesis, is the attempt to overcome the national dimension of migration, by describing it as a polycentric phenomenon in which the characteristics of the resources that individuals endow constitute the central feature behind it. 19
In conclusion, the structuralist literature that considers the new Italian emigration determined by the context of structural deficiencies seems to be prone to consider Italy as a country that shows sign of socio-economical decline, highlighting a series of macro structural problems quite atypical for a developed counties. What it can be considered valuable for the sake of this thesis is how studies on the new Italian emigration have framed the historical continuity of migration from Italy.
On the other hand, the "Europeanist" more neoliberal literature that views Italian migration as a phenomenon of internal migration, has avoided to make a clear distinction among different national situations, concealing instead what is considered to be more a sort of European reticular system of interdependent states.
3a) Theorizing the formation of Italian migrants' aspirations
Both the approaches have valuable insights in trying to understand trends of the actual Italian emigration, reason why the theoretical framework of the thesis needs to embrace different perspectives.
In order to find a theoretical approach suitable to investigate the formation of migrant aspiration from a micro level of analysis without losing the grasp with the macro circumstances that affect migration, it is relevant the capabilities and aspiration framework developed by de Haas (2003; -
2009; -2014). It needs to be mentioned the fact that De Haas (2003) for its concept of migrants aspirations relied on the capability approach developed by Sen (1999). From this point of view migrants are actors whose capacity to migrate rely on their ability to mobilise and make efficient use of the resources available and accessible to them.
The use of resources is instrumental: people tend to gain, modify ,or voluntarily loose resources by considering how they can benefit from it. However, the capacity that migrants have to make a beneficial use of resources depends also on a series of external circumstantial situations
20 continuously shaped by specific processes of social transformations, historically and socially defined.
The core concept used to operationalize the research has been as follow: "people migration aspiration are affected by the opportunities they perceived they have to lead the lives they aspire to"
(de Haas, 2014, 23). Evaluating the ability that people have to pursue and live a life they have reason to value, is a way to inquire migrants determinants of the new Italian emigration, by considering the decision to migrate as a choice taken first and foremost from a subjective point of view. It is important to underline how the idea of embracinga subjective perspective needs to be seen as a deepest and more personal layer of analysis embedded within the more general concept of agency, which reflects: “the limited but real ability of human beings (or social groups) to make independent choices and to impose these on the world and, hence, to alter the structures that shape people’s opportunities or freedoms” (de Haas, 2014, 21).
The definition of agency clarify the importance of approaching migrants as actors whose capacity to migrate belongs to their ability to instrumentally make an efficient use of the social, economic and cultural resources available to them. Indeed, even though they are embedded in a context that exert a certain influence on their decisions, migrants, consciously make a number of independent choice to pursue well-being and life aspirations.
Following de Haas (2014), it is useful to make at this point also a distinction between the instrinsic and the instrumental dimension of migration. In the first case, with the term we refer to "the value people attach to the migration experience itself, such as the joy and pleasure derived from exploring new societies"; in the second case, we refer to the dynamics that can be seen more from an utilitarian or functional perspective, such as labour migration or student mobility (de Haas, 2014,
24). With this further clarification, we should be able to process migrants aspiration avoiding any kind of exclusionary categorization.
21
The idea is to put migrants decision beyond theories and not the opposite, because the decision and the effective capacity to migrate is based on what people themselves perceive as accessible and available in the circumstances in which they are embedded. It should be clear, that theories emerge from the narrative of actors. Migrants construct their aspirations in a physical environment, whose values tend to be determined by the subjective perception of it, and the possibility to move out of it or modifying that subjective reality. is the objective attempts made to reach the possibility to lead the aspired life.
In conclusion, it needs to be note, that de Haas has developed the concept of migrants aspiration and capabilities in order to inquire the relations between migration and development and how development can lead to more migration. The concept has been originally applied to international migration, in this thesis is applied to Italian emigration to Germany, even though is not a case of
"international" mobility but neither an internal or circular mobility.
In the next chapter the methodology of this thesis will be outline, showing how the methodology and the theoretical framework used have tied ties.
4) Methodology and methods
This chapter will provide an explanation on methodology and chosen methods on which the results are based. The fieldwork of this research has been conducted from the beginning of April
2016 until the first couple of days of May 2016. All the interviews were conducted in Italian.
Observations and document analysis has been done throughout the period spent on the field. The location of the research was Berlin; where interviews and meeting took place.
This study approached the social phenomenon of emigration from a constructivist prospective, according to which, reality and knowledge are always social constructions made by human beings.
This view is antithetical to the positivist epistemology approach, which considers the construction of knowledge as a process through which we establish objective facts. The flaws of positive
22 epistemology lies in the fact that in order to construct social and cultural knowledge the empirical reality is subjectively evaluated and oriented toward the creation of social laws. Differently, through their work on social knowledge, Berger and Luckmann (1966) argued how knowledge is lawless, constantly created, modified, and re-created, through process of social interactions. The perception of social reality that people have is detached from their own volition. It follows that what could be considered subjectively real, is inalienable (as a subjective reality) from the social circumstances in which the individual has constructed the notion of what is real and what is not. Therefore, social phenomenon are always common constructions derived from perceptions; and as societies change and transform, ideas and perceptions derived from those ideas change as well, modifying social practices and social relations.
The relativistic and constructivist approach fits with the idea that migrants are both actors endowed with agency and therefore able to make independent choices, while also being inevitably part of a transformative process
Whereas, on one side this could be seen as a flaw - because the line is not clearly drawn between the two spheres- it highlights how it will be highly contradictory using a theory that does not reflect the epistemological approach of the research. These ties seem to be even more important if we consider that the research has been carried out using mainly qualitative methods.
In the field work a sense of empathy with the interviewee and shared feelings and ideas represented a first bias of the constructivist approach. A shared cultural heritage represented during the research the a "blind side". Words such as family, culture, corruption, mentality etc etc, were slightly biased, since their significance was sometimes taken for granted, and directed toward a specific discursive construction Another bias could be corroborated by the fact that we were (during the interview) sharing a common vision on our country, even if I have never encouraged this emphatic approach.
The research was conducted through semi-structured interviews. Migrants were therefore free to develop their own thoughts, and encouraged to express their own perceptions and feelings. The fact 23 that we were almost always peers, facilitated all the "ice breaking" moments during the initial stages of interviews. Each narrative were somehow unique in his contents, even if some common issues such as the high rate of unemployment or the heavy functioning of bureaucracy emerged as a leitmotif throughout the interviews. The deep discussions about perceptions opened a space to develop within each thematic area an argument by creating interaction. Here, the problem of my own personal capacity of interpreting and contextualizing emerged, as I was making an attempt to understand how relevant the argument was perceived by the person being interviewed. Migration assumed a personal meaning because it is located in that personal sphere of time and space in which the singular experience of migration takes place. Hopefully, more research will be conduct based on an analysis that considers how each kind of migration experience is firstly a personal experience that acquires a value for the individual for a heterogeneous set of reasons which cannot be fully understood if approached through a categorical exclusionary analysis.
4a) Methods
The results are based on the combination of net-ethnography, and two qualitative methods: semi- structured interviews, and participant observation. Net-ethnography was conducted before my arrival in Berlin. I have "navigated" through Facebook pages of Italians in Berlin, blogs that gave tips to newly arrived Italians and other websites that provide general information about the city.
Through that information, I was able to virtually enter into some of the discussion common to
Italians in Berlin. The most useful insights of net-ethnography was the creation of new acquaintances before my physical arrival in Berlin. Once arrived in Berlin, the network from which
I have benefited the most was the German venue of the Italian democratic party, which was more a symbolic space where Italians from different backgrounds, proveniences, and ages, gather frequently, than a proper political venue. Through a constant frequentation of it, I was able to get more insight.
24
The snowball technique was the method that I most frequently used to get in touch with new people.
Snowball sample is a technique that begins a sample with a few relevant participants you have identified and then expands through referrals. is a technique that begins The passage from friend to friend allowed me to detach myself more and more from the social environment from which the snowball started. The same snowball technique was used with a group of acquaintances recently emigrated to Berlin from Rome. The only criteria followed during the selection of the samples was to diversify as much as possible age and regional provenience, while including people from both town and cities. As the graph in the appendix shows, the 15 people interviewed matched the required criteria.
In all encounters, after a brief introduction of the interviewee -age, regional provenience, current occupation- nine basic question where posed:
- Since when are in Berlin? - Why did you chose Berlin? - Why did you chose to leave Italy, it was an episode in particular or a series of event? -Have you tried to moved somewhere else in Italy? -This was you first migratory expeirence? - what attract you to Berlin? - Did you go through the Erasmus program, and if so, how did it influence your choice? - Do you plan to back to live in Italy, if yes, why?
- In which way and through which means your aspiration has been frustrated?
The interviews were all recorded; nevertheless off-record informal talks before and after the interview were not only useful but also required from some of the interviewees. All the interviews have a length that goes from 30 to 45 minutes. The data that I have analyzed are the ones recorded, there are no further notes that I have used for additional analysis.
25
4b) Ethical considerations and limitations
This research has been conducted in respect of the ethical guidelines established by the College of
Social Science and Graduate School of Social Science of the University of Amsterdam (UvA 2017).
All interviews have been conducted after having explained the aims and the nature of the research.
Informal consent has been obtained and a common understanding reached on the use of the information gathered before each interview. The privacy of the people has been respected; nor they were not exposed to any danger or violation of their fundamental rights.
The information disclosed by the interviewee has not been manipulated to fit the goal of the research and sensitive information has not been handed over to third parties. The interviews were carried out so as to avoid either excessive physiological distance or affinity with the respondent.
No limitations or ethical problems derived from the behaviour of the individuals involved. The interviews were completed avoiding a biased use of snowball technique. Indeed it could happen in case studies such as this to exclude through subjective evaluation certain kinds of person during the selection of the samples. This problem has been avoided by balancing the gender of interviewees and by diversifying as much as possible their regional provenience so as to avoid any kind of stereotypical judgement regarding the relation between regional circumstances and gender with the decision to migrate. The only problem was the limited time of the research: at the end of the fieldwork it became clear that understanding the complex mosaic of Italians in Berlin additional study and time.
26
5) The Post 2008 Italian emigration to Berlin
We have embraced a narrative according to which the Post-2008 Italian emigration is a phenomenon whose roots need to be searched in almost two decades of political and economic decline.
The graph below shows the statistical data furnished by the statistical office of Berlin- Brandenburg highlights how Italian migrations to Berlin rapidly increased after 2008. After a peak in 1995 when the Italian population resident in Berlin was more than 20.000, the total Italian population in Berlin remained always beneath 10.000 from 1996 up to 2009. More recently, the Italian population of
Berlin reached 31.276 in 2014, more than doubling its values from the 1990s.
Nowadays Berlin is generally recognized as a city in Europe that tends to attract migrants for its socio-cultural life. The low presence of Italian “guest workers” in Berlin highlights how the city was initially characterized by non-industrial activities. If the recruitment of foreign workers in general is datable to around 1955, when the bilateral agreement between Germany and Italy were signed, in Berlin they took place only after 1965 (Pichler, 2002).
Evolution of Italian population in Berlin from 1998 to 2013
Grafico.6.1. Evoluzione della popolazione italiana a Berlino dal 1998 al 2013.
Source: Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg
27
The industrial development of Berlin occurred at a later date compared with the general industrial development that took place in other cities such as Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich or Stuttgart. This is due to the fact that in the aftermath of World War II, Berlin witnessed the exceptional situation of being reconstructed while being politically (from 1961 also physically) divided into two different political, cultural and economic sphere of influence, which reflected the bipolar division of the world amid capitalism and socialism.
The history of the recent Italian migration to Berlin can be traced by following the historization made by Edith Pichler. Pichler theorized how during 1960-1970s, the city became a pole of attraction for many of the young people who belonged to the left and the extreme left in Italy. They have been identified by Pichler as "the rebels" (Pichler, 2002): young people who belonged to extra- parliamentary groups, such as "Autonomia Operaia" (Workers Autonomy) or "Lotta Continua",
(The struggle continues) willing to reproduce group structures and dynamics in Germany, while also being susceptible to eventually learn and adopt new experimental forms of political activism.
When in the mid-1970s the wave of student protest come to an end, the young Italians that arrived in Berlin almost a decade before began to diversified their activity within the western part of the city. From the epicentre of where the student contestation, the universities, Italians moved - always in coherence with their political identity - to new areas that only a decade after will became renowned for their vibrant socio-cultural life. For example, when the alternative and occupied scene reached its peak in the 1990s, neighbourhood such as Kreutzberg, became the centre of the cultural life of Berlin, where new cosmopolitan lifestyles met and meshed (Del Prà, 2006, 112).
Throughout the 1990s, during the formation of the "alternative scene", cultural and political activities moved in unexplored new urban spaces: like art galleries, design studios, and other kind of places where "leftist" people reinvented also in economic terms their social identity (Del Prà,
2006, 112). The sector of activities in Berlin where Italians reinvented themselves with success 28 were ethno-gastronomic activities. The fact that Italians migrants arrived in Berlin moved by political and cultural stance for almost two decades, contributed. among others, also toward the creation of an image different from the stereotypical ones related “guest workers”. Nevertheless, stereotypes sometimes could contained hints and the view of Italians as "pizza and mandolino" people was probably fostered by those mushrooming activities related to gastronomy; which contributed, among other factors, to the creation of new temporary jobs available for newly arrived
Italians.
Alongside the new possibilities represented by growing Italian activities in Berlin, decreasing restrictions on the European migratory legal framework contributed to the arrival of the post modern migrants in the late 1990s who were characterized by being apolitical and beneficiaries of new sustained forms of mobility throughout Europe (Pichler, 2002). Indeed, the formation of new possibilities enhanced by the European communitarian initiatives fostered a new type of circular mobility, from which students in particular benefited.
During the two decades that followed the downfall of the wall Berlin was transformed also by how the citizens elaborated collectively the "wounds" derived from being a city divided for more than three decades. How powerful is Berlin, in its historical heritage, is something that I also felt when I was there as well almost all the individuals that I interviewed, who were captured and fascinated by how unique the city is for its recent history and by the way in which Berlin became one of the most, if the not the most, dynamic and tolerant multicultural capital of the world. In my opinion, if Berlin is such a cosmopolitan capital, capable of attracting people from all over the world, it is due to the way its people shaped their environment by collectively facing the elaboration of historical memories. If avant-garde and experimental lifestyles spread in Berlin is perhaps also linked its civil society always aware of the concrete chance it has to influence the cultural, political and economic environment of the city.
29
Berlin grew under the influence of specific political and social environments that called for tolerance, coexistence and respect, attitudes that shaped and marked the identity of the city.
Among the positive aspects that were pointed out by some of the individuals interviewed there were the fact that Berlin continues to be a city where living cost are lower if compared with other cities such as London, Paris or Rome and rents in Berlin are substantially lower than in Rome or Milan and events are accessible to the large majority of residents.
One other feature that characterizes Berlin is the good quality of services and infrastructure; every corner of Berlin is well connected with all the other areas of the city, travel from point A to point B of the city will take you a maximum of 30 minutes wherever you are and wherever you have to go.
The movement over long distances in short periods of time was an important discovery for those
Italians coming from the areas of the peninsula in which good services are still a mirage. Last but not least, since Germany is a country where welfare has not been totally dismantled, there is a substantial help from the state for the unemployed, which guarantees a minimum wage while one is searching a job and also people employed but receiving very low wages can access some state financial contributions.
5a) The construction of an "empathic" relation with Berlin
Berlin represents for a great number of people interviewed a city able to transmit deep feelings, which help individuals to reflect on life trajectories and life aspirations. Liliana from Naples, for example, argued how she was fascinated by Berlin since when she was a child and the fact that she didn't know much about it at that time increased her sense of fascination, stimulating the deepest fantasies and increasing her desire to directly explore it. Once Liliana arrived in Berlin (without any kind of long term plan) she felt that it was exactly how she imagined it, which lead her to decide that Berlin was the place where she wants to conduct her life, despite several difficulties (the
30 language in first place) It seems considerable the enormous power that migrants have to bend a so called - objective- reality in accordance to their emotional disposition.
The empathic experience of Liliana shows how certain feelings are substantially supported by shared narratives about Berlin; for example that Berlin is a tolerant city, which is something that was repeated over and over by almost all the person interviewed.
It is perhaps from this feeling of being in a tolerant and multicultural environment that the sense of empathy emerges. The discursive rhetoric of being "in contact" with the city makes sense once we compare how migrants used to feel when they were in Italy. Arianna, for example, feels that in
Berlin when she walks in the streets she does not feel observed because, according to her, the huge dimension of the city and the mentality of its inhabitants contribute to give you a sense of anonymity. Moreover in Berlin no one seems to judge you on the base of your provenience or social position. While in Italy she felt under pressure growing up in Fossalta di Piave, a small town near
Venice, because the people around her were always judging each other's behaviour. Arianna's sense of empathy with Berlin is to what she attributes to her new environment, when compared with her previous personal story, because the city for her represents the opposite of what she voluntarily left behind in Italy.
A similar case is the experience of Eva, a 25 years old woman from Formello, a small town within the Rome metropolitan area, who after a six months Erasmus stay in Dresden in 2012, moved to
Berlin, where she declares she is able to get in touch with the "chaotic" part of herself. Eva feels that Berlin is giving her the chance to know herself better. While she was exploring the city she was also exploring parts of her that she was unable to see and express in Italy. The Berlin multicultural and cosmopolitan environment helps her to discover "who she really is". The argument of Berlin's tolerance comes back also here: the fact that people coexist pacifically seems to foster a certain attitude, through which migrants take the time they need to know themselves, which is something that is apparently missing in Italy. What is interesting in Arianna's and Eva's cases, is how they used 31 their agency to disentangle themselves from certain structures in Italy, mostly beliefs and behaviours, and re-create in Berlin the condition to live the life they want.
The perceived emotional connection with Berlin is directly related to three main considerations that the interviewee underlined: first, people have duties toward civic matters, second the work environments of Berlin are meritocratic and, third, the role of the state and it's reassuring presence in case of economic necessity.
Berlin's people civic attitude convinced Elettra, a thirty years old woman coming from Agrate
Brianza, a small town of 15.000 people near Monza, that Berlin was the right place for her when she witnessed the following concatenation of events: after the closing of an historical bakery next to where she lived, neighbourhood residents organized public meetings and talks with the municipality in order to understand why the bakery closed and what they could concretely do to help to re-open the shop. Even if Elettra was not directly involved, she considered the involvement of the neighbourhood as a sign of civil society awareness. Federico S. had a similar impression when he first arrived in Berlin from Rome: he was astonished by the fact that people from the same line of work environment as his provided contacts and suggestions of potential employment, without demanding or pretending anything in return. " The first thing that I have experienced in Berlin”
Federico S said “is cooperation, the idea that I could meet people, really increased my appreciation of the city and the decision to pursue my future here" (12:55). Also Federico Q, who arrived in
Berlin in 2011 after having attained his master's degree certificate in Milan and after an exhausting research of jobs in Italy, felt immediately integrated in Berlin:
" I was lucky because I met through internet and social events people with whom I felt immediately comfortable with, the availability that people showed towards me was exceptional; it is hard to find something to complain about during my first period in Berlin."
The narratives on how liveable is the city tend to reflect some stereotypical vision of the city, as a place where everyone can realize dreams and aspirations, or where everyone can afford to conduct 32 any lifestyle. These myths and legends about Berlin- such as Berlin is a the city where everything is possible, it is not required that you speak German, any lifestyle is accepted- reflect a way of framing the city that is far from reality. Stazio argues that these narratives are instrumentally promoted by institutional and commercial actors in order to attract human and financial capital. By making an instrumental use of these narratives, institutional actors embrace the so-called place branding strategies to promote Berlin. These institutional strategies are set up through widespread communication activities that generally involve all the city’s media system (Stazio, 2017, 53).
Nonetheless the considerations on the empathic feeling of well-being by Italian immigrants in
Berlin remain a fundamental factor in explaining their choices.
6) The Italian context
From the analysis of the data, we can affirm how the formation of the aspiration to migrate occurs in a space in-between reality and desires. One of the most interesting things emerged during the analysis of the data, is how migrants tend to create subjective patterns through which contextualize the why and the how their aspiration has been formed. In relation to the formation of the aspiration to migrate, three main area-topics emerged from the analysis of the data.
1) The negative perceptions of the interviewee on both Italian civil society and the state effective capacity to modify current paths.
2) The problem of living in a social context considered provincial, which entangle young people in a context characterized by dynamics of social obligations; social pressures; and social support.
3) The role of education in shaping aspirations, in particular: the possibility enhanced by the
Erasmus program.
The graph below shows name, age, arrival in Berlin and provenience of the group of Italians that I interviewed.
33
Federico Q 28 September 2011 Pietrasanta (LU) Liliana N 26 January 2012 Napoli Sebastaian 27 August 2016 Roma Giovanni 25 August 2015 Palermo Leonardo 25 September 2015 Fiesole (FI) Arianna 24 September 2016 Fossalta di Piave (VE) Giorgio 23 October 2016 Verona Benedetta 26 September 2016 Roma Andrea L 30 January 2016 Pordenone Eva 25 September 2016 Formello (RM) Francesca 25 August 2016 Roma Federico S 27 August 2016 Roma Nicolò 28 September 2014 Milano Elettra 30 August 2016 Agrate Brianza Andrea D 29 October 2012 Bari
It is important to note how the large majority of the Italians interviewed arrived in Berlin less than
15 months before our encounter. Some of the migrants interviewed are therefore only going through an exploration period, which entails the possibility that they could move again to another destination or go back to Italy.
6a) The role of civil society
The analysis of "civil society" deals with how the young Italians that I interviewed perceive and react to the socio-economic situation in Italy. Throughout the interviews I had the chance to discuss the problems related to the Italian civil society, whose centrality was recognized by all. It was on the one hand a somehow abstract and very general topic, on the other hand a topic that migrants have used to concretize and give an empirical base to what they considered the main limitations of living in Italy. What emerged was that the issues related to civil society represent in the opinion of almost everyone I interviewed as the most serious threat to Italy's future.
As we have previously seen, the effect of the 2008 economic crisis in Italy dragged the country in a spiral of socio economic problems, in a situation that was already problematic two decades before the stock market crash. As the graph above shows, the majority of the people I interviewed arrived
34 in Berlin between 2014 and 2016, which means that they were still in Italy1when the crisis erupted.
The cohort of individuals interviewed did not however suffer from any kind substantial deprivation due to the crisis, probably thanks to the support furnished by their parents: the access to infrastructures such as universities was guaranteed, basic necessities were always available and in general those who had a certain lifestyle were not forced to abandon it. However, everyone witnessed a shrinking in personal purchasing power.
The concept of relative-deprivation helps us to frame the material situation in which young people found themselves in Italy. In a status of relative-deprivation people are enclosed in a gap between what they perceive as legitimate for their future in projection and the reality. The idea of relative deprivation according to Stazio (2017, 44) together with structural flaws, is what has shaped the aspiration to leave of young Italians. Which is what Schaefer defines as: "the conscious experience of a negative discrepancy between legitimate expectations and present actualities" (Stazio, 2017,
44).
The first empirical reality of a civil society perceived as problematic is related to employment of young people in Italy. I will bring the examples of Arianna, Sebastian and Liliana.
Arianna, after graduating in social sciences at the prestigious university of Padua was employed by a local journal of politics and international affairs. She was underpaid and exploited (which is considered somehow normal in Italy) and her main complaint did not refer to her economic compensation but about the fact that her boss uses to make comments on her private life with other colleagues by watching daily her Facebook profile.
" When I realized they were mobbing me, I decided to leave...it was terrible... when they realized my intention to leave, the two bosses sat me at one extremity of the main table and started to attack me by saying they had invested on me, that I was unfair and dishonest and other insults and false accusations. As soon I left the office I started to cry..."
1 Almost all the people interviewed were enrolled in university when the crisis took place. 35
The case of Sebastian is somehow similar. While he was working as a waiter in a restaurant the manager accidentally forgot to register the payment of all extra hours worked. Sebastian recounted how, if he had not involved his father, who had threatened the manager to recur to legal means in order to solve the issue, he would probably have not received correct amount of money that he had earned. Not very different is the story of Liliana, who was still waiting to be paid for a job done in the summer of 2015 in Italy. Sebastian and Arianna argued how the proof that they had learned the lesson was leaving Italy and its rotten system, while Liliana, said that leaving Italy was one of the best choice that she had made in her life.
Those cases reflect a general widespread attitude of exploitation of young people that is at the root of frustration for individuals, in particular of the most fragile, who aspire to have an honest way to pursue a future in Italy. Negative experiences such as the ones described above have the power to reduce the capacity of people to believe in themselves and in their country, while making the goals they would like to achieve somehow unreachable. The discrepancy between aspiration and reality in
Italy is a social construction and the reduction or the enlargement of this discrepancy depends on the capacity of individuals to react morally and legally, considering themselves as part of a community of equal citizens. The capacity of the state of being an example of conduct is fundamental in supporting the active participation of civil society.
6b) Provincialism
It was not easy, even though I am Italian, understanding what exactly was the meaning of provincial mentality, as used by the interviewee. "Provincialismo" is defined by the Italian Treccani dictionary as "limited interest due to scarce contacts with more updated and universal cultural environment"(Treccani, 2017), but, I have reached the conclusion that a provincial dimension
(where provincial mentality grew) is also intended as a limited social environment, in which interactions always take place among the same actors. In other words, provincialism is also a social behaviour, in which narratives of solidarity or antagonism are created among people that have close 36 boundaries for different kinds of reasons. What emerged as a common perception among my interviewee is that this kind of social behaviour tends to create material and immaterial barriers, which tend to reduce the individual capacity to access social and economic opportunities (e.g: new jobs, new friends, cultural contaminations etc etc ). It is important to underline how in this particular section provincialism is intended as an oppressive mental attitude perceived without necessary making explicit the importance of the physical place where this happen. Therefore, it is not something that occurs only in small towns, but it can be found also in large urban areas, or large cities such as Rome or Milano. The focus of this section is the underpinning order and mental attitude through which those divisions are justified and perpetrated.
6c) The social environment
The large majority of young people interviewed felt the necessity to escape from social dynamics perceived as oppressive. What is common to all the people affected by this feeling, is that pressure manifests itself as a form of anxiety and dislike toward the surrounding social environment.
According to Giorgio from Verona, people who are particularly sensitive and who have an heterogeneous assets of aspirations to develop, could eventually manifests a sort of "schizophrenia" due to the invisible, though oppressive, behavioural stance created through the division into different social groups.
As Giorgio explained:
" In a provincial context there is always a sort of group formation; divisions and rivalry are the logical consequence of it. People want always to be distinguished from those who are considered to be " provincial"...the other groups are always accused of being narrow minded as a way through which to distinguish your own group, but in this way you create a dynamic of opposition; which is always bad if you want to embrace different kinds of cultural insights." (Giorgio: 25:02)
37
A similar idea of what group formation means has been expressed by Federico from Rome, who highlighted how Rome is affected by "tedious rivalries" which are most of the times not "declared", because very often it occurs within the same group of people. Federico pointed out that rivalries occur also among individuals. According to him, the idea behind the social relations in Rome is that: "We are friends, and you are welcome to work with me, but then, eventually I have to be represented and paid better than you, and even if I won't demonstrate that I'm better than you, I'm just better because I invited you to be part of this..." (Federico, 17:21).
The continuous rivalry and the lack of cooperation among peers, was perceived by Federico as dynamic mentally and physically exasperating, especially on the long run. The perception of an
"oppressive" environment in this case was given by the absence of any new opportunities while he was making his first steps in his work environment (sound engineer). Federico realized how frustrating was living in such an environment, only when he moved to Berlin.
This was noticed also by Giorgio who pointed how the rhetoric of presenting your group as better than some other group, tends to reproduce itself also in peer to peer relations within the same group.
The paradox which Federico encounter is that what seems to be a normal competitive environment tends to be regulated not by meritocracy, but by very subjective perception of personal benefit.
Provincialism manifests itself also in terms of social obligations. "In Italy taking a decision by yourself is much more risky than outside Italy". Thanks to the data collected during the interviews,
It is possible to have a deeper grasp of the social obligations connected with the provincial attitude.
Chicca, a 25 years old girl from Rome, argues that in Italy you are always trapped in this kind of situation in which someone gives you an opportunity as a personal favour, as something that they are personally doing for you, and for your social position. This situation of owing something to someone is absent when you are on your own abroad. When she is speaking about Berlin and the positive sense of responsibility that she felt, Chicca stated how:
38
"(In Berlin) there is no one that will help you when you make a wrong choice, the responsibility is yours, but here you are somehow encouraged to try and eventually make the wrong choices; this is something that in Italy you can't do, because if you make mistakes you are going to disappoint someone, and if you disappoint the expectation of people, you feel that you lose opportunities, and that's a risk that many people don't want to run. I mean, in Italy many people run roads already run because it's the most simple thing to do, in Italy we like to travel with comfort..." (Chicca, 28:55)
This is a useful quotation to stress the emotional dispositions through which social obligation is perceived. The links between the dynamics of oppositions and the question of the opportunities, can be established by the fact that what people receive often doesn't come from merits recognized through meritocratic standardized criteria, but more as a something granted personally. If such phenomenon occurs on a large scale, people will logically grow wary of the others capacities.
This lucid explanation of Chicca, can be also used to understand the perceptions of Elettra. She moved in Berlin in 2015, when she was 29. What pushed Elettra to emigrate was the fact that in
Italy she was "living without really living", while being constantly confused and scared, by the prospective of a professional failure.
The social environment acts also in terms of support and protection. The case of Elettra the provincial dynamics In her case, the provincial dynamics among the group of friends that she use to frequent represented the "envelop" in which she isolated herself while feeling protected and safe, from what was "just one step further"
when a physical group exists, provincial dynamics tend to create shared narratives to justify behaviours and perceptions. Actors tend to create empathic boundaries to boost feelings of support and relief, from which every member of the group can benefit. By being ritually supported from the outside "real life", members of a group live their life in a bubble in which the everyday problems are somehow left aside, as Sebastian from Rome said:
39
"My group of friends is very ghettoized, we tend to stay all together and back up each other in our uneasiness, even if no one does a shit, at the end of the day we meet for a beer and we all feel good; at least mentally." (Sebastain 15:30)
It is quite interesting to see how similar dynamics occur in a small town in Lombardia (Agrate
Brianza). As this excerpt of conversation with Elettra shows:
Question: "How did your friends influence your decision (of leaving)?"
Elettra: " they were slightly selfish I think...I mean...they said: no Elettra don't leave; I can't see the point of your departure; what are you going to do in Berlin; there you have no friends; etc etc..."
Question: "But do they have a job?"
Elettra: "Yes, however there are different situations: from the most exploited friend who is scared to join the unions, to the self employed friend who struggles each month to reach the minimum wage."
In concluding her remarks Elletra said that arriving in Berlin was a a sort of epiphany, realizing how many years she "threw" away without doing anything.
To sum up, the main feature of provincialism is the creation of dynamics, which tend to create alienation and frustration among people who:
1) suffer from a lack of aspiration; from a sort of existential void.
2) or among those who have aspirations and consider the social environment as gloomy and motionless.
For both cases, emigration represents a way to "break the circle" and abandon a lifestyle in which people are stuck without being able to make any kind of social and professional advancement.
40
Often the provincial environment is supported by the way in which the family institution is lived.
The family is the focal point in which different topics converge: economic factors, sense of responsibility, future plans. Generally speaking families, unconsciously and unwillingly, tend to exert different kinds of pressures which have a negative result. Suggestions and facilitations from families have the intrinsic risk of driving young people into something that they do not consider valuable, as in the case of Sebastian: by choosing to study architecture because the parents are architects; or as Federico: by choosing to study sound engineering at the University in Rome because the parents considered it fundamental. As a result both abandoned the studies and moved to
Berlin.
Young people have to face everyday a rhetoric (on the media, among friends, at the university etc, etc,.) that repeats over and over again the same news: the drama of unemployment rate, the lack of social mobility, the low salaries, and all the others "structural" problems that nowadays affect Italy.
In this scenario the families naively try to encourage the young people to do "whatever you want to do as far as you are happy". The encouragement most of the time is moral or economic, but in both cases "wishful thinking and unrealistic".
The important issue here is that through the way in which communication and the sense of duty are socially shaped, an eventual failure - instead of being perceived as caused by the socio-economic circumstances - is felt as a symbolic waste of the resources that the family made available: the perceived sense of guilt of young people is doubled. By acknowledging this type of implications, social pressures is clearly linked to family dynamics.
One of the aspects that emerged from the interviews is that what is valued is not the money in itself, but the responsibility for the resources made available by the family. The level of freedom that young people perceive is directly tied to how much they feel obligated, or they feel they owe to those who granted them possibilities or opportunities. However, the detachment from the pressure
41 of the family can be reached through economic success, while separation from a cluster of friends and acquaintances needs to be physical.
6d) The Erasmus program
An important factor for 7 out of the 15 people interviewed was their participation to the erasmus program, an experience that according to them radically changed their perceptions and aspirations.
During the Erasmus people live in a context that is extra- ordinary: physically and mentally they moved into a framework in which is easier to create new network, embrace new lifestyles, and most importantly: take some time to develop though and future prospective. The prospective of being abroad, raise the awareness about the situation left behind in Italy; which is considered normal and unproblematic, up to the moment of discovering new realities:
" During the Erasmus I was able to get in touch with different people, and to talk with them about some stuff that really triggered my interest, such as art and literature, and through those confrontations I have realized that (in Italy) there was something wrong, because I never had had the chance to talk about those issues before." (Giorgio 5:12).
The Erasmus was a crucial moment also in the migration trajectories of Benedetta:
"Yes I did it (the Erasmus) and just like everyone does during it, I have realized how beautiful is living abroad. After that experience of 6 months, I went back to Italy, finished my bachelor, and I went abroad again for a two years Master between Lisbon and Brussels". (Benedetta 12:32)
The narrative of the 7 people that did the Erasmus is very similar, content and outcomes have always the same feature: before doing the Erasmus people were unaware of their social capital. Once they went abroad the necessity of living on their own and engage new challenges pushed them to know themselves better. What is interesting, is that for a series of circumstances people are socially and mentally "blocked", in their environment, and what they want to do, or what they like became clear only when they moved abroad. Niccolò and Arianna for example think that their awareness grew because they were distant from the family.
Arianna said that she mature during the Erasmus because:
"First of all the bureaucracy, in a country where people speak a different language and...I didn't have the passport, and once I was there I realized that my national ID was useless because not valid for expatriation. I had several difficulties therefore I contacted the embassy...however, let's say all these things that in Padua I could manage from Monday to Friday, and then Sunday going to visit 42 my mum that did the wash machine for me...all this these thinks took me much no longer, or where not possible in when I was in Erasmus" .
For Niccolò the Erasmus was the first real experience of separation from the family and from that moment he realized how importance was living independently.
" The ties with my family were quite strong, but I was already realizing (before the Erasmus) that it was an environment not really healthy... and about this the Erasmus helped me a lot, because it was a first long-term detachment from my family, and because I perceived for the first time how good it is to live by yourself ". (Niccolò 34:11) .
7) Conclusion and discussion
This dissertation provides a case study of the factors and dynamics that have shaped the migration aspirations of Italians aged 20-30 who migrated to Berlin in the last decade. It provides a description of Italian migration history until the 1980s, when Italy turned from a country of emigration to one of immigration and of the different intepretations of a new rise of emigration after the 2008 financial crisis. Applying the concepts developed by Amartya Sen and Hein de Haas it argues that the current Italian emigration represents a break from past streams of Italian emigration, being conditioned by cultural as much as economic factors. The fact that Lombardy, the richest region in Italy, is the largest source of emigrants, together with other relatively rich regions of the north, is a further demonstration of this conclusion.
The new Italian emigration is a phenomenon whose determinants need to be searched in the major political and economic shift that occurred in Italy from the 1980s, determining the disruption of the
Italian social and economic progress acquired up to that moment. The economic crisis of 2008 further deteriorated the situation and today Italians in general are sceptical of the problem solving capacity of the state at both national and local level. Italy is now in the phase in which development is stagnating, unclearly swinging between reverting its trend or fostering a new phase of
43 development. It is indeed this odd situation, in which the reliability of Italy as a developed country is put at stake by many young people, that we have to frame the formation of migrant aspiration.
This consideration open a space for theorizing how not only in Italy development is not linear, but how it could perhaps also revert its trends, or it could stagnate for decades, with unpredictable outcome for migration flows.
We have seen how sociological theories approached the post 2008 migration from Italy in different ways. For its large majority Italian literature follows a line that contextualized the new emigration in its historical continuity with the past. This despite the fact that Italy passed through phases of emigration that differ in regional, social and economic compositions.
The phenomenon of rising numbers of young Italians leaving the country is theorized as a result of the convergence of new and inherited socio-economic problems. Migration is therefore seen as a choice made under constrictive conditions of structural inequalities toward which people are powerless.
The second way of approaching Italian migration transcend the national dimension of migration, even the category of migrant is considered inadequate to describe the mobility of Italians in other
European countries. Other theorization so called "europeanist" portray migration as a form of circular mobility within a context of increasing economic liberalization, which entails increasing opportunities for those able to instrumentally exploit the resources they have. The possibility to migrate and utilize in the receiving country the resources acquired in the country of origin, is somehow facilitated and fostered by the political framework in which migration occurs: intra
European mobility is a way to fill the imbalances of socio economic opportunities among countries.
This second approach draws its theoretical legitimacy on neoclassical migration theories that see migrations as a phenomenon that tends toward the creation of social and economic equilibrium and the single market of the European Union an instrument used to foster the convergence of national
44 economies, by means of which standardize and reduce the imbalances among European member states.
But the conclusion that this thesis proposes is that for the cohort of Italian migrants interviewed in
Berlin, the choice of migrating, as a means to pursue enhancing material condition does not represent any longer a valuable determinant of migration and even though both theoretical approaches mentioned above can partially explain Italian migration, the ease which young Italians became "European citizens" does not coincide with a reduction of intra states socio-economic imbalances.
However the European Union does represent a way through which people can effectively enhance the possibilities they have. Programs such as Erasmus and Erasmus + interpret the communitarian spirit of Europe at the best. It is not a case if more than half of the young people interviewed did an
Erasmus. Perhaps even more important is that the Erasmus program gave to young Italians a sense of self-confidence of their capacities that hardly could be compared with in Italy.
From the analysis of the case study it emerges that young Italians migrate under problematic circumstances manifested mainly through cultural factors. The determinants of migrations are
'assets' of heterogeneous problematic situations that all combined increase the young Italians aspirations to leave. And even though the "luggage" of negative experience accumulated in Italy is different from one actor to the other and therefore it is quite unrealistic to create a common denominator of standard problems that people encounter in Italy it is evident from the interviews that the perception of a specific Italian attitude and mentality has exasperated young people aspirations. The fact that a way of thinking has a concrete effect on everyday life, while also being somehow intangible, tends to increase frustration and desire of leaving of young Italians.
From the analysis of case study we have seen how what is defined as "provincial" transcends the physical environment: Rome as Agrate Brianza or as Verona, can have the same social dynamic, in spite of environmental, economic and social differences. This leads to assume that a certain 45 mentality can be deeply rooted in the individual idea of a national customs and/or tradition and viceversa. People from Lombardia, Veneto, Lazio or Sicily stated how among the factors that affect their desire of leaving Italy the lack of hope in Italy's future was a fundamental element. We have seen how this lack of hope is caused on one side by the intrinsic value they attached to their personal experiences, on the other by the extrinsic to their subjective sphere, due to the mere observation of a socio, economic, cultural reality in degradation.
The troubles that Italy encountered after the 2008 economic crisis exasperated an already difficult situation. A widespread sense of insecurity and confusion increased people perception of a State unable to take care of its citizen because it is unable of being respected. Is not surprising if one of the elements that young Italians value the most in Berlin is the coherence of the civil society and the cooperation between citizen and the various state apparatus. To the contrary the state in Italy is perceived not as something to which citizen belong and contribute to but rather as an antiquated and inefficient bureaucratic machine that needs to be eluded. The widespread means through which young people work while being illegally employed reflects the refusal of the employer to pay taxes and social contributions on workers. The distrust of young people seem to be based on the observation that such behaviours represent a mentality rather than a real necessity which leads to the projection perceived sense of hopelessness.
What characterizes the desire of leaving is the distrust in people not in structures. Italy is perceived as a hopeless nation because it is perceived as a country not able to manage and exploit the cultural and social resources inherited from the past. Italians are leaving because of the mental attitude of
Italians. This highlights also the difference with past cycles of emigration. Before people migrated because there were few possibilities to conduct a decent life in Italy. Nowadays young people migrate because they refuse to be part of something for which they see no future. The "tragedy" of
Italy is that the economic, social and technological changes of the last decades did not correspond to the development of a shared and respectful sense of civil conscience. 46
47
8) Bibliography
Amt fur Statistik Berlin Brandenbourg. 2015. "Berlin-Statistick 2015" Potsdam. Amt fur Statistik Berlin Brandenbourg https://www.statistik-berlin- brandenburg.de/produkte/kleinestatistik/AP_KleineStatistik_DE_2015_BE.pdf
Barbagallo, F. 2016. "Storia contemporanea: dal 1815 ad oggi" Terza edizione aggiornata. Roma: Carocci Editore.
Berger, P.; Luckmann, T. 1966. "The social construction of reality". New York: Open Road Integrated Media.
Bernadotti, A. 2015. “Direzione America del Sud. Le nuove migrazioni Italiane in Argentina.” IN: “La Nuova Emigrazione Italiana.” Edited by: Iside Gjergji. Venezia: Edizioni Ca’Foscari. pp. 135- 173.
Bertoli, S.; Brucker, H.; Fernandez-Huerta Moraga, J. 2013. “The European Crises and Migration to Germany. Expectations and the diversion of Migration Flows.” IZA discussion paper.
Bonifazi, C.; Livia Bacci, M. 2015. "Le Migrazioni Internazionali ai tempi della crisi". Firenze: Associazione Neodemos.
Bonifazi, C.; Heinz, F. 2000. "Long Term Trend of Internal Migration in Italy" . Population, Space and Place 6 (2) 111-131.
Bonifazi, C.; Heinz, F.; Strozza, S.; Vitello, M. 2009. “The Italian transition from emigration to immigration country”. IRPPS, Working Paper N 24.
Bryman, A. 2008. "Social research methods". Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Consant, A. F. D’Agosto, E. 2010. “Where do Brainy Italian Go.” IN: Caroleo, F.E. Pastore, F. “The Labuour Market Impact of the EU Enlargement: A New Regional Geography of Europe?” Berlin-Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, pp. 247-271.
De Clementi, A. 2014. "Il prezzo della ricostruzione: L’emigrazione italiana nel secondo dopoguerra". Roma, Bari: Laterza. Digital Edition. de Haas, H. 2003. " MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHERN MOROCCO the Disparate Socio Economic Impacts of Out-Migration in the Todgha Oasis Valley". PhD Thesis University of Nijmeng. de Haas, H. 2010. “Migration Transitions: a theoretical and empirical inquiry into the developmental drivers of international migrations”. IMI/DEMIG, Working paper N 24. 48
- 2011. “The determinants of international migration. Conceptualizing policy, origin, and destination effect.” IMI/DEMIG Working Paper N. 32. - 2014. “Migration Theory. Quo Vadis?” IMI/DEMIG. Working Paper N. 100.
Del Prà, A. 2006. “Giovani Italiani a Berlino: Nuove Forme di Mobilità Europea.” Edizioni della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli.
Docquier, F. Rapoport, H. 2012. "Globalization, Brain Drain, and Development". Journal of Economic Literature: 50 (3): 681-730
Favell, A. 2014. "The Fourth Freedom: theories of migration and mobilities in “Neo-Liberal” Europe". European Journal of Social Theory: 17(3): 275-289.
Fondazione Migrantes. 2016. “ Rapporto Italiani nel Mondo.” Todi (PG): Tau Editrice.
Gentiloni Silveri, U. 2015. "Italy 1990–2014: the transition that never happened", Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 20 (2), 171-175.
Gjergj, I. 2015. “Cause, Mete, e Figure Sociali della Nuova Emigrazione Italiana”. IN: “La Nuova Emigrazione Italiana. Venezia:” Edizioni Ca’Foscari. pp. 7-25.
Guidotti, M. Haug, S. 2005. “Emigrazione Italiana in Germania.” Studi Emigrazione: International Journal of Migration Studies. 42 (158).
Haug, S. 2006. “Storia d’Immigrazione e Tendenze All’Integrazione Integrazione Di Emigrati Italiani in Germania.” IN: Carchedi, F. Pugliese, E. “Andare, Restare, Tornare: Cinquant’Anni di emigrazione Italiana in Germania”. Isernia: Cosimo Iannone Editore. pp. 45-56. - 2012. “Migration and return Migration: The Case of Italian Migrants in Germany.” Kankien Revisited. - 2015. “New Migration from Italy to Germany. Chain migration or circular migrations? ” IN: “La Nuova Emigrazione Italiana.” Venezia: Edizioni Ca’Foscari. pp. 83-111.
Huffington Post. 2016. "Rapporto Migrantes, 107 mila Italiani Emigrati all'estero nel 2015. Un Terzo Sono Giovani. Germania la meta preferita". http://www.huffingtonpost.it/2016/10/06/rapporto-migrantes-emigrati_n_12370826.html
Il Fatto Quotidiano. 19/12/2016 "Cervelli in Fuga".
Kammerer, P. 1976. “Sviluppo del Capitale ed emigrazione in Europa: La Germania Federale” Milano: Edizione Gabriele Mazzotta.
49
Milio S. et all. 2012. Brain Drain, Brain Exchange e Brain Circulation. Il caso italiano nel contesto globale. Aspen Institute. Interesse Nazionale.
Macioti, M.I.; Pugliese, E. 1998. "Gli immigrati in Italia". Roma; Bari: Laterza.
Lopreno, D. 2015. “L’immigrazione Italiana in Svizzera del XXI secolo” IN: “La Nuova Emigrazione Italiana.” Venezia: Edizioni Ca’Foscari. pp. 111-135.
McKay, S. 2015. “Young Italians in London and In the UK.” IN: “La Nuova Emigrazione Italiana” Venezia: Edizioni Ca’Foscari. pp. 71-83.
Pichler, E. 2002. “Pioniere, Arbeitsmigranten, Rebellen, Postmoderne und Mobile: Italiener in Berlin.” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte. 42. pp. 257-74.
Pugliese, E. 2003. "L’Italia tra migrazioni internazionali e migrazioni interne". Bologna: il Mulino
Pugliese, E. 2015. “Le nuove migrazioni Italiane: il contesto i protagonisti.” IN: “La Nuova Emigrazione Italiana” edited by: Iside Gjergji. Venezia: Edizioni Ca’Foscari. pp. 25-39 .
Quadrelli, F. 2013. “Una Nuova Fase Per l’immigrazione Italiana?”. Firenze: Associazione Neodemos.
Recchi, E. 2013. "Senza frontiere. La libera circolazione delle persone in Europa". Bologna. Il Mulino.
Rieder, M. 2004. “Migrazione ed economia. L’immigrazione italiana verso la Germania occidentale dopo la seconda guerra mondiale.” Studi Emigrazione: International Journal of Migration Studies, 155 pp. 633-654.
Sen, A. 1999. “Development as Freedom.” New York: anchor Books.
Sanguinetti, A. 2016. " Nuove Migrazioni Italiane in Germania. In Fuga Dalla Crisi." Mondi Migranti: (2016) 3. 65-78.
Stazio, M. 2017. "Esploratori e Fuggiaschi, La mobilità giovanile Italiana nella Berlino che cambia." Milano: Mimesis/Eteropie.
Trincia, L. 1997. "Emigrazione e diaspora: Chiesa e lavoratori in Svizzera e in Germania fino alla prima guerra mondiale". Roma: Edizioni Studium. Verwiebe, R. 2011. "Why do Europeans Migrate to Berlin? Social-Structural Differences for Italian, British, French and Polish Nationals in the Period between 1980 and 2002". International migration, 52 (4): 209-230.
Vocabolario Treccani. 2017. "Provincialismo". http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/provincialismo/ 50
University of Amsterdam . 2017. Guidelines for the Ethical Review of research conducted by students.
51