I agree. I've got others I remember well that may appear in future posts.
They're the reason I can't say no when I see one of the African migrants on the street. I don't just give them something or buy what they're selling, whenever I can (and if we share a common language) I try to talk to them as well. It's very obvious how much I've personally been changed by covering these stories.
I believe Canada - until recently - was the only 'western' country to admit it needs about 250K new immigrants each year to stay ahead of the curve. So many European countries live in denial. who is going to pay the taxes to support the ageing population? Particularly in countries where tax avoidance is a sport??
I didn't know about Canada, but this is a great point. Italy's not just trying to shut down the border, but they've made it harder for residents or for foreigners of Italian descent to become citizens. I'm not saying Italy and other countries should fling the door open and let anyone pour in, but they do seem to be covering their eyes when it comes to this big problem.
Yes, Italians are the good ones ... but good ones that do their best to undermine themselves with policies to keep people out and not enough to convince the best to stay.
Excellent piece. The Italian “brain escape” is news to me. Given Meloni’s immigration in the spring, I suppose Italy is not trying to attract academics and researchers (they are on sale now)? I’m in Sweden, which is following France’s lead and creating programs to capture the U.S. brain drain folk. It’s an exceptional opportunity.
This is a whole aspect of "brain escape" -- I hope the term will catch on -- the essay didn't even touch on. The U.S. ultimately won the space race in part thanks to German scientists they plucked.
A major economy that is an attractive destination and is being hurt by a lack of innovation would be ridiculous not to try to attract some free agents.
I wish Italy would try to attract some disenfranchised Americans. The planning here is too short sited. It's all about nationalism. If an Italian expert living in the U.S. wanted to come back back that would be fine. Anyone else, forget about it!
I think there was resistance in Sweden initially, as well. It’s not quite nationalism, more of a second cousin of it. But the defunding of American research is a chance to import entire teams ready made and build out new spheres of research in a weekend for the price of a plane ticket. It’s crazy good.
Fascinating statistics. Interesting that the Italian government has chosen to limit citizenship by decent (jure sanguinis) in light of declining population. I lived in Rome in the late 1980’s and would love to return. Not sure I would be welcome…
Your point about Italy restricting citizenship eligibility is absolutely correct. It makes no sense: if the country has a declining population and they restrict immigration because they want to protect the "Italianness" of the population, then why not let people of Italian descent in the U.S., Argentina, Australia, etc., become citizens??
Immigration theoretically plugs labour gaps but it isn’t a demographic solution - and relying on it courts brain-drain by siphoning talent trained elsewhere. The only durable fix is a family- and mother-centred policy mix that lowers the lifetime cost of children (lighter tax burden for larger families).
I don't disagree with your points about greater support for families, but I have to push back on what you wrote about the value of immigration.
First, I don't think there's a single solution to any big problem. It's always a mosaic of changes. We need very tool in the tool kit.
And you are right that Immigrants can plug labor gaps, but they also help balance the tax base and keep public services working, they support the host economy (so it can afford the government support you mentioned) in ways that would not be possible amid the limited opportunities they'd have if they stayed at home.
One way to look at it is brain drain for the poor country, but another way is as brain *circulation*. What I mean is that they send remittances and often return home with more money and skills (like the Italians in the U.S. a hundred years ago). In poor countries, professors, government ministers, media figures, and activists are almost always people who livd abroad and then returned home.
I don't think the question should be whether or not to accept immigrants but how to *integrate* them in a way that they can contribute to the society, the economy, and culture and learn skills that will help them thrive whether thy stay in their new country or return home.
Eric, that argument doesn’t hold. Importing labor isn’t a free lunch: every new cohort requires housing, schools, transport, healthcare, policing—costs that themselves demand more workers and more tax base. You risk a self-reinforcing cycle where infrastructure strains, wages compress at the bottom, and social trust erodes. At some threshold, integration capacity is exceeded, local norms weaken, and the equilibrium tilts. That’s not “brain circulation”; it’s state-capacity dilution. If the aim is demographic resilience, the durable lever is a family- and mother-centered policy mix that lowers the lifetime cost of children and rewards larger families. Immigration can be a tool, but as a primary strategy it’s a treadmill—historically, overreliance on it has correlated with fragmentation rather than cohesion. Let’s learn from history and prioritize renewal from within.
Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Andrew T. Young, “Hospitalitas: Barbarian settlements and constitutional foundations of medieval Europe,” Journal of Institutional Economics 14.6 (2018): 1071–1090.
Nico Roymans, “Gold, Germanic foederati and the end of imperial power in the Late Roman North,” (2016).
Peter Heather, “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” English Historical Review 110 (1995): 4–41.
P.S. Sorry for the slow replies on my end ... my attention has shifted to the newer post (take a look at that one and weigh in if you have an opinion there). But I am enjoying our discussion. I would like the comment section on these posts to become a kind of town square for discussion ... so thanks for helping with that.
When I wrote this post, I didn't think the comments would lead to a discussion about the fall of Rome!
As we both know, Rome's fall was a combination of many, many factors. That's always the case with complex situations. And I think that's the same for demographics. I never said that immigration would solve all of Italy's ills, or that renewal from within (I like that phrase) isn't important.
But I continue to believe that a solution, if there is one, would require many dozens of policy changes. Smarter immigration standards, strategies to increase the birth rate, and incentives for the best and brightest to stay home are all among them.
I'm an immigrant in this country and I'd like to think that all told my residency here is a net positive for Italy. My mother was an immigrant to the U.S. and I'd say the same for her. I think Joshua (mentioned in the post) being here is probably also a net positive for Italy.
I don't think you're arguing that Italy should have a zero immigrant policy. But unless someone is arguing for that then the discussion on migration has to be about how to improve it. Not to the exclusion of other priorities, but it's a conversation that needs to take place.
I have a photo of the two of us in Mali but I didn't want to use it without his permission. I can't even send him the article to show I wrote about him. I hope he calls soon.
I had a small window into the very real problem of Italian brain escape. While in Venice 20 years ago or so, I climbed a lovely six-story tower for a view above the rooftops. I was alone at the top except for a young woman seated on a folding chair. Her job? To take photos of tourists with the gorgeous view in the background. This was before selfies were possible. Her English was good and we started a conversation. It turns out she was an ambitious and talented violinist in a professional quartet. She explained how meritocracy was nonexistent in Venice and she had no chance of getting regular work performing in the city. Her quartet played the occasional wedding or family gathering. Otherwise, they all worked menial jobs in tourism. She was looking to leave Italy soon for greater professional opportunities.
Those kinds of stories are always sad. I also hope she managed to find a way to make a living from her craft.
Believe it or not, though, Italy is among the world's top cultures for professional classical musicians. Almost every decent-sized city -- not just Rome and Milan, but also Ancona, Padova, Bari, Parma, Palermo, Cagliari -- has a professional symphony orchestra and/or opera company. Some cities have more than one. People in the profession are well-regarded socially thanks to the country's long history with opera and symphony music.
That said, it used to be better and nowadays Italian musicians are under-paid compared to their peers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the U.K., and (I think this is worse) they're very traditionalist. People I've met in the industry tell me that the goal is to reproduce Verdi or Puccini (for example) exactly as they intended their music to be played and not to produce something more modern inspired by the masters or some variant. Other countries are more musically innovative.
I think the vast majority of those who choose not to leave do so *despite* the economic climate ... they accept a less supportive and less lucrative professional environment because they want to be close to family or because of the culture or something along those lines. I know a handful of people who came to Italy because there was a better economic opportunity here than they could have found anywhere else -- but there aren't many who fit that description.
Italians have the very special talent of looking at the pointing finger instead of looking at the moon. As an Italian who is currently in France, I understood that Italians who never left the country don't realize how much better people abroad have it - if just by having minimal wage.
I think that when you know you have enough, you have less reason to believe that someone will come and get what little you have left. We, as a country, are living on a fight-or-flight basis. We're left with the dregs of our parents' wealth and feel that everything could crumble at any minute - hence the hatred for anyone who they imagine could sweep the last, tiny doormat from under their feet.
ports, fields and cultivations would probably not function without immigrants, and then some 55 year old is out there complaining that 10 africans are occupying a single studio apartment ad probably sleeping head/feet on matresses on the floor, while believing that waiters should be ok with 6-7 euros per hour but 'young people don't feel like working'.
So, (I'm assuming) you are among the million Italians who have left the country in the last decade. I meet people in that group everywhere I go -- in Europe, in the U.S., even in the Middle East and Latin America.
You have a lot of good points here, especially where you write that if people have enough they're less likely to think someone will come along and take everything. Well said.
I think people want to stay in Italy, but for many it's like staying in an abusive relationship.
Oh man yes, the abusive relationship comment is so spot on! When I lived in Rome I used to think that it was like a woman who is so beautiful you'd forgive her everything, but that doesn't mean it's a good reason to stay.
Yes, I am currently in southern France. I'd love to go back someday. Even amidst chaos, I think we're pretty cool.
It's a depressing situation. My friends and professional contacts who work in the hospitality industry are constantly lamenting that they can't find qualified staff for their hotels, restaurants, etc. And yet new five-star hotels are always opening. Who's going to staff them if government policies keep immigrants out? Of course young Italians with master's degrees don't want to work those jobs—why would they? What are all the tourists going to do when there's no one left to serve them their cappuccino and clean their hotel room?
Hi Laura. I've seen your point play out over and over again. It's circular: you can't grow the economy you want without a young, energetic, dynamic work force, but you can't get those people to come (or simply stay) unless the economy is thriving.
But Italy's problem goes beyond even that, because policy decisions seem intent on tighten the knot, not loosen it.
I remember that your husband is in the hospitality sector. From his vantage point, are they getting too few applicants? Or are the applicants under-qualified? Or both?
Through the eyes of my husband and friends who work in the hospitality industry, I see many problems. Young people don't want to work early mornings/late nights or weekends. (And why would they when the pay is so low and they can't necessarily count on tips?) Opportunities for growth in the industry are few and far between, which hurts employee loyalty. It sometimes seems that promotions are given based on managers' personal preference rather than merit or experience.
And with so many big corporations coming in, there's investment but also less humanity in the industry. Just two days ago, a friend who worked as the GM of two luxury hotels in Rome was telling me how disillusioned she's become by the demands for numbers and revenue. It seems like the more tourists come, the more the industry loses sight of what hospitality is supposed to be about—human connections and a genuine sense of welcome.
Such a sharp, necessary piece. The irony struck me — Italy is seen as a gateway for desperate arrivals, yet its own talent quietly slips away through airport terminals. Migration always reshapes a country, but the real loss comes when a nation invests in its brightest and then can’t hold onto them. Your story about Joshua was the perfect counterweight — a reminder that while policy fails, individual acts of humanity ripple long...
I couldn't agree more, though I think that if the functioning of a community depends first and foremost on individual acts of kindness to compensate for policy shortcomings then it's in trouble.
When I say people, I refer to the ostensibly sentient beings who don’t want immigrating people in to their countries. Why do people want fewer friends, a smaller workforce with fewer intelligent people and fewer problem-solving perspectives, a safer and more boring life? Why do people dumb down their own worlds so everyone has the same floor covering and fake eyelashes?
This is the $64,000 question! (Do people still say that?)
I don't know why, but the modern world seems to have shifted toward an us-vs.-them mentality and a lot of people would apparently prefer nobody than more of "them."
I know it's not unique to Italy or Europe, but it seems worse here than in the U.S. because with only a few exceptions most of Europe is so homogeneous. It makes it easier to figure out which group doesn't "belong." But in that context, I don't understand why European countries are even making it difficult for the children and grandchildren of emigres to become citizens.
Italy doesn't want migrants, they evidently don't want the descendants of Italians, and they won't do anything meaningful to increase the number of native born Italians. Seriously. Will the last Italian please turn out the lights?
Yes, you said it. The coming decades are going to be strange.
I've always thought the same, that everyone has a story to tell. I love finding out peoples' stories, but it doesn't always work. Some people are filled with trauma or they're naturaly shy or they don't realize what's unique about their path. But there's none of that means there isn't a story in there ... it just means it'll probably remain untold.
Interesting article and indeed, this topic has not been covered enough. To add more perspective: Italy is the only market where real wages actually decreased in the last years; most companies are super small and that has a lot of negative consequences in terms of productivity increase and decent job opportunities.
True! Wages are up around 50% over the last 25 years, while inflation is up around 125% over the same span. That means that in relative terms the average resident is 1/3 poorer than in 2000. Incredible.
(This stuff is too close to my day job for me to want to write much about it in the newsletter)
Your story at the end is beautiful. These human connections are the real story of migration.
I agree. I've got others I remember well that may appear in future posts.
They're the reason I can't say no when I see one of the African migrants on the street. I don't just give them something or buy what they're selling, whenever I can (and if we share a common language) I try to talk to them as well. It's very obvious how much I've personally been changed by covering these stories.
I believe Canada - until recently - was the only 'western' country to admit it needs about 250K new immigrants each year to stay ahead of the curve. So many European countries live in denial. who is going to pay the taxes to support the ageing population? Particularly in countries where tax avoidance is a sport??
I didn't know about Canada, but this is a great point. Italy's not just trying to shut down the border, but they've made it harder for residents or for foreigners of Italian descent to become citizens. I'm not saying Italy and other countries should fling the door open and let anyone pour in, but they do seem to be covering their eyes when it comes to this big problem.
I was just thinkung the same thing about countries in denial! What is Italy going to be like when it only has 35 or 40 million residents??
Yes, yes. I'm glad I won't be around to see it (or if I am, that I'll have bigger issues to worry about).
Heartbreaking article, Eric. I too think we’re the good ones (and Italy is the good one) but…
Yes, Italians are the good ones ... but good ones that do their best to undermine themselves with policies to keep people out and not enough to convince the best to stay.
Excellent piece. The Italian “brain escape” is news to me. Given Meloni’s immigration in the spring, I suppose Italy is not trying to attract academics and researchers (they are on sale now)? I’m in Sweden, which is following France’s lead and creating programs to capture the U.S. brain drain folk. It’s an exceptional opportunity.
This is a whole aspect of "brain escape" -- I hope the term will catch on -- the essay didn't even touch on. The U.S. ultimately won the space race in part thanks to German scientists they plucked.
A major economy that is an attractive destination and is being hurt by a lack of innovation would be ridiculous not to try to attract some free agents.
I wish Italy would try to attract some disenfranchised Americans. The planning here is too short sited. It's all about nationalism. If an Italian expert living in the U.S. wanted to come back back that would be fine. Anyone else, forget about it!
I think there was resistance in Sweden initially, as well. It’s not quite nationalism, more of a second cousin of it. But the defunding of American research is a chance to import entire teams ready made and build out new spheres of research in a weekend for the price of a plane ticket. It’s crazy good.
Fascinating statistics. Interesting that the Italian government has chosen to limit citizenship by decent (jure sanguinis) in light of declining population. I lived in Rome in the late 1980’s and would love to return. Not sure I would be welcome…
Your point about Italy restricting citizenship eligibility is absolutely correct. It makes no sense: if the country has a declining population and they restrict immigration because they want to protect the "Italianness" of the population, then why not let people of Italian descent in the U.S., Argentina, Australia, etc., become citizens??
Immigration theoretically plugs labour gaps but it isn’t a demographic solution - and relying on it courts brain-drain by siphoning talent trained elsewhere. The only durable fix is a family- and mother-centred policy mix that lowers the lifetime cost of children (lighter tax burden for larger families).
I don't disagree with your points about greater support for families, but I have to push back on what you wrote about the value of immigration.
First, I don't think there's a single solution to any big problem. It's always a mosaic of changes. We need very tool in the tool kit.
And you are right that Immigrants can plug labor gaps, but they also help balance the tax base and keep public services working, they support the host economy (so it can afford the government support you mentioned) in ways that would not be possible amid the limited opportunities they'd have if they stayed at home.
One way to look at it is brain drain for the poor country, but another way is as brain *circulation*. What I mean is that they send remittances and often return home with more money and skills (like the Italians in the U.S. a hundred years ago). In poor countries, professors, government ministers, media figures, and activists are almost always people who livd abroad and then returned home.
I don't think the question should be whether or not to accept immigrants but how to *integrate* them in a way that they can contribute to the society, the economy, and culture and learn skills that will help them thrive whether thy stay in their new country or return home.
Eric, that argument doesn’t hold. Importing labor isn’t a free lunch: every new cohort requires housing, schools, transport, healthcare, policing—costs that themselves demand more workers and more tax base. You risk a self-reinforcing cycle where infrastructure strains, wages compress at the bottom, and social trust erodes. At some threshold, integration capacity is exceeded, local norms weaken, and the equilibrium tilts. That’s not “brain circulation”; it’s state-capacity dilution. If the aim is demographic resilience, the durable lever is a family- and mother-centered policy mix that lowers the lifetime cost of children and rewards larger families. Immigration can be a tool, but as a primary strategy it’s a treadmill—historically, overreliance on it has correlated with fragmentation rather than cohesion. Let’s learn from history and prioritize renewal from within.
exempli gratia:
Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Andrew T. Young, “Hospitalitas: Barbarian settlements and constitutional foundations of medieval Europe,” Journal of Institutional Economics 14.6 (2018): 1071–1090.
Nico Roymans, “Gold, Germanic foederati and the end of imperial power in the Late Roman North,” (2016).
Peter Heather, “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” English Historical Review 110 (1995): 4–41.
P.S. Sorry for the slow replies on my end ... my attention has shifted to the newer post (take a look at that one and weigh in if you have an opinion there). But I am enjoying our discussion. I would like the comment section on these posts to become a kind of town square for discussion ... so thanks for helping with that.
When I wrote this post, I didn't think the comments would lead to a discussion about the fall of Rome!
As we both know, Rome's fall was a combination of many, many factors. That's always the case with complex situations. And I think that's the same for demographics. I never said that immigration would solve all of Italy's ills, or that renewal from within (I like that phrase) isn't important.
But I continue to believe that a solution, if there is one, would require many dozens of policy changes. Smarter immigration standards, strategies to increase the birth rate, and incentives for the best and brightest to stay home are all among them.
I'm an immigrant in this country and I'd like to think that all told my residency here is a net positive for Italy. My mother was an immigrant to the U.S. and I'd say the same for her. I think Joshua (mentioned in the post) being here is probably also a net positive for Italy.
I don't think you're arguing that Italy should have a zero immigrant policy. But unless someone is arguing for that then the discussion on migration has to be about how to improve it. Not to the exclusion of other priorities, but it's a conversation that needs to take place.
always exciting to read your new piece dear! Thanks for opening our eyes on the topic and showing the angle we had no idea about.
Thank you, Ella! What a nice comment.
all comments here are provoked by your wonderful articles! thanks for sharing them once again. I`ll send to my friends )
Wishing Joshua the best!
Yes, he's one of the good ones ...
I have a photo of the two of us in Mali but I didn't want to use it without his permission. I can't even send him the article to show I wrote about him. I hope he calls soon.
I had a small window into the very real problem of Italian brain escape. While in Venice 20 years ago or so, I climbed a lovely six-story tower for a view above the rooftops. I was alone at the top except for a young woman seated on a folding chair. Her job? To take photos of tourists with the gorgeous view in the background. This was before selfies were possible. Her English was good and we started a conversation. It turns out she was an ambitious and talented violinist in a professional quartet. She explained how meritocracy was nonexistent in Venice and she had no chance of getting regular work performing in the city. Her quartet played the occasional wedding or family gathering. Otherwise, they all worked menial jobs in tourism. She was looking to leave Italy soon for greater professional opportunities.
I’m sure she did.
Those kinds of stories are always sad. I also hope she managed to find a way to make a living from her craft.
Believe it or not, though, Italy is among the world's top cultures for professional classical musicians. Almost every decent-sized city -- not just Rome and Milan, but also Ancona, Padova, Bari, Parma, Palermo, Cagliari -- has a professional symphony orchestra and/or opera company. Some cities have more than one. People in the profession are well-regarded socially thanks to the country's long history with opera and symphony music.
That said, it used to be better and nowadays Italian musicians are under-paid compared to their peers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the U.K., and (I think this is worse) they're very traditionalist. People I've met in the industry tell me that the goal is to reproduce Verdi or Puccini (for example) exactly as they intended their music to be played and not to produce something more modern inspired by the masters or some variant. Other countries are more musically innovative.
I somehow missed this post until now ..... another good one.
What do you think about the Italians who stay in Italy or come back? Do you think its a bad decision based on the way things work??
I think the vast majority of those who choose not to leave do so *despite* the economic climate ... they accept a less supportive and less lucrative professional environment because they want to be close to family or because of the culture or something along those lines. I know a handful of people who came to Italy because there was a better economic opportunity here than they could have found anywhere else -- but there aren't many who fit that description.
Such an interesting read!
Italians have the very special talent of looking at the pointing finger instead of looking at the moon. As an Italian who is currently in France, I understood that Italians who never left the country don't realize how much better people abroad have it - if just by having minimal wage.
I think that when you know you have enough, you have less reason to believe that someone will come and get what little you have left. We, as a country, are living on a fight-or-flight basis. We're left with the dregs of our parents' wealth and feel that everything could crumble at any minute - hence the hatred for anyone who they imagine could sweep the last, tiny doormat from under their feet.
ports, fields and cultivations would probably not function without immigrants, and then some 55 year old is out there complaining that 10 africans are occupying a single studio apartment ad probably sleeping head/feet on matresses on the floor, while believing that waiters should be ok with 6-7 euros per hour but 'young people don't feel like working'.
So, (I'm assuming) you are among the million Italians who have left the country in the last decade. I meet people in that group everywhere I go -- in Europe, in the U.S., even in the Middle East and Latin America.
You have a lot of good points here, especially where you write that if people have enough they're less likely to think someone will come along and take everything. Well said.
I think people want to stay in Italy, but for many it's like staying in an abusive relationship.
Oh man yes, the abusive relationship comment is so spot on! When I lived in Rome I used to think that it was like a woman who is so beautiful you'd forgive her everything, but that doesn't mean it's a good reason to stay.
Yes, I am currently in southern France. I'd love to go back someday. Even amidst chaos, I think we're pretty cool.
It's a depressing situation. My friends and professional contacts who work in the hospitality industry are constantly lamenting that they can't find qualified staff for their hotels, restaurants, etc. And yet new five-star hotels are always opening. Who's going to staff them if government policies keep immigrants out? Of course young Italians with master's degrees don't want to work those jobs—why would they? What are all the tourists going to do when there's no one left to serve them their cappuccino and clean their hotel room?
Hi Laura. I've seen your point play out over and over again. It's circular: you can't grow the economy you want without a young, energetic, dynamic work force, but you can't get those people to come (or simply stay) unless the economy is thriving.
But Italy's problem goes beyond even that, because policy decisions seem intent on tighten the knot, not loosen it.
I remember that your husband is in the hospitality sector. From his vantage point, are they getting too few applicants? Or are the applicants under-qualified? Or both?
Through the eyes of my husband and friends who work in the hospitality industry, I see many problems. Young people don't want to work early mornings/late nights or weekends. (And why would they when the pay is so low and they can't necessarily count on tips?) Opportunities for growth in the industry are few and far between, which hurts employee loyalty. It sometimes seems that promotions are given based on managers' personal preference rather than merit or experience.
And with so many big corporations coming in, there's investment but also less humanity in the industry. Just two days ago, a friend who worked as the GM of two luxury hotels in Rome was telling me how disillusioned she's become by the demands for numbers and revenue. It seems like the more tourists come, the more the industry loses sight of what hospitality is supposed to be about—human connections and a genuine sense of welcome.
Such a sharp, necessary piece. The irony struck me — Italy is seen as a gateway for desperate arrivals, yet its own talent quietly slips away through airport terminals. Migration always reshapes a country, but the real loss comes when a nation invests in its brightest and then can’t hold onto them. Your story about Joshua was the perfect counterweight — a reminder that while policy fails, individual acts of humanity ripple long...
I couldn't agree more, though I think that if the functioning of a community depends first and foremost on individual acts of kindness to compensate for policy shortcomings then it's in trouble.
True, true. But I can’t do much to remedy policy gaps. Even if it’s just a drop in the bucket, I’m committed to trying 🤷♀️
Why do people want less?
When I say people, I refer to the ostensibly sentient beings who don’t want immigrating people in to their countries. Why do people want fewer friends, a smaller workforce with fewer intelligent people and fewer problem-solving perspectives, a safer and more boring life? Why do people dumb down their own worlds so everyone has the same floor covering and fake eyelashes?
Humans need more therapy than we know how to do.
This is the $64,000 question! (Do people still say that?)
I don't know why, but the modern world seems to have shifted toward an us-vs.-them mentality and a lot of people would apparently prefer nobody than more of "them."
I know it's not unique to Italy or Europe, but it seems worse here than in the U.S. because with only a few exceptions most of Europe is so homogeneous. It makes it easier to figure out which group doesn't "belong." But in that context, I don't understand why European countries are even making it difficult for the children and grandchildren of emigres to become citizens.
Italy doesn't want migrants, they evidently don't want the descendants of Italians, and they won't do anything meaningful to increase the number of native born Italians. Seriously. Will the last Italian please turn out the lights?
Everybody's got a story in them, and it just takes the right person to recognize it and tell it. Good job telling Joshua's story.
What a sad state of affairs about the brain drain. It's the same most developed countries. It's going to be a different world in the next years.
Yes, you said it. The coming decades are going to be strange.
I've always thought the same, that everyone has a story to tell. I love finding out peoples' stories, but it doesn't always work. Some people are filled with trauma or they're naturaly shy or they don't realize what's unique about their path. But there's none of that means there isn't a story in there ... it just means it'll probably remain untold.
Very poignant words
Interesting article and indeed, this topic has not been covered enough. To add more perspective: Italy is the only market where real wages actually decreased in the last years; most companies are super small and that has a lot of negative consequences in terms of productivity increase and decent job opportunities.
True! Wages are up around 50% over the last 25 years, while inflation is up around 125% over the same span. That means that in relative terms the average resident is 1/3 poorer than in 2000. Incredible.
(This stuff is too close to my day job for me to want to write much about it in the newsletter)