Managing reception in a structured way bears fruit

Inland areas where it is helping to prevent depopulation and demographic winter, which is one of the great risks of our entire territory, and also representing a means of mending between territories, celebrated only a few days ago in Carlentini in the Cultural Festival of Kites, an awareness-raising project that unites eight municipalities from three different provinces under the banner of inclusion and solidarity.

When I think of the mending of territories, I think, for example, of the experience of the Municipality of Rovigo, where the Sai project, thanks to a partnership with local businesses, has created a path for labour inclusion that represents a crossroads of opportunities between businesses and migrants; I am thinking of the experience of the Municipality of Castelpoto (Benevento), where with the involvement of migrants and the local community it has been possible to reopen vacant houses and small neighbourhood economic activities, where the school has become de facto international thanks to the intercultural exchange with young migrants, where a community cooperative has been set up, formed by Castelpoto citizens and migrants welcomed into the local Sai and where several families, at the end of the project, have decided to stay and live in the area.

I could cite so many examples, but the point is that the good integration promoted by municipalities through the Sai network is an opportunity not only for the migrants we welcome but for all our communities. We cannot deny that there are critical issues, ranging from the changing legal definition of who can be accepted, to the fragmentation of the funds that finance the Sai, to the increasingly complex social and health situations that people accepted into the Sai often suffer from.

But today the time is ripe for a further qualitative leap in the system, which first of all requires a shift of investments and resources from the Cas, and thus from the very first reception, to the Sai and the involvement of the Regions in what is today to all intents and purposes multiple governance and where the Regions, which although they have important and fundamental competences in the areas of health, work, and training, are totally absent.

In addition, a great opportunity is also offered to us by the new European Migration Pact, which stipulates that asylum seekers, if not eligible for the accelerated procedure, must have access to social, linguistic and labour integration pathways, and with respect to which we believe their reintegration into Sai is fundamental.

Today we need to shift the axis from emergency management to structured management, to move from individual projects to the concept of universal services. In this sense, we are talking about a cultural investment and not just a regulatory or economic one, which is the main way to ensure both integration and the development and social cohesion of our communities.

(*) Mayor of Teramo and Anci national delegate for immigration and policies for reception and integration