The migratory wound must be healed to enhance the value of returnees
Half of the departures are between 18 and 34 years old. They leave the country from inland areas but also from northern cities
by Delfina Licata*
3' min read
3' min read
That the only Italy growing today is the one putting down roots abroad is now more than established. Over the last 20 years, through the report "Italians in the World", the Migrantes Foundation has reported on the doubling of Italy's presence outside national borders, a presence that is mostly young, educated and in the midst of professional creativity. A vitality that contrasts with the Italian fragility that tells us of a country that is dull, increasingly old and where children are struggling to be born.
The most recent Istat data only confirm these trends. That Italians, like other European citizens, move is not a social alarm. On the contrary, it is a symptom of an active protagonism in the era of free migration - at least in Europe - and circular migration to be welcomed. What should be worrying, however, is that this is a sick migratory process, which takes place in unidirectionality: from Italy one leaves and cannot return and, when one does, one is forced to re-depart. In a virtuous migration process, the migrant must be able to freely enjoy three inviolable rights: leave, return and stay.
In the last year, everyone has started to leave Italy again: young people above all, joined by young adults, but also families with minors and the elderly. Half of those who officially leave the country, i.e. fulfilling the necessary registry obligations, every year are between 18 and 34 years old. These are people who seek existential fulfilment abroad, which implies positive responses in terms of work and pay, certainly, but also in terms of personal planning and improvement, in order to grow as individuals, as couples, and increasingly as parents.
Thus in Italy we encounter territories that are increasingly depopulated by internal migration - over 1.5 million displacements per year, with a high intensity for the South - and by departures for the other side of the border that, instead, mainly characterise the North. The territorial analysis becomes, therefore, crucial to understand the structural nature of the migration phenomenon. Departures to foreign countries permeate every territory, metropolitan and inland areas, both in the South and along the Centre-North. They start from border territories (and here the great theme of cross-border realities opens up) and also from northern cities, which are economically rich and are home to companies and universities that should be able to retain them, much more than other contexts.
Italy continues to be dynamic and generative by moving abroad. Instead, it remains closed in on itself within national borders. And mobility itself is read as a abandonment of territories, as an escape from responsibility.
