Skype on our final project!

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During our last lesson in the lab we (Group 1) did Skype with Chiara Olivi, an 18-year-old student from Dickinson college, who is collaborating with us in our wiki project. It was the first time I did Skype and it was really an amazing experience!! I never talked with Chiara before and I appreciated the fact that she is very interested in our language and in knowing more about our culture! :-) In our Skype conference we discussed the topics we'd like to talk about in our final project, but we realized that they were actually very different from each other... I must admit it was quite hard to find a common topic!

We started discussing Elena’s topic: she talked about abortion, focusing on the current debate which is now taking place in Italy. She said she'd to compare the related laws and the methods of abortion allowed in Italy and in the U.S.: Chiara really liked Elena’s suggestion and she said she would like to talk about the influence of religion on the woman’s right to decide. Moreover, Chiara would like to do some research on a particular aspect of this topic, i.e. on whether health care in the US covers abortion as well as on the widespread lack of information about contraceptive methods, which actually affects the public education system of the two countries.

Then, Elisa talked about her topic, i.e. the importance of music as an expression of multi-ethnic identities and how it could be related with the issue of immigration. I was interested in immigration as well: I talked about the difficulties that skilled immigrants encounter at work and I said I’d like to compare their condition in the two countries. Chiara suggested that we can discuss the situation of Latin Americans, in particular Mexicans, who represent the majority of the immigrants in the U.S.

Finally, Silvia Lovato discussed women’s discrimination at work, in particular in the world of politics: she’d like to talk about ‘quote rosa’ and whether this measure actually promotes women’s career. Chiara appreciated this topic a lot and said that as regards politics the situation in the US is very similar to ours: male candidates constitute the overwhelming majority in the US government with the result that women don’t have equal opportunities in asserting their political platforms.

As our topics differ a lot from each other, we eventually decided to talk about women’s issue; however, since it was too general, we chose to analyze the condition of women at work. In our opinion, it can be subdivided into 5 subtopics, so that each one of us can deal with a specific aspect. So, Elena is going to discuss the condition of stay-at-home mums vs. working mothers; Elisa is going to talk about working mother’s rights; Silvia Lovato is going to discuss women in politics; I’m going to deal with the condition of immigrant women.

About immigration

Immigration in Italy is quite a recent phenomenon with respect to other European countries; during the XIX century it was in fact mainly considered a country of emigration as thousands of Italians left their country due to the lack of work. The phenomenon of immigration has particularly increased from the 80s and in only ten years immigrants with a regular residence permit became almost 600.000-700.000. According to Caritas, in the last two years their number has further increased by 3.7 millions, with an annual rate of about 700.000 immigrants.

During the last decade, lots of things in the bureaucratic procedures for the admittance of immigrants have changed, and many of these policies were designed to limit the illegal flow of immigrants: the law "Bossi-Fini", for example, among other restrictive measures, provides that any immigrant who applies for a regular residence permit must leave his/her fingerprints. Even though such measures enable the identification of the immigrant, I think that on the other hand it leads to classify him/her as a potentially dangerous person or a criminal. Moreover, mass media talk about immigrants almost only when serious offences of organized crime happen, in such a way that they are often considered the ‘problem’ of our society.

Many are in fact the obstacles that immigrants have to face to integrate in our society: among these, certainly the mastery of the Italian language and the knowledge of Italian traditions. One of the main factors that make it difficult for them is that colleagues and friends frequently talk with each other using dialect, this way excluding the possibility for the immigrant to fully integrate in the society. In order to overcome this problem, I think it is necessary to promote more policies which enables him/her to live as a citizen with his rights and duties, also with regard to the right to vote: I think that every person who live and regularly work in our country must have the right to decide which candidate they want to govern, otherwise it will be very difficult for them to identify themselves with our society and institutions. Therefore, I think that more clear procedures for achieving such rights are the basis of a concrete and farsighted policy aimed at eliminating prejudices and reducing social disparities.

Reflecting on the topic for the final paper...

Well, thinking about the topic for my final project I’d like to discuss about the difficulties that immigrants face when they have to apply for a job in Italy, and I think that it would be very interesting to compare the situation in both the U.S and Italy as regards this aspect of immigration. For example, in Italy it frequently happens that immigrants are exploited and far less paid than Italians having the same job and they are often forced to do jobs Italians refuse to do, such as assistance for older people or people with disabilities. In particular, I’d like to focus on the problems that skilled immigrants (i.e. those who achieved a university degree and/or have had a high professional experience in their country) encounter in finding the job for which they studied because in most cases their academic and professional qualifications are not or only in part recognized.

In Italy they represent 53% of the immigrants but only 1/3 of them can effectively find fulfilment in their job. I would be interesting to know how is their condition in the US (e.g. who these immigrants are, where they come from, why they migrate from their countries, which are their credentials and how effectively they are taken into consideration etc.) and compare it with their condition in Italy. Moreover, it would be interesting to see to what extent the “Brain drain” phenomenon has spread during the last few years both in Italy and in the U.S.