OVERLAPPING STORIES

I had a long conversation with the vice-mayor of Cairano today. We talked about a lot of different things related to this area and my research.

We talked about new immigrants in town and why they would chose to move here. He thinks they decide to move here because they find “condizioni favorevoli” (favorable conditions): people are “tolerant” and “sympathetic” due to the “sensibilita’ di questa vita ancora contadina” (sensibility of the peasant way of life that still exists here). Further, he suggested they move here because they can find simple, inexpensive housing, and they can make some money through the “mercato povero” (the low-cost, simple markets). He also said that “integrazione” (integration or, what we might more easily call, assimilation) is key and that he, as both vice-mayor and former mayor, has been involved in helping new immigrants integrate. Of course, for him, as a city official, integration has for the most part to do with following the law.

He told me about helping Ukrainian women, on at least two occasions, fill out their resident papers in order to get their permesso di soggiorno. (There goes my bubble; I thought I had been special—see my very first post.) Also, he suggested that one of the surest ways to guarantee a family’s success at integration in a town is to have their children attend school.

I certainly wanted to hear more about this idea, and so I asked what he meant.

He described to me a series of conversations that he and a police officer had with one Moroccan man whose children were not attending school. I asked how the father took the news that he had to send his children to school. Not well, he said: “We had to be a little ‘cruel’—the police had to go there and, with some sense of authority, tell them that the children had to go to school. Not with any violence, of course. Just using the authority that the police give. The kids had to go to school. We couldn’t have that here. In the bigger urban areas they get lost, but that can’t happen here.”

We all know what the questions are here (don’t forget what happened in France over the past year!):

What’s gained by such attempts at stability?
Does integration of immigrants happen through institutional means?
Does it require other elements as well?

These stories (from this post and the last) of authorities telling immigrants they had to send their children to school have reminded me of a similar story I heard during one of the first interviews I did. Back in February, I spoke with an Italian woman from the town of Bisaccia who had lived in Switzerland for over thirty years.

She told me that when she was pregnant with her first daughter she was working in a pantyhose factory and renting a furnished room in a house, until authorities came and told her that she and her family had to live in a larger place if they had children. I paste below the translation/transcription of what she said. (She was speaking rather freely and moving around topics loosely. She said she found life to be quite nice in Switzerland and that the Swiss were very pleasant towards Italians.)

Sure, you always find some Italian who does something he’s not supposed to do, and then, someone says, “Oh that guy did that because he’s Italian,” but then even they realize that everywhere you find honest people and people who are [trails off]…no, I have a good memory of my life there. Although everything was always in order. I see, these immigrants who come here [to Italy] today—poor things, even they live in places that are very, well, uncomfortable [trails off]…. Instead, there, no, you went with a work contract in order. For instance, when I was married, we rented a furnished room in an apartment. Then, the next year, my daughter was to be born. That is, the police…they, they tell you, “You, can’t live in this room with a baby,” and so you have to look for an apartment with at least two rooms. Because you had to live right, like they lived.