Nicola Guerra’s essay deals with the recent Italian migration to Finland. The author examines why a growing number of young people has moved to Finland in the last ten years and many young Italians look to the Scandinavian country with a desire to settle there soon. The investigation of the driving forces behind the flow is accomplished through the semantic analysis of the migrants’ narratives. The study places the reasons for the exodus within the social and economic settings that characterize the two European nations. Guerra identifies the quality of life, rather than the opportunity to get a job matching one’s educational qualification, as the reason for the decision to migrate.
Margherita Di Salvo analyses the experience of the Italians in Bedford and Cambridge, focusing on the features of the present-day mobility that reproduce migration patterns of the past. This is, for instance, the case of the revitalization of migration chains by the new youth mobility. Despite the socio-economic differences between Bedford, an industrial city, and Cambridge, a university town, the interviews highlight common traits in the rationales for migration, spanning from the lack of hopes about the future of one’s country to the awareness of the actual opportunities available in the two locations examined.
Emanuele Toscano’s article focuses on contemporary Italian migration to France, a phenomenon that is still going on. Drawing upon statistical data from French and Italian sources, the article outlines the Italian presence in this country, describing the changes that have occurred in the last few decades. It examines the shift from an emigration wave made up by unskilled labourers to a flux of young and highly educated workers with temporary mobility projects.
Claudia Cucchiarato underlines the troubles in securing quantitative data about the new migrants because the latter are often young singles who tend not to register in the aire and to frequently change their places of residence. The migrants of her case study in Spain have replaced the cardboard suitcase with a laptop bag, have a high level of education and are connected to the web round the clock. They come from every section of the peninsula and mainly leave Italy by their own choice, but in most cases they are not free to choose repatriation, because what they find abroad is much more attractive and satisfactory than what contemporary Italy offers them.
Sergio Nava sketches a profile of the roughly 60,000 Italians, aged between 20 and 40, who leave Italy in growing numbers every year. In the first decade of the new century, the emigration of northern graduates increased by an average of 90 percent. Preferred destinations are still European countries and North America.
The new youth mobility places a double burden on the southern regions. From the privileged perspective of svimez, Luca Bianchi points out that, in the last ten years, half a million young southerners have «fled», while a million fails both to study and to work. Reaching 30 percent, the percentage of southerners in this condition is as much as twice that of northerners. Bianchi also shows that, besides the persistence of emigration abroad, the last few years have witnessed an increase in domestic migration to northern Italy. A reason is that, considering the employment rates, only 53 percent of university graduates is employed in the South, as opposed to 75 percent in the North.
Stefano Luconi’s paper examines Italian migrations in the last few years and focuses on the interpretative paradigms of the present-day mobility. It assesses to what an extent such categories as transnationalism and diaspora can be aptly used to describe these outflows and concludes that the former model is more viable than the latter to define the behaviour of contemporary Italian migrants.