Italy

Berlusconi's party has been making headlines on the issue of migration: the recent three week wait for 37 Sudanese refugees aboard the Cap Anamur to enter the country, the calls for the sacking of the Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, by right wing coalition groups for his tolerance on the subject of immigration, Berlusconi's own proposals to form an EU policy on immigration which introduces stricter controls around Italy's borders. The fear of an influx of foreign immigrants to Italy's borders plays large in the public's mind. Although Italy has less a legal immigrant population of less than 5%, its illegal immigrant population is sizeable, consisting mostly of Albanians and Africans. In the past, it was traditionally a country of emigration, as the population of Italians in New York, Buenos Aires and Queensland reveal.

An investigation carried out in 1978 revealed that since 1820 over 5,294,000 people emigrated to the United States from Italy. This amounted to 10.9 per cent of the total foreign immigration during this period.

The reasons for this mass exodus were mostly economic problems in Italy, and unemployment. Southern Italy was always worse hit than the other regions due to its dominant agricultural economy.

Attitudes in Caulonia reflected a positive attitude to emigration- to join family in Milan, Australia or Germany, to find work and make a better life. The general opinion was that young people had no choice but to leave, despite a strong sense of family and loyalty to one's roots. the alternative was poverty or boredom. Increasingly, the traditional skills such as ricotta cheesemaking, cart making, agriculture and music were simply becoming quaint rituals practised by the few. The majority of young men sought temporary labour jobs on construction sites or seasonal work. Naturally, the birth rate there, as in the rest of Italy, is falling.