We are us, the Italians, the migrants to speak of

[Italian version]

“Of course, I voted for the right-wing! I am not racist. But this is an invasion. An invasion! I don’t know how we will survive,” I am told by a regular in the cafè on the square. Where, every time I am back home, I am asked to write about this, that and the other: and do justice: even though no one reads newspapers anymore. Outside, a Romanian strolls around arm in arm with an old lady. Caregivers, here, are the only foreigners. And without them, I don’t know how we would survive.

“I am not racist. I’ve been running a business for all my life, I speak from experience: we will go bankrupt,” he says. And indeed. He never paid taxes. Never. Else, he says, I would have been strangled by the state. How could we not go bankrupt, this way? I am endlessly asked: Why you don’t write of migrants? Because that’s what they want. They want us to focus on migrants. And forget real issues.

Which are not simply Italian issues. And that’s the real issue. That national states are increasingly unfit to face challenges that cut across their borders. And their powers. Now that companies can easily relocate production elsewhere, in countries with lower salaries, and quite often, less rights, there is a sort of race to the bottom: while technological innovations, in the meantime, reduce manpower reliance – when it was bought by Mark Zuckerberg, for 19 billion dollars, Whatsapp had only 55 employees. And on top of that, few controls and lots of collusion foster speculation. A speculation that in the end, every now and then, we are called to pay for, by saving banks with our own savings. Because managers, rather than getting fired, get rewarded. Today, they earn 434 percent more than their workers. Who work, and more and more often, instead, can’t even make a living: in Italy, 11.7 percent are under the bread line.

If I don’t speak of migrants, it’s because that’s what we have to speak of. But it’s something the government has nothing to say about. After 30 days, and seven councils of ministers, it passed just two decrees. Two minor decrees.

One of the journalists I read the most is Riccardo Staglianò. Because he writes reportages. He works from the street: and so he works on what really matters. And not by chance, that’s what he usually works on. The Whatsapp figures I mentioned come from his latest book, a book on the gig economy: the economy of my generation. Where, in theory, we all are our own boss. We all are managers of ourselves. Even the Uber driver who doesn’t even know the name of his customers, and sleeps in a 7-Eleven parking lot to get more rides, and in winter, wakes up every three hours to turn on the heating: receiving puzzled looks by the homeless. We are not free. We are simply exploited. Freelancers only because else, employers should cover welfare benefits. While in this way, instead, we cover everything. We have no rights. Time off. Sick leave. Dismissal pay. No rights at all. We are heading towards a wall. Spending power falls, and so does consumption: and so production. And why? Because Africans work in our tomato fields for 15 hours and 15 euro per day, and steal our jobs, or perhaps because over the last years the magicians of tax evasion helped the first fifty US companies hide 1.3 trillion dollars?

And for every dollar of taxes they eventually pay, they get 27 dollars of state aid. In 2016, 181,000 foreigners arrived in Italy. And 285,000 Italians left Italy. In the list of the countries of origin of migrants, Italy ranks eighth. After China, Syria, Romania, Poland, India, Philippines, and Mexico.

We are us, today, in Italy, the migrants to speak of.