Politics’ choices, the role of religions, citizens’ responsibilities. The panel on migration at the international meeting “Imagining Peace” (22-24 September), organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio in Paris, focuses on these three points. Migration and peace are deeply connected themes: on the one hand, according to the UNHCR in May 2024 there were 120 million – never such a high number since the end of the Second World War – forced migrants due to wars, widespread violence, environmental disasters, 75% of whom are hosted in low- and middle-income countries; on the other, welcoming migrants means “imagining peace”. We are in the city that hosted the Olympics and the Paralympics and it is precisely to the sporting event that Daniela Pompei, head of Sant’Egidio for services to immigrants, refers to outline the beautiful and rich mixed reality of European countries, symbolized by the exchange of gold medals between volleyball players Myriam Sylla and Anna Danesi. The athletes’ biographies tell an Italian and European story. Myriam, born in Palermo to a Senegalese father, who emigrated first for work reasons and who then reunited with his wife; in the difficulties of the beginning, the family found support from a couple from Palermo, who the volleyball player still calls grandparents. Now that she has Italian citizenship, she explains: “Integrate? But integrate with whom? I don’t have to integrate anywhere, I was born and raised in this country, this is my culture. Talking so much about integration has the opposite effect.” If Myriam’s family came to Italy for economic reasons, political ones are at the basis of the migration of Andy Diaz Hernandez, winner of the bronze medal in the triple jump for Italy. After Tokyo, where he had participated with the Cuban national team, he avoided returning and asked for asylum in Italy, as two of his teammates did the same with Spain and Portugal: respectively bronze, silver and gold at the last Olympics. Andy explained that he chose Italy because in the previous games he had spoken with an Italian athlete older than him: Fabrizio Donato, who welcomed him into his home when he decided not to return to Cuba and asked for political asylum. “Both – says Pompei – have a common trait that explains the secret of their success: meeting Italians who were available to support them at the beginning of their journey.”
Yes, the beginning is a decisive and critical moment, in which potential for success or failure can be seized. Even the gold medal champion in the discus throw at the Paralympics, Rigivan Ganeshamoorthy called Rigi, born in Italy to Sri Lankan parents, was also supported for a long time by his coach. In a different context, this embrace of solidarity is the basis of the success of the Humanitarian Corridors, the ecumenical channel that has allowed the arrival of ten thousand refugees in Italy, France and Belgium since 2016: «The contribution in the initial phase of citizens, groups, associations, available to support the naturalization process is especially decisive». Stories like those of Myriam, Andy and Rigi show the responsibility of journalists and commentators in representing migration in informed and correct terms, without fomenting fears and resentments. “We must stop – said Dominique Quinio, former director of La Croix and honorary president of the Social Weeks in France – thinking of them in the plural, as an undifferentiated group, but start considering them as individuals. Our perspective changes when we are no longer faced with a category, a concept, an idea, but with a person, a family, with needs, joys and sorrows similar to ours, aggravated by the distance from their native country”. The Italian successes at the Olympics have also reopened the debate on citizenship. The first campaign by Sant’Egidio, Made in Italy, was launched twenty years ago to ask for the reform of an anachronistic law, which only recognizes the blood right of ancestors and not the roots in the territory, or the work of school for the youngest. A minor has no possibility of becoming a citizen before coming of age, unless one of his parents becomes Italian. For adults, ten years of residency are required, to which four are added for the duration of the procedure. It is among the highest in Europe, even Hungary requires less time. “This legislation – Pompei comments – determines, especially in young people, a condition of precariousness, of uncertainty about their future, which affects their personal identity: they feel fully Italian without being recognized as such, a condition, even legal, of absolute dependence on the parents’ residence permit is prolonged”. Citizenship constitutes the legal recognition of that feeling of belonging that young people already experience: “This lack explains, at least in part, the disadvantaged condition in which foreign minors grow up, for example the greater difficulties encountered in the school environment, which reach 30% of dropouts from secondary school”. Italy’s failure to reform citizenship – the law is from 1992, based on that of the Kingdom of Italy of 1912, designed for a country of emigration and not immigration – is an example of the “lack of serious policies, because they are structured and constant over time, that address integration and that implement effective actions to rebalance the initial disadvantage of new arrivals”.
Pompei clarifies: “If Italy has granted the highest number of citizenships among European countries in the last three years, it is certainly not due to a particular favor of the legislation, but to the fact that several decades of immigration and an achieved stability have led a significant cohort of immigrants to obtain the requirements for citizenship”. In the meantime, however, society is changing: on January 1, 2023, among the 448 million of the European population, 27 came from non-EU nations, to which must be added 14 million EU citizens and 20 million who have acquired citizenship in the last 15 years. One of the most significant features is age: the average in the Union is 44.5 years, for the new Europeans 31. The new citizens are rejuvenating Europe: in 2022, 39% of those who acquired citizenship were under 25. The message from Paris is that the real challenge for the next Commission is to imagine and build a European dimension capable of permanently including these new citizens, not focusing solely on policies of closure, externalization of borders and containment of flows.
The panel also hears the voice of the Mexico-US border, brought by the Catholic bishop of El Paso and president of the Committee on Migration of the US Episcopal Conference, Mark Seitz, who works in Texas on the border with Ciudad Juárez, and by Father Alejandro Solalinde of Hermanos en el Camino (Brothers on the Road), a symbol of aid to migrants in Mexico. Drug cartels have beaten him, threatened him and organized attacks on his migrant shelter in Ixtepec. On one occasion, municipal authorities informed him that if he did not close the center within 48 hours, they would burn it down. But even when it was discovered that a hitman had been paid to kill him, he chose not to remain silent. Regarding the Great Journey, as migrants call the route between Central American countries that leads to the American Dream, he says: “Trafficking is the biggest business in the world, the more restrictions on entry increase, the more the risks of death and the profits of traffickers increase.” Women raped, children robbed of their clothes, men quartered and burned in gasoline barrels because their families didn’t pay. “These are the extreme consequences of the neoliberal capitalist system,” the priest continues, “which has dehumanized and “objectified” human beings. Many are involved in the system, with the connivance of the authorities, from the police to local officials, from taxi drivers to those who distribute flyers on how to contact the groups that manage the trafficking.” Some good news is coming: in Mexico, for the first time in ten years, a trial has begun to restore justice to the Nicaraguan Elvis, tortured because he opposed trafficking, and the work of solidarity of many religious, nuns and activists for solidarity with migrants continues: “This work,” concludes Father Solalinde, “is building peace: peace is always relational, it does not fall from the sky, but is built daily.”
photo: Sant’Egidio community