Immigration and the Italian Media
We see them everyday in towns throughout Italy, standing on the street corner or waiting outside supermarkets to ask for a few coins. They have calm, almost ironic, expressions as they watch the people pass them by. They are immigrants, displaced from their home countries by turmoil or are simply searching for a better life. They sought refuge in the relative serenity of Italy, but what kind of reception awaits them there? On the second day of the festival in Sala Baldeschi of Palazzo Bonucci the panel discussion “Migrants, immigrants, illegal immigrants” analyzes the portrait Italian media sources paint of immigrants to Italy.
The matter has received much attention in the past year due to the effects of the Arab Spring. Tunisians started coming to Italy by boat in December 2011, and the Italian media picked up on the story to predict that more than a million refugees would “invade” Italy over the ensuing months. As of August 2012, some 48,000 Tunisians and Libyans are said to have moved to Italy, hardly the million that was predicted.
The panelists agree that the media is alarmist when it comes to immigrants. “People lose sight of the data,” says Laura Boldrini of the UNHCR. While there was an immense displacement of persons during the Arab Spring, many of those people were diffused throughout Africa, Europe and Turkey, not Italy alone.
Though Italy itself did not have to absorb as many refugees as expected during the Arab Spring, the island of Lampedusa infamously was swamped with some 6,000 refugees. The island of 5,300 inhabitants lacked facilities and structures to house the refugees through the cold winter. “The only center has a capacity of 800 people,” says Boldrini. The inhumane and unsafe living conditions for Lampedusan and refugee alike was ultimately responsible for the bad feeling and misunderstandings on both sides.
The panelists emphasized however that these people came to Italy as a result of war and brutality in their homeland. “They tend to define those who arrive by sea as illegal immigrants. In reality these represent only ten to fifteen percent of the total arrivals. Usually the arrivals are in flight from persecution and violation of human rights. And once they have arrived, they suffer new offences,” says Boldrini. To portray the immigrants as “invaders” or “illegal immigrants” glosses over the fact that they were pushed out of their homes by catastrophe.
Yet even in times of peace, Corrado Giustiani, journalist and author, notes that there is a double standard for Italians and the extracomunitario, the extracomunitario being a person from a country that does not belong to the European Union. When an Italian commits a crime, the fact that he or she is Italian is rarely made explicit. Giustiniani recounts an episode in 2006 in which a Sicilian man decapitated a Chinese boy in Villasimius, asking the audience to imagine the furor if their identities had been reversed. The conclusion that can be drawn is that in Italy, crimes committed by foreigners tend to get a great deal of attention and coverage in the press, blackening the reputation of entire groups of people based on the actions of a few.
Eric Jozsef, correspondent for the Libération, points out that the problems Italy now must confront are the same that France contended with in the ‘70s. “Until the ‘70s, immigration did not exist,” he says. And similarly to Italy, the French press tended to be alarmist. In this sense, with time, there is hope that these issues can be overcome.
The panel calls for greater precision in the Italian press: news stories should avoid sensationalizing isolated incidents. In fact, journalists ideally ought to be intermediaries for immigrants. “Immigrants bring worth, skills and knowledge. This is overlooked by the Italian press,” says Boldrini. Most importantly of all, it is critical to never forget the humanity of these stories.
-Catherine Morris
