Stefano Allievi explains why “children are no longer enough, regular migrants are needed”

Sociologist, scholar of migratory phenomena, from Milan who has chosen the Northeast where he has lived for twenty-five years, Stefano Allievi is an indefatigable author of essays and an indefatigable reader of poetry (“for mental hygiene”). Professor of Sociology at the University of Padua, his latest book is the ‘Dizionario del Nordest’ released by Ronzani Editore, in which he claims, to put it briefly, that the Northeast no longer exists. And since he happened to hear him on the day of the States General of the Natality, he did not miss the opportunity to recall that, according to him, only with the arrival of migrants can the Northeast (whether it exists or not) and Italy be saved

Professor, what is the Northeast?

It is rhetoric and aspiration. It serves to sell products, especially political ones, with reference to a very broad identity. But there are huge differences between Friuli and Veneto, not to mention Trentino or even Emilia-Romagna, incorporated in the same electoral district in the European elections. The Northeast is a political and journalistic invention, which has worked for quite some time as a key to presumed uniqueness: “We are the locomotive of Italy, those who work more than others” and so on. But for about twenty years the Northeast has been a magma without common characteristics, neither political nor economic. In Veneto itself, Polesine, Belluno, Verona or Venice are many worlds in themselves.

How to define this “magma”, which exists but isn’t there?

A sort of sprawling metropolis that is not a metropolis but is scattered among medium-sized, small and rural towns. With a provincial social fabric, within which we know each other well and don’t speak ill of others in public. We protect each other, we are not enthusiastic about those who come from outside and the migrants are ugly and mean, even if Veneto registers a negative demographic balance and a dramatic shortage of manpower, because unlike Lombardy, the decline in the birth rate is not compensated by inflows from Italy and abroad.

Will things change with more incisive policies in favor of the birth rate?

They are desirable but insufficient in a country that has lost 400,000 people in one year. The most “natalist” policies in the world, assuming we finance them, would have effects on the labor market in twenty years’ time: it means that in the meantime thousands of companies already without a workforce will have closed or will have moved abroad, with an enormous loss of production and national wealth. We moved late: we should have noticed the demographic winter a long time ago. Instead we only woke up a couple of years ago when, in addition to talking about the landings, we noticed how many young Italians emigrate so as not to stay in a country for old people.

Do you believe that the arrival of migrants can solve economic problems rather than aggravate social ones?

Let us stop the rhetoric of invasion: the alarm is unjustified. And then irregular arrivals are not the result of fate, but we created them. Forty years ago there were no small boats because it was possible to go and return from Europe, not only from Italy, without all the current restrictions that have produced clear results: deaths at sea, migrants with ever lower education levels and an increase in unaccompanied minors, which represents a social bomb. It hasn’t happened since Neanderthal times that children came out of caves instead of adults to get food.

Ports open?

Ports closed to irregular migrants, open to regular flows. The solution must be found in direct agreements with the countries of origin, establishing an annual quota of arrivals for each. The hubs in Tunisia do not solve, rather they reveal a still subtly colonialist vision with respect to countries that have public opinion, the media and an electorate to answer to. Direct agreements would also allow an upstream selection and would make the match between job supply and demand realistic. We need not only asylum seekers, but economic migrants. Anyone who says otherwise goes against young Italians. It seems a heresy for the vox populi, but insiders know it.

Explain to the vox populi.

When the ratio of active workers to retirees is no more than 3 to 2 but one to one, that generation will have to shoulder an unbearable burden. At the university the boys answer me: so I too am leaving Italy. Already today, to simplify with an approximate but easily memorized parameter, a 25-year-old young man earns 25 percent less than his peer of 25 years ago.

Why don’t they have children?

Let’s not reduce everything to a question of hedonism. In Italy, 45% of women of childbearing age have no children, but only 5% of them say they do not want them. It is that ours, despite being a familial country, does not offer great services to the family. From crèches to full-time schools to leave to more trivial things, such as changing tables at the restaurant or free ski passes for the little ones. In fact, the Italians who emigrated to Germany or Holland have children and reconcile them well with work.

Was the period of the pandemic a wasted opportunity for change?

Not only that: it has aggravated the situation, because women have suffered more from job losses and the gap between guaranteed and unsecured has widened. There is no drama on the horizon. We’re already in it.