A blast of wind sweeps away the dark clouds above Melbourne, and the Southern Cross finally shows up lighting up the south celestial pole. In the silence of the night, the sound of a few young voices is easily audible, but their accent is weird. Actually, it is not even English but a rhythmic and melodic language that sounds like a singsong.
“Buon appetito!” the guys say in unison.
On the dining table in the backyard of the house, every plate is full to the brim with “spaghetti alla carbonara”, while red wine fills up the glasses. Although Eleonora, Luca and Guendalina are far away from their country, a homely atmosphere inundates their dinner.
Since the economic woes hit Europe a few years ago, more and more Italians have said “ciao” to their “beautiful country” looking abroad for better opportunities. The Italian Government seems to have lost count, and it has not yet released any official data on this new migration flow. However, Australians have been counting and the statistics are meaningful.
According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, in the last couple of years more than 60,000 Italians have flown down-under to get in the “lucky country”. Between 2006 and 2011 there has been an increase of 80 per cent of Italians under a working visa, while the number of youth, between 18 and 30 years of age, has grown of 120 per cent.
Magica Fossati, SBS journalist who has recently analysed this issue in an insightful radio documentary Bye bye Italy: from austerity to Australia, explains that the statistics only partly reflect the reality.
“It is not only a reticence of the Italian Government, there is also an objective problem. Most of the people who leave Italy don’t register for the A.I.R.E. (the general register office of Italians living abroad) or they do it after many years,” Ms Fossati points out.
After the publication of her documentary, Ms Fossati has kept looking at this new wave of Italian migration through her radio programme Australia: operating instructions, where she conducts various interviews to investigate this phenomenon.
“It cannot be considered a exodus, such as the first wave of Italian migration during the 1950s and 1960s, because the numbers are not that high yet. It’s not even a simple brain drain, because it is a very assorted flow with many qualified professionals migrating – such as chefs, plumbers and workers,” Ms Fossati points out.
“It will take some time to be able to compare Italian and Australian data and to understand, quantitatively and qualitatively, what kind of migration is underway.”
In the mean time, however, Italians keep leaving their homeland. After all, a country where the unemployment rate has recently reached eleven per cent, with some worrying figures among youth (38 per cent) and women (12 per cent), does not seem to offer many other options.
After the birth of his son, Luca had no alternatives at all. In Rome, he had worked underpaid for four years for two different airline companies, always under part-time contracts of three months.
“After every three-month contract I used to get fired automatically, they paid me the severance tax the following month, and then I had to wait for them to call me again under another temporary contract, and so forth…for four years,” he says.
Moreover, loading and unloading myriad of luggage at the airport for 8 -10 hours a day caused Luca a serious back injury. Unable to lift weight thenceforth and with a family to take care of, the 28-year-old father lost his only job.
However, Luca had an ace in the hole. His mother was born and raised in Australia by Italian parents, who had migrated overseas in the 1950s. As soon as he knew he could apply for Australian citizenship, Luca did not think about it twice. Six months later, he got his fresh passport and took the most radical and courageous decision of his life: leave temporarily his family in Italy to try to build a better future for his son.
“It was a tough choice because William was only 9 months, but I did it for him. If I were by myself, I probably would have stayed in Italy. If you are alone you can go on with casual works, but it’s impossible when you have to take care of a family. I could have stayed at my mother’s place, but I wanted to have my own house for my own family, you know. I couldn’t have it in Italy, so I had no other choice but Australia. My plan was to find a house and a job within one year to be able to bring my family here with me,” Luca says.
With a tattoo picturing William on his left arm and a mission in his mind, Luca arrived in Melbourne on September last year. Just a few days after his feet touched the Australian soil, he was able to find a job at a car wash in Coburg. However, the pay was bad and the cars to wash too many. Two months later, he left the job and started working at an Italian restaurant as a kitchen-hand. Despite there Luca does not earn that much and the dishes to wash are even more than the cars at Coburg, this new job allowed him to find a good house and get ready to welcome his family.
“I don’t want to spend my life working in a kitchen, I came here to find something else…this is a launching pad! When I come back with my son and my girlfriend, I will look for a better job that allows me to work 8 hours per day for 5 days a week, and I’ll keep the one at the restaurant for the weekends,” he says energetically. His resolution is vivid in his eyes.
Luca accomplished his mission, but his Australian passport has definitively facilitated his experience as immigrant. The reality is that most of the people who choose the “sunburnt country” as destination have to go through different, and often complex, procedures. Youth, between 18 and 30 years old, still have a big opportunity being able to apply for the famous working holiday visa, which allows them to travel and legally work in Australia up to twelve months.
However, Ms Fossati explains that the increase in the migration flow among youth is not due to more backpackers travelling around Australia for a gap year.
“I met much more people that came here with a working holiday visa because it is easy to obtain, but they get here resolute. Considering the situation in Italy, they think it is a great chance, so they find soon a job and they start creating a network of professional contacts,” Ms Fossati says.
Moreover, many young people decide to lend support to Australian local economies working in the agriculture sector for three months in order to gain a second working holiday visa, extending their stay for other 12 months.
“Many guys are doing things they wouldn’t in Italy, because there they might be considered humble and underpaid jobs. But in Australia, the pay is generally very good and, most of all, there is the feeling they are a sort of trampolines,” Ms Fossati says.
After four years of work at a prestigious restaurant in London, Eleonora decided to have a gap year and leave England. Australia seemed to be the most attractive destination for backpacking with her best friend, and obtaining a working holiday visa took her not more than half an hour online and a few hundreds dollars. A couple of months later, the two Italian friends left their small village near Florence to fly to Sydney, the first stage of their adventure.
In Sydney, Eleonora worked hard managing three different jobs that allowed her to save some money to travel along the East Coast in the following months. Later, she arrived in Melbourne with the same backpacker’s mentality: work hard, save money, and then travel. However, in a few weeks everything changed.
“I found a job as waitress at Bistro Vue in Melbourne CBD, which is a highly recognised French restaurant in Australia and around the world. So I started looking at things differently, because that place could give me a very good professional opportunity,” she explains.
The idea of coming back to Italy in a few months did not excite Eleonora as much as the possibility to stay in Melbourne. Before the expiry of her working holiday visa on September last year, Eleonora decided to ask the company for the sponsorship. Considering the young Italian girl as an important member of the staff, the restaurant’s manager was happy to sponsor her, and a few months later she obtained a four-year working visa (457 visa).
“I was lucky with the sponsorship, but I know that many people are still waiting to get the visa, while others are lost in trying to get the necessary certified documents – such as diploma, birth certificate, reference letters, criminal record, and so on,” she explains.
In Eleonora’s mind the plan was to get further work experience and save as much money as possible. Despite she has a golden opportunity to stay in Australia longer by obtaining the permanent residency in a couple of years, she is still uncertain about her future.
“I’ve never thought to settle here… it’s too far away from home. If Australia were in place of France or Spain, I wouldn’t have any doubt, because I live well, everybody lives well here, but I want to be closer to home. Thanks to the money I’ve saved with the job at the restaurant, I will be able to come back in Europe, maybe in London, to study and realise my dream to be a gastronomic journalist,” Eleonora points out with a spark in her eyes.
Unlike Luca and Eleonora, Salvatore was just 14 when he left with his mother a village near Syracuse, in Sicily, after the death of his father. In 1963, there were not intercontinental flights, so mother and son had to travel by ship, leaving behind their back the familiar Mediterranean Sea to cross the vast Indian Ocean, before docking in Port of Melbourne 27 days later.
Salvatore explains that in those days things were very different, with the Australian Government actively campaigning in Italy by handing out fliers that described the wonders of Australia, in order to attract Italians to move overseas.
“When I came here, there wasn’t a complicated system like today. I simply got a visa in Syracuse before my departure, and after a few years in Australia I automatically obtained the citizenship,” Sam says.
The Australian social and cultural context was very different, and being Italian was not easy at all. The life was tougher and the work harder. Moreover, there was discrimination towards Italians, because Australians were scared to lose their jobs. Somehow, this seems to be the same fear that many people in the Italian community are feeling towards the new wave of Italian migration to Australia.
“It’s not discrimination, but all these young people from Europe come to work here for just a few months or a year, depriving opportunities and jobs to local residents,” Salvatore says blaming the working holiday system.
“I don’t like it at all, I’ve never liked it! In my opinion, you have to come here as a tourist or as a permanent immigrant.”
However, today times have changed and moving to Australia is not easy as it was for Salvatore. The government does not need to convince people to migrate anymore, indeed it created complicated and tight procedures to control and select the flow of migration. Last year, a new legislation introduced the Skill Select, an online service that enables skilled workers and business people interested in migrating to Australia to record their details to be considered for a skilled visa through an expression of interest. This and other tools were created to ensure that the skilled migration program is based on Australia’s economic needs.
The problem is that most of the people are not familiar with the many cavils and peculiarities of the legislation. Guendalina, a 32 year-old girl from a small village near Alessandria, in Piedmont, came to Melbourne four years ago to attend a PhD in Italian Studies at Monash University. As a postgraduate student, she expected to get some useful information about her chance to stay and find a job in Australia through the university services.
“I went to a couple of meetings at Monash, but there I had the feeling that the agent from the Immigration Office conveyed a clear message to all the international students: ‘you came here for studying, and when your study is over you can go back home’,” she admits letting out a pinch of anger in her voice.
“I could not ask any question about my specific case, so I thought I did not have any chance to stay in Australia after the end of my PhD.”
Lost in the websites and in the hundreds different kinds of visa, Guendalina decided to contact a migration agent as last resort. Just then, she found out that thanks to her PhD, she could apply for a skilled nominated visa (190 visa).
“Here it was, but who knew it? Now, step by step, I have to see if all the documents are fine, if the working experience is valid, etcetera…I’ll try, then we’ll see,” she says.
In order to try at least, Guendalina might spend up to $10,000 in visa application, documents, medical exams, skills recognition, and migration agent. On the top of that, she will have to prove that she has at least $30,000 on her bank balance.
“You know, sometimes I ask myself if it is really worth it,” she sadly admits.
The myth of Australia as a place where it is easy to migrate has been surely amplified by the Italian media, which have portrayed Australia as a sort of El Dorado that is easily accessible to everyone. The Internet also has played his role, with the proliferation of blogs and forum about Australia.
Willing to share his experience as immigrant and give advice to his “followers”, Aldo Mencaraglia started his blog Italiansinfuga in 2008. In the last couple of years, he saw an increase of people looking and asking for information regarding Australia, and also realised there was a deceptive idea of it.
“The thing that strikes me the most is that most of the people look at Australia as a paradise, the Promised Land, without being aware of the many hindrances they would have to face,” Mr Mencaraglia admits.
However, despite their different background and experience, Eleonora, Luca and Guendalina share the same view: Australia as the place to be, a meritocratic society that can pay them back for hard work and sacrifice. This is something that in Italy now is difficult even to dream.
Note:
*The category “Total Temporary Entrants” includes mainly temporary residents (long-stay business, working holiday makers, and occupational trainee visa subclass), students, and visitors.
*”Italians in Australia” includes only working holiday makers (417 visa) and long-stay business (457 visa).
Marcello Bocchini 