It is a phenomenon in perpetual exponential growth, that of Italian youth emigration. Young people looking for hope for the future; of open doors, found closed in your own home; of fertile ground to cultivate dreams and possible goals that ignore any embankment; but also a passion for discovery and cultural diversity. But has it always been like this? Has emigration always had as its motive a treasure chest of various extenuating circumstances that has given rise to a similar phenomenon?
Italy Primacy of emigration
For some time, the migrant exodus has been a predominantly Italian reality. Italy has always maintained the primacy social emigration; especially in the southern areas, which make up almost 50% of the phenomenon. But the story describes a very precise parable that explains the reasons of those who were the embryos of a phenomenon in perpetual growth.
In pre-revival years, it did not take long to understand what were the reasons why emigration mainly affected the southern regions: rooted landlords and the general hunger in which the population is rampant, have determined the need to seek fortune elsewhere. There were no pleasurable reasons promiscuous to needs. Italy was poor, and from California came the tales of people collecting gold from streams. The emigrant was therefore suffering from a social depression that called him from afar, due to the disastrous territorial policies impervious in his country.
The Telemachite
But emigration today has multiple reasons, some of which collide with others. For young people, emigration appears more as a stage in their own cultural formation, rather than exclusively as a necessary choice.
It is more a form of Telemachite than just a social issue linked to general discontent. And it is also such because it is predominantly juvenile; that is, it is aptitude for those who one day would like to return to reconstitute the corroded social fabric of this Italy from which one bitterly escapes. The emigrant Telemachus no longer looks for Ulysses in the Mediterranean seas; but elsewhere: England, France, Germany, Holland, or Australia (the new contemporary America). But this Italian suffering from Telemachite, has no intention of stationary in the places where he took refuge; he always dreams of being able to go home to chase away the suitors who threaten the equilibrium of the peninsula.
Penelopite too
But there are no protagonists in this scenario of migratory flows; only involved. And it is the case of those who remain waiting. Waiting, not only Ulysses, but also Telemachus, is Penelope. Those who remain because they are unable to follow their loved ones emigrants do not only expect their return from them; but also an answer to one's own problems, which comes from distant, almost mythical lands. Individuals affected by "Penelopite", in perennial expectation, will always expect from those who see leaving, a return that brings with it a psychological and practical solution. That is, the desired return of a loved one who has been far away (Telemachus); and the hope of seeing the answer to his own problems arrive with it (Ulysses), which will have various resolutive forms; from economic formulas, to those of skills learned during the trip, reusable.
