Italy needs to think about the young people leaving Italy for education, research or jobs abroad, President Sergio Mattarella said on Tuesday, lamenting the long-running ‘brain drain’ from the country.
“Our country, which has a long history of emigration, must open a proper discussion about the causes of this phenomenon, and on the possible opportunities which the Republic is tasked with offering citizens who intend to remain living here, or to want to return to Italy,” he said in a message to the president of the Catholic MIgrantes Foundation on the occasion of the presentation of its “Rapporto Italiani nel mondo”, a report on Italians around the world.
“The Rapporto furnishes, this year too, a very interesting snapshot of the migratory flows that involve our co-nationals.
“Despite the period of the (COVID-19) pandemic the trend to leave our Country has grown in the last few years.
“Those who leave are mainly the young, and among them young people with a high level of training and education, for reasons of study or work.
“Often they do not return, with significant consequences on the social and cultural composition of our population.
“Pensioners and whole families also leave. The phenomenon of this new phase of Italian emigration cannot be wholly understood within a virtuous dynamic of the processes of global interconnection, which require an ever greater circulation of people, ideas and competences.
“In many cases those who leave our Country do so not out of choice but out of necessity.”
Mattarella conclusively called on the government to take measures to keep young people in Italy.
