At least 550,000 Italians now call the U.K. their home, according to estimates by the Italian Embassy and the Italian Consulate there.
To help a growing number of Italians settle into their new lives in England, the embassy and the consulate have launched an initiative, “Primo Approdo” (First Landing), a series of seminars to begin January 8 with the goal to support the new expatriates in the early stages of their lives abroad. The seminars will touch on every aspect of life in another country, the Italian ambassador in London, Pasquale Terracciano, explained to Italy’s newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, from how to avoid scams when looking for work and a place to live to how to best use the country’s health and welfare services to how to navigate a different bureaucracy.
The project is symbolically dedicated to Joele Leotta, the young Italian who was killed in Kent last October. It is the first project of its kind organized by an Italian embassy abroad. Participants will be admitted on first-come, first-served basis, for a maximum of 50 people per class.There will be three meetings every month.
Young people looking for a job are the most numerous group among those moving to the U.K., with 60% less than 35 years years old, although as much as 25% are aged between 35 and 44. Not everyone can be considered part of the brain drain phenomenon, while at the same time, it is not true that all the Italians moving there end up working as waiters in a restaurant, the Italian consul Massimiliano Mazzanti pointed out to Il Fatto Quotidiano. “There are many computer scientists, engineers, doctors, and so on. There are those who come for an English course and stay only a few months, those who are here for various reasons and decide to stay, or those who eventually go back to Italy after a few years living here," he said.
The Italian embassy also has plans to launch another project in 2014, called “Italy Made Me,” a series of meetings on Italian excellence abroad, as an inspiration and an example to the younger generations and as a way to help them maintain ties to their home country.
