Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Being Italian
The People
Who are the people you'd encounter every day as an Italian? Just over 22% of your fellow
citizens are smokers and 75.5% drive to work, compared to only 3.2% who cycle. A grow-
ing proportion of Italians are already retired. Indeed, one out of five is over 65, which ex-
plains the septuagenarians you'll notice on parade with dogs and grandchildren in parks, af-
fably arguing about politics in cafes, and ruthlessly dominating bocce tournaments.
Today, people of Italian origin account for more than 40% of the population in Argentina and
Uruguay, more than 15% in Brazil, more than 5% in Switzerland, the US and Venezuela, and
more than 4% in Australia and Canada.
You might also notice a striking absence of children. Italy's birth rate is one of the lowest
in Europe, at around 1.41 per woman in 2013.
North versus South
In his film
Ricomincio da tre
(I'm Starting from Three; 1980), acting great Massimo Troisi
comically tackles the problems faced by Neapolitans forced to head north for work.
Laughter aside, the film reveals Italy's very real north-south divide; a divide still present
more than 30 years on. While the north is celebrated for its fashion empires and moneyed
metropolises, Italy's south (dubbed the 'Mezzogiorno') is a PR nightmare of high unem-
ployment, crumbling infrastructure and Mafia arrests. At a deep semantic level,
settentri-
onale
(northern Italian) equals reservation, productivity and success, while
meridionale
(southern Italian) equates with conservatism, melodrama and laziness. From the Industrial
Revolution to the 1960s, millions of southern Italians fled to the industrialised northern cit-
ies for factory jobs. Disparagingly nicknamed
terroni
(literally meaning 'of the soil'), these
in-house 'immigrants' were often exposed to racist attitudes from their northern cousins.
Decades on, the overt racism may have dissipated but the prejudices remain. Many north-
erners resent their taxes being used to 'subsidise' the south - a sentiment well exploited by
the Milan-based Lega Nord (Northern League) party.
