Reflections on the skype exchange

Today we were asked to decide the topic for the final project together with our American peer, Chiara Olivi. It has been quite difficult because we suggested four different topics. In particular, Elena Vivian suggested abortion because it is a hot topic and causes a bit of upset in Italy and she wanted to compare different aspects between Italy and America, such as the methods of abortion which are legalized in the two countries, the laws which rule and prevent it, the trend of abortion rates in Italy and in the USA and the influence of religion on this matter. Silvia Nicolini wanted to discuss the difficulties that immigrants face when they have to apply for a job in Italy and in America, whereas Silvia Lovato suggested women’s issue because often women are paid less than men, scarcely involved in politics and the equality between sexes is not always guaranteed even in the USA. Finally, I chose music because especially in America there is a variety of genres which reflects the country’s multi-ethnic population and it would be a good idea to compare them with Italian classical music analysing their origins as well.
As far as immigrants and their exploitation at work are concerned, Chiara Olivi told that people coming from South America, especially from Mexico are discriminated. She liked all the four topics, but she was much more interested in women’s issue. As a consequence, we decided to develop a specific aspect of this wide topic: WOMEN AT WORK. In particular, an outline for our final project might be the following:

· Working mothers and housewives (Elena Vivian)
· Working mothers (rights) (Elisa Caramori)
· Women in politics (Silvia Lovato)
· Immigrant women (Silvia Nicolini)

At the beginning we decided to develop WOMEN’S ISSUE and Chiara told us that she would have liked to focus on healthcare and abortion, but given that it was a much wider topic we changed it and we sent to her an e-mail saying that we chose a more specific one, asking her if she likes it and what aspect she would like to discuss.
While waiting for Chiara’s e-mail, we will do researches on the 4 aspects listed above by Monday in order to start working on our project as soon as possible. We hope to do a good and interesting work!

Immigration in Italy

Immigration is quite a recent phenomenon in Italy. A country of emigration for many years, it is facing nowadays new cultural and political problems regarding the current big social change.
Immigrants arrived in Italy during the 70s and, in particular, the country saw an increasing number of foreign people during the 80s. The immigrants in Italy come from various countries with different customs, traditions and history. As a consequence there are not few ethnic groups prevailing as in the rest of Europe, but there are people coming from almost every area of Maghreb, Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey etc…
Italy started to develop strategies and to draft laws regarding this issue not many years ago (during the 70s and the second half of the 80s), but the policies didn’t concern the needs and above all the rights of the people coming from a different country. Only at the end of 1986 was drafted the first law on immigration, when the necessity of a greater state intervention in this field was perceived. An important progress was made with the law of the 28th February 1990 because the ‘fixed presence’ of immigrants living and working in Italy was accepted. Furthermore, they saw the attribution of rights not only related to work, but also to the more general personal sphere. Significant innovations were introduced by the law drafted in 1998, such as the ‘carta di soggiorno’, a document which allows the permanent stay in Italy with a legal residence permit. Recently the sensibility towards immigrants has increased; they are no longer considered only workers, but people who want to build their lives in our country and so they need both cultural and social assistance. However, the entrance of immigrants is not so easy nowadays because the so called Bossi-Fini law, drafted in 2002, has made the acquisition of the so called ‘carte di soggiorno’ even more difficult.
From a social point of view, nowadays immigrants are part of our society and the issue is not how many rights they should have, but the kind of coexistence we should build with them. In Italy there are many children of immigrants, born in our country or living here since their childhood. These belong to the so called ‘second-generation’ of immigrants. All of them share the same social and economic wishes, they would like to succeed in Italy, but they still have to face many problems, such as the language. Furthermore, it is not easy for them to give up their cultural habits because their parents are still bound to the traditions and habits of their place of origin, and that is why many unhappy events often happen.
We should create new organizations to help them to face the new reality, from a linguistic point of view as well and, if their stay becomes permanent, we should extend to them more of our rights to make them feel more integrated in the Italian society.

A cultural topic for the final project: MUSIC

The topic I would like to focus on for the final project is music. I think that it reflects the traditions and the history of a country, that is why I would like to know the differences between American and Italian music.
In particular, I find it interesting to know what kind of genres are most popular in the two countries and in which areas as well, the reasons of their success and the social identities they reflect. I know that in America there are many genres, such as country, hip hop, rap, jazz, rock which reflect the country’s multi-ethnic population; this aspect enables us to make connections with immigration. Moreover, I would be curious to know in which occasions the different genres are played and compare the results with the holidays and the festivities in Italy.
In Italy classical music is very popular, maybe because many Italian personalities made and still make excellent work on that genre (Verdi, Pavarotti, Bocelli). Is classical music popular in America as well?Why?
Music expresses the characteristics of a country, its history, and through an accurate analysis of the words we can understand the thoughts, the habits and the opinions of the people as well.
In my opinion it might be an interesting topic because it enables us to explore different aspects of a country and make both good comparisons with and reflections on Italy and America.