THE DREAM BECOMES AN IMAGE

Over time, Caritas Italiana has given more and more weight to the pre-departure formation phase of the selection process for its Humanitarian Corridors program. The purpose of this phase is to provide refugees with as much information possible about the Italian legal, social, linguistic and economic contexts in which they will live. This allows the program to work towards its end goal – the social integration and economic independence of the refugees – even before they travel to Italy. Pre-departure formation has turned out to be crucial for the phase of active accompaniment by local Italian communities. Even in the earliest days of the program, in late 2017 and early 2018, it quickly became clear that refugees needed to be told the basic legal rules and the most common habits they would need to live in Italy, while they were still in Ethiopia.
Formation takes place on several levels. The first involves explaining the rights and duties that fall to refugees and to their host communities, and which correspond to a contract signed by both parties. The agreement commits both sides to participate for twelve months in the Humanitarian Corridors program. The earliest corridor projects brought to light that, in some cases, refugees paid little attention to the contents of the contracts. This derived from an issue that was more cultural than legal: the recognition of the value of a signature as a tool for accepting a series of rights and duties. One Eritrean cultural mediator, who had tried to resolve several cases of friction between host communities and refugees, remarked: “I sometimes have the impression that they do not understand the information.”
One refugee described the feeling just before departure: “When they told us we were coming to Italy, it was something like a dream.” It is clear that, at times, the transition from the dream to the reality of Italian life can give rise to frustration. This has resulted in cases where beneficiaries have been critical of the hospitality provided by the social workers, volunteers, and mentor families in Italy, saying that they had been given a different sense of what life would be like in Italy.
The clash between refugee expectations and the Italian reality have chiefly had to do with: the provision of a monetary allowance (“pocket money”), the bureaucratic timelines for obtaining documents, and housing located in areas far from city centers or in living conditions that a given family unit considers to be inadequate to meet their needs.
The receiving communities see these cases as instances where the refugees considered their signature to be merely a tool for guaranteeing their chances to reach Italy, and did not seriously understand or consider the consequences of their choice.
In order to reduce the risk of this happening, Caritas Italiana uses video calls and recorded videos sent from host communities to beneficiaries to build the contacts between them as much as possible before they leave Ethiopia. This is to allow them to get to know the faces of the people who will welcome them in Italy, to see the housing as it is being prepared for them, and to glimpse the social realities that will surround them in their new life in Italy.
Caritas Italiana has also offered programs in cultural preparation in Rome for diocesan social workers and even some volunteers. The sessions held there have featured experts and cultural mediators who share their experiences in Italy and offer insights into the history, culture, religion, and social structure of the refugees’ home countries.