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Talking to locals and migrants in Macerata, Italy’s immigration flashpoint

"There's starting to be too many of them," says a young man at a bar in the central Italian city of Macerata. He does not wish to give his name, but the "them" he talks about are migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Published: 23 February 2018 13:02 CET

Talking to locals and migrants in Macerata, Italy's immigration flashpoint

The town of Macerata in central Italy. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

The issue has dominated political headlines in Italy ahead of parliamentary elections next month.

“If you walk in certain areas at night, you see them in groups. You can't help but be scared,” the man says.

Italy is 'steeped in hate', Amnesty warns amid toxic election campaign

Fear of immigrants – and of a far-right anti-immigrant backlash – has overshadowed election discussions about the economy ahead of the vote on March 4th.

People in Macerata know the conflicting arguments better than most. At the end of January, the body of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro was found dismembered in two suitcases near the city.

A Nigerian man was arrested. Days later a far-right activist, Luca Traini, went on a two-hour shooting spree targeting African migrants in Macerata, injuring six.

'Alarming' messages of solidarity for Macerata shooter, lawyer reveals
A handgun in the back seat of the suspect's car. Photo: Giuseppe Bellini/AFP

The happy migrant

The events set off waves of condemnation, protests and counter-protests. Right-wing campaigners used the death of Mastropietro to promote their anti-immigrant message.

Within days, there were two small but headline-grabbing demonstrations from far-right groups in Macerata.

Then thousands of anti-fascists descended on the city.

Anti-fascist protesters rally in flashpoint Italian town
People take part in an anti-racism demonstration in Macerata on February 10th 2018. Photo: AFP

“It was a bolt from the blue for us, you know? We're not used to this sort of thing,” says Laura, a mother of six-year old twins, outside her children's school. “Macerata is a really peaceful city and it's been hard to deal with what happened.”

Madu Cisse, a migrant from Mali, was also surprised. “I wouldn't have ever expected something like that to happen here,” he says.

He made the perilous Mediterranean crossing from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011. He moved to Macerata and became a pastry chef. “I've been in Macerata pretty much since I arrived in Italy and I'm happy here.”

Support for attacker

Protests over large-scale immigration have rocked Italian politics since the beginning of the migrant crisis. More than 690,000 migrants have come to the country by boat since 2013.

But the numbers have been falling. After the EU agreed a controversial deal with Libya to intercept migrants, Italy received 119,000 migrants by sea last year, a third less than in 2016.

‘We're scared of immigration, not Europe,' say Italian voters

The ruling centre-left Democratic Party welcomed that reduction. But immigration remains a hot political issue. Polls indicate it is an important subject for around 30 percent of voters.

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has pledged to deport 600,000 illegal immigrants if his coalition of Forza Italia and two far-right forces wins power.

Far-right demonstrators clash with anti-riot police in Macerata. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

“Lots of people say positive things about Traini,” the gunman who admitted to shooting migrants,” says one staff member at a local bar in Macerata, who wished to remain anonymous. “It's very common.”

Giancarlo Giulianelli, the lawyer representing Traini, told AFP he has received an “alarming” number of messages in support of his client's actions. He feels those are only “the tip of the iceberg”.

Anti-immigrant backlash feared

As well as the national election result, eyes will focus on the vote in Macerata to see if far-right parties gain from their pledges to “fix” Italy's migration problems.

Macerata has taken in a similar number of migrants to other Italian cities. Just over nine percent of its 42,000 residents are foreign nationals compared to 8.3 percent nationally, according to the National Institute for Statistics.

Immigration in Italy: Fact-checking five common myths and assumptions

But analysts would not be surprised if the violent events of recent weeks lead to an anti-immigrant backlash. Far-right parties across Europe have enjoyed a surge in recent years, from Marine Le Pen's Front National in France to the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany to Italy's own Northern League.

Italy's anti-establishment Five Star movement has also seen a big boost in support.

In Macerata. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

“I personally have never had any problems in Macerata. When people see me around they say hello,” says Mohamed, a Somalian who arrived in Italy in 2009 and works in a petrol station.

“Everything depends on how you behave. If you behave correctly with people they will react well to you.”

'It could have been me': Shooting highlights racial tensions ahead of Italy election

But for minority groups living in the city, the election will be a test which risks confirming their worst fears.

“People tell you to go back to Africa,” says Gennaba Diop, a 23-year-old born in Macerata to Senegalese parents.

“The first time someone called me 'nigger' I was ten years old and it was by a boy and girl the same age as me. Since then, if anything, things have gotten worse.”

Italy is 'steeped in hate', Amnesty warns amid toxic election campaign
An anti-racism demonstrator in Macerata. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

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By Terence Daley

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.