A nice May Day should have the future of young people at the center of attention. Everything – work, study, passions, aspirations – should be declined by looking at the new generations. If a country doesn’t invest in young people, it doesn’t value them, it doesn’t help them to grow, to become citizens of the world, then it won’t go anywhere.
Figures in hand, there are about 3 million young Italians of study and working age who do nothing. They don’t study, they don’t work and, according to Istat, they stay out of the job market which usually represents the sign of detachment from the family and therefore the start of navigation on the open sea.
Young people struggle to enter the cycle that society considers “normal”, whereby a student follows and completes his training course and then looks for a job.
But the availability of girls and boys of working age does not meet the demands of businesses, which often complain of not finding professional figures suited to their needs. And on the other hand, the categories of employment, from gig economy jobs to graduate-interns, are characterized by low wages, precarious contracts, and opaque working conditions.
Now the Meloni government is widening the net of precariousness, to favor companies that benefit from social and wage dumping as a competitive factor, just as Europe is experimenting with options to offer stable work, adequate welfare, continuous training.
The proliferation of NEETs (Not in education employment or training) bears witness to the impoverishment of the country which is unable to create an educational project, of civil growth, shared by young people.
In this regard, one of the crucial issues is the inadequate, not very innovative school system. Perhaps public resources are not sufficient or are badly used and private ones are aimed at important but partial, elite, class interests, as we once said.
The issue is complex, it also affects the demographic deficit, reception policies and public strategies for employment. Everything holds. And there will be a reason why the Minister of Education (and of Merit) Giuseppe Valditara in the polls almost always contends the last places with the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi.
In a few months, in September, the new school year will begin with 130,000 fewer students. Enrollments plummet because Italian families have fewer children and there is still a strong early school leaving. How to fill schools? How to help young people? We don’t know.
Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti is thinking of a billion-dollar plan of aid and relief for families with children, but there is no money. And, in any case, it takes time to liven up cradles. Meanwhile Giorgia Meloni is terrified by a number – 900,000 – who would be refugees ready to land on our shores if Tunisia collapses, while the minister-brother-in-law Lollobrigida is alarmed by the “ethnic replacement”.
Last year around 105,000 migrants arrived in Italy, in 2023 there could be 120,000 (Ispi), so no invasion. We could also change the register, with a welcome policy for refugees to support schools and guarantee companies the workers they ask for.
Between 2011 and 2021 Germany went from 80 to 83 million while in the same period Italy recorded a drop from 60 to 59 million. The demographic contraction can be stemmed by following two lines, one “slow” and one “fast” (as proposed by the rector of Bocconi Francesco Billari).
Long-term “slow” demographic policies aim to strengthen and stabilize measures in favor of births and families. The “fast” policies operate in a realistic way with the immigration of families, with workers, children and students who want to build the future in Italy.
In this way, even the “threat” of migrants and African pressure could be managed and become an opportunity for growth and social progress for our country.
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