Specials

This paper presents some data concerning the flow of Italians who are directing their own development strategies, business and investment abroad.

It is also makes particular reference to those Italians who have a special visa for entering the United States, of the ones granted only to workers with "extraordinary ability or results." The data express well current reality: great speedy changes, big news that could accelerate the establishment of relations between the communities of Sicilians living in Sicily and the Sicilian community in the world.

In fact, the presence of Sicilians in the world should be reconsidered as global citizenship to which we must give regulations and structures but also content and substance. The recent economic debate on rediscovered “relational goods” (relationships, gratuity, shared value, etc.) helps us to understand that time is ripe to structure and organize our relationship with the community of Sicilians abroad.

Indeed the "common good" does not consist only of a certain amount of material goods, services and security for which we live together in a given community. There is evidence that only those who were able to maintain relations with their culture of origin were able to adapt to the processes of change and development in the host country.

A personal experience: A mayor of Italian origins in a small town near Canberra told me that he feels Italian even though he has never been to Italy, does not speak Italian and administers a community where the presence of Italians is irrelevant.  This s a fascinating fact that immediately leads to the question of young Sicilians abroad, who sometimes cannot even speak the language, and yet they continue to cultivate a growing sense of "feeling Italian." It is fascinating because the concept of identity, both for peoples and nations, cannot be understood as something static, as it is expression of the flesh and blood of women and men.

This leads us to the conclusion that titles this paper: place and identity, reflections about being "Sicilians".  We, who are increasingly traveling around the world, who are informed every day in real-time on news from around the world, and have our Sicilian communities all around the world, are able to understand the local context only if this is capable of representing the global dimension towards which we are all moving.

Home is by definition a confined place, where you can separate those who are inside from those who are outside, where it is clear who is part of the family and who is not. Having our own home in a world without boundaries is possible today, as we may be citizens of the world and thus re-discover how to maintain relationships with our communities abroad.