Nine Young People, Three Tables, One Question

Naples, Piazza Garibaldi — 21 July 2026

Nine young people between the ages of 20 and 22 sit at three tables—Employment, Care, and New Citizenships—to dismantle narratives about the “other.” This is EU FACTOR’s first event in Italy, with the Forum on Inequalities and Diversity also taking part: four listening phases designed to bring to light many things that usually remain unsaid.

The Employment Table

At the Employment table, facilitated by Alessia Acito, the statement to be dismantled is the most common of all: “Migrants steal jobs from Italians.” The three participants are a sociology student, a social work student, and an economics student; the latter two have Pakistani and Bangladeshi migrant backgrounds. That statement, they say, echoes everywhere. But when concrete experiences emerge, the dynamics of the conflict are reversed: one person lost a job because another young foreigner was willing to accept lower pay; another opened a small business and was accused of having “stolen” the space from an Italian. It is not a wall between us and them, but a race to the bottom that benefits employers, buyers, and sellers. The poster also highlights the labelling of particular sectors: care work is predominantly associated with Polish women, construction with Romanians, and labour on buffalo farms and in livestock farming with Indians. When the Forum on Inequalities and Diversity presents its proposals—a minimum wage, transparency and consistency in employment contracts, and a guaranteed pension—the group does not dispute the principles but stresses: “These are good proposals; now they need to be put into practice.”

The Care Table

At the Care table, moderated by Luisa Bencivenga, the most significant story comes from afar. A pregnant woman leaves Parma for Naples because there are no places left at the nursery. Within the family, the blame is placed on people with migrant backgrounds—and only the family support network can shoulder the burden. It is a precise illustration of the mechanism at work: anti-migrant narratives take root where public welfare fails to reach people.

Another participant, who is of Senegalese origin, works part-time for an older employer who makes disparaging comments about migrants but has an affectionate relationship with him: personal affection coexists, entirely undisturbed, with the stereotype. Over the course of three sticky notes, the narrative shifts from “invasion” to “send them home.”

There is also a silence that weighs as heavily as the statements collected. These young people choose carefully whom they engage in discussion; they give up when it comes to older people, whom they consider “lost causes,” and sometimes remain silent because they feel they lack solid evidence. In response to the proposal on care, they add an interpretative key of their own: care work falls disproportionately on women—and even more heavily on migrant women.

The New Citizenships Table

At the New Citizenships table, facilitated by Ismahan Hassen, the poster fills up with seemingly innocent questions: “Where are you from?”, “Do you eat pork?”, “Do you like pizza?”, “You look like that—how can you be Italian?” They are not insults, but a continuous test: an examination of Italianness administered every day to young people in their twenties who were born here, or to a primary-school child who speaks with a Neapolitan accent yet is still considered “the only foreigner in the school.”

This is the paradox of the exception: people who are known personally cease to be viewed as foreigners, while prejudice against the broader group of “foreigners” remains intact. The places mentioned reveal a double form of violence: police headquarters and public offices on one side, and selective admission to nightclubs and checks in cafés on the other—bodies perceived as out of place both by institutions and in spaces of leisure and entertainment.

Regarding citizenship reform, ius scholae—citizenship based on completing a course of education—is viewed favourably because “it presupposes a journey.” But the concluding observation is unequivocal: the law alone is not enough; the path towards social inclusion remains difficult and tortuous.