As Europe ages and a youthful Africa grows, how does migration reshape economies, identities and the issue of population decline?
Across much of rural Italy, ageing populations and declining birth rates have left towns with a shrinking workforce and empty homes. This episode connects these demographic shifts to the presence of newly arrived migrants: people whose search for safety and stability intersects with local communities’ growing need for labour, revitalisation and social support. In this context, migration becomes not only a humanitarian issue but also part of a wider conversation about Europe’s demographic future.
We follow award-winning Sicilian photographer Francesco Bellina, who uses his camera to document migration routes from Africa to Europe. He focuses on the human stories of men, women and children who begin their journeys in sub-Saharan Africa, travel through perilous stretches of North Africa and attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing in the hope of reaching European shores. In Roccamena, a sleepy, ageing town in the Sicilian hills dotted with a plethora of empty apartments as a result of a dwindling local population, Francesco collaborates on a photography project with Roccamena’s new residents from West Africa. A story of humanitarian responsibility and community renewal unfolds.
Original film title: The Great Migration
Maybe because immigration was left unchecked for years and ended up creating ghettos, zones where it is impossible for people (especially women) to go after a certain time and zones where you walk surrounded by illegal immigrant that live by petty crimes (look at the Milano Central Station for example).
In the end people notice it and started to change the attitude from “they need help” to “they are criminal and we don’t need them”.
The sad thing is that this way we do not discriminate anymore between the legal immigrants, those who are integrated work and contribute to the society, and the illegal immigrant that are often just here thinking they can violate any law without consequences.
While people generally had no problems with the legal immigrants, once the illegal immigrants become a problem the distinction mostly was gone and people started to look to all immigrants as a problem.
Note that often also the legal immigrants do not want the illegal immingrants because (and that was told me by more the one legal immigrants) “when they [the illegal immigrants] cause problems, people look also at us as problems” and I agree that it is not fair to them (the legal immigrants) to be treated this way since often they work harder then us.
Most of Europe has developed because it colonised other countries and stolen it’s resources and enslaved it’s population, then the whole world developed thanks to the oil that it stole from those countries poisoning the environment and fucking up the atmosphere.