Writing Assignment 3

Piazza Vittorio looks like any other Italian neighborhood at first glance but upon further inspection it is completely different from any other neighborhood within Rome; with a variety of different international shops, grocers and food markets. This culturally diverse neighborhood is home to immigrants from all reaches of the world from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and anywhere you can think of. From talking to many of the foreigners many of them came here alone with the dream of making more money and having a better life, with many of them aspiring to move to the United States. The majority of the people working at the food market are emigrants from Bangladesh and some from north Africa and the Middle East. The first interview that we did was with 2 men, one from Egypt and the other from Bangladesh both of these men were in their early 30's or late 20's. Both of them worked as butchers in the market Esquilino, they both enjoyed working as a butchers in the market and have been living in Italy for four years and six years. The man from Bangladesh came alone and by himself an plans on moving to the US in about 2 years, the man from Egypt came to Italy with his family but doesn't like here in Italy as much as he did in Egypt. From talking to them we learned that they were interviewed by some other students from our class, that were taking notes and writing down information and names; which they found to be disrespectful and offensive. Much of what they told us about the immigration process sync to what we have been learning in class and their experiences both differed.

The Italian that we talked for the interview was a 22 year old female university student we met on the street in the neighborhood, who lives with her parents in the area around the piazza vittorio. She had a different view on the immigration than most of the other Italians that we talked to previously; she was open to the idea of allowing immigrants into the country allowing them to work and raise their families here in Italy. She was happy to talk with us and offer her option on immigration in Italy even though she was an Italian, granted she may have held some of her true thoughts back but she was generally in favor of allowing immigrants to reside here. I think that she may have been more open with discussing this topic with us if we were one of her peers at the university or another Italian.

I feel that this was a fun assignment meant to push our boundaries and make us talk to immigrants and Italians about a controversial topic in Italy. During this assignment I realized many people don't like to talk or discuss immigration in Italy, but this is not only limited to the Italians but also some of the immigrants were reluctant to talk to us about their history and the experiences that they had coming to Italy, an example of this was a Bangladeshi man who Sarah had bough food from in english but when we started to ask him questions about where he came from he became reluctant to answer questions and just said that he didn't speak English. Overall I thought that this was a enlightening experience and showed us a new side of Rome that isn't normally seen when you are touring the main attractions.