Expatriate community: Italia, dolce patria mia… Maastricht in Italics
“We are foreigners in Italy and we are foreigners here in Maastricht”, these few words uttered by Carmelo Riggio, co-owner with his brother Bernardo of the Italian restaurant ‘Il Giardino’, simply explain the common feeling of Maastricht’s Italian community.
“Thanks to God,” says Riggio, “we are well integrated and I’m happy that my son - he’s 14 years old - is growing up here, because in the Netherlands and in Belgium everything works perfectly in terms of public offices, hospitals, banks and transportation. But the truth is that a lot of Dutch people treat us like foreigners even if we have been here for a long time. And, in the same way, when I go back to Sicily I feel like a stranger because I moved away from there more than 30 years”.
Riggio, who lives in Belgium, where the Italian community is historically more rooted, has been working in the capital of Limburg for the past 20 years, and is one of the many Italians who immigrated to the region during the second half of last century.
In the immediate post-war period, the Netherlands had to embark upon a rapid reconstruction of the country: houses and civil infrastructure but also productive infrastructure and activities. In order to support such a programme, the Netherlands was able to draw upon one of its most important resources, the coal mines of the south-eastern province of Limburg. The intensive exploitation of coal constituted an essential element in the production of energy in order to get the productive system moving again.
But the Netherlands, like Belgium and Germany, had lost a lot of its youth during the war and therefore was forced to import foreign labour in order to meet the labour shortfall. In the 1950s many workers were recruited in Italy to be employed in the building and coal industries, and later in the metallurgical industry.
According to information provided by the Dutch Central Office of Statistics, the Netherlands had “thousands” of Italian workers in the period 1956-1960: more than 4000 Italians in 1956; 5200 in 1960 and 8500 in 1962. Approximately 2500 of these labourers moved to Limburg. According to the latest census there are now 535 Italians living permanently in Maastricht, representing 0.4 per cent of the city’s population, estimated at 122,000.
One of them, now-retired Italian manager Guido Lombardi, arrived in Maastricht eight years ago after living and working for more than 30 years in Curaçao, in the Dutch Antilles. His eyes cannot hide his emotion when talking about “la madrepatria” because “I’m very much a nationalist”, he says, adding: “I travelled around the world during my life and this is a good city to live in but there’s not a place that can be compared to Italy and there’s no people which can be compared to Italians, with their big hearts and their unusual sense of hospitality”.
Talking about Maastrichtenaars, Lombardi says that “they are so different from us first of all because of that sense of hospitality I was talking about. They accept foreigners but usually there’s not perfect social integration”. Angelo Di Napoli, waiter at the restaurant “I 4 Mori”, seems to share the same opinion: “I have been here for 13 years and I can say that there’s no social integration. In fact I just have one Dutch friend and I don’t think it’s enough after so many years. But living in Maastricht is good, he says, even if some years ago, before the Euro was adopted, it was better especially in terms of salary”.
One of the cooks in the same restaurant, Andrea Scala, is less negative about Maastricht and its inhabitants: “I’m 27 and have lived in this city for 5 years and maybe because I’m young and do not have so many problems with socialisation, I have a lot of Dutch friends. But Italian and Dutch people are very different. This is considered the ‘Land of freedom’,” he says, “but here people think that freedom means you can do everything you want, in Italy we have stronger values and a different concept of freedom, first of all it means respect for the others”.
Enthusiastic about life in Maastricht is Manuela Alfe, 26 years old, and has been working at the European Institute of Public Administration since January 2005. “The city is so nice and I love it because it’s small but modern and here you can find all you need. It’s a strategic position within east reach of Brussels, Amsterdam and Köln. But first of all I love Maastricht because it’s so calm and quiet and it’s not as crowded and confused as my native city, Naples!”. Referring to her relations with the Dutch she says: “Yes, it’s true they are not so open but I’m trying to learn Dutch and since I speak some words in their language they are increasingly friendly. The reason? Maybe they appreciate my willingness to learn or maybe my Dutch is so bad that I make them laugh and appear likeable in doing so!”
Alessandro Carcaterra
December 2005
