Italians stuck in UK without a home: should the Government rescue them?
By: Francesca Casonato
Tags: Covid, Brexit, Travel Ban, Italy, Italians In Uk

— Article by Francesca Casonato

When Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio banned all the flights coming from the UK, many people were left with nowhere to sleep. Many Italians were actually leaving the country for good, after they lost their job with the new Tier 4 restrictions. And yet, many people in these tense hours, kept asking sceptically online: “Why did they travel to the UK now, if they knew it was dangerous, with Covid and Brexit? And why they want to come back?”. To answer this burning questions that have recently populated Facebook and Instagram posts, I interviewed two of those Italians that are now stuck in the UK, jobless and without a home.

Moving to the UK during the Pandemic: the stories of Daniele and Stefania

Video interview with Stefania and Daniele

Daniele has more than 30 years, and for 7 he has lived outside Italy, working as a pastry chief first in Paris and then in Switzerland. He decided to move to the UK on the 1st of November.

“I wanted to move back to work in a big city and I chose London. I started sending my CV until I got a job interview via Skype. They guaranteed me a job and a room where I could do the 14 days of quarantine required by the British Government. That made me feel safe, so I booked the flight and on the 1st of November 2020 I came to the UK.”

Daniele decided to move to England even though, four days prior his arrival, the November lockdown had started.

“I called the restaurant and they told me that they needed me because they were still open for take away.”

But things didn’t go as planned. The orders were less than what they had expected. And when Boris Johnson announced the Tier 4 zones from the 19th of December, the shop closed. As they couldn’t guarantee Daniele’s paycheck anymore, and he couldn’t therefore pay the rent, he decided to move back to Italy to live with his parents and to save the little money he had left. He booked a flight for the 21st of December.

Stefania had her flight booked just one day later, on the 22nd. She was born in Sardinia, where she usually works in the summertime, while in the winter she moves to Spain. She arrived in London only two months ago as well, to work in an Italian restaurant. The owner gave her a job as a waitress and a place to sleep. This until she was let go.

“She treated me poorly. After our last fight she told me I needed to leave the room by the 26th of December.”

After that, she found herself without a job and without a home, while the UK was transitioning into a partial lockdown. She decided to move back to her parents house in Italy and she booked a flight, which has now been cancelled. Instead of asking for a refund, she postponed the date to the 24th.

“I don’t think they will let me leave... But what else can I do?”

So, where are Daniele and Stefania staying now?

Both Daniele and Stefania were leaving their accommodations when the Foreign Minister Di Maio announced the cancellation of the flights from UK. When I talked to Stefania, she was on a bus headed to Stansted Airport.

“I will likely be sleeping in the airport. I am alone and I have a rare condition, called neurofibromatosis, that creates fibroids in my brain, blocking my legs and my hearing. I am scared of sleeping on the streets alone. What if somebody beats me up? It’s safer for me to sleep in the airport.”

Daniele had more luck. He called a friend of his who is letting him stay in his house until he can figure out what to do.

“It’s three of us in a flat with two rooms. My friend gave me his bed and he is sleeping now in the kitchen. I was lucky. I know many Italians are actually sleeping in the airport with no clue on what to do next.”

Now that the minister Francesco Boccia announced that “all residents in Italy can come back”, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. However, the flights that will be allowed to travel from the UK to Italy haven’t been announced yet.

Should the Italian Government rescue them?

Finally, why should the Italian Government take care of these people who decided to move to the UK during the pandemic for personal reasons?

Well, sometimes it is not a personal choice. We are not talking about people who came here for a short holiday. Moving to another country, it’s sometimes a need, born from ages of high unemployment rates and irregular contracts, as Stefania well explained to me.

“We all know that the UK is often the starting point for many careers. To have a better future. For example in Sardinia, where I come from, you work a lot in the summertime, with tourists. But in winter, there is nothing to do. Employers simply don’t give you a permanent contract, it costs too much to them.”

In fact, in September 2020, Italy unemployment rate was at 9.6% (according to recent AGI figures), while the UK rate, counting its constant raise during the pandemic, is still lower: 4.8%. Of course, they couldn’t predict that the UK Government would have close the shops again, or that a new variant of Covid would have come along. But this is a generation of people who were pushed to travel, to live their lives according to the touristic seasons. And this year, more then ever, they were ready to move anywhere for a proper job.

And even if we set aside the fact that it is not just a “personal issue”, but more a collective responsibility that is making people moving from country to country, there is a legal reason why the Italian Government should allow its citizen to come home. It is written in the European Convention on Human Rights (4th Protocol, art. 3):

“No one shall be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the state of which he is a national”.

Let’s just hope that the Italian Government will read those lines, so often quoted by the Facebook group Azione Collettiva Italiani Bloccati in Gran Bretagna, that Daniela and Stefano are members of.