Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
because the transcultural perspective has acquired greater importance.” We
are dealing now with highly traumatized people who, even having survived
experiences of war, are now finding themselves in a foreign country
with an alien culture, and where stressful situations such as lack of available
work, inadequate lodging or racism further prolong their trauma and
hardship.
Geographic location and experience
The social conditions of Kosovar immigrants differed according to their
location in Italy. Some of the people interviewed had settled in northern
Italy, after their relatives had already made a home for themselves and
established a network there. Following are some of the experiences of the
interviewees, in trying to find housing and acquire the necessary permits,
before they even had a chance to adapt to the different environment:
Since 1990, when my relatives started to come, I always tried to help
them find a job so that they could have a residence permit… I helped to
find a place where they could sleep, a job, to find a house to rent…
People in this zone are wealthy, but they are not very friendly towards
foreigners, especially ten years ago…the first ones who got here were
looked upon as beasts…refused… When we were living in a small town,
in Balabio, there were seven or eight of us living in the same house… I
even asked help from priests, to see if they could lend me a hand, for a
house or something… but there was a lot of fear, diffidence… when
finally, after a year we were able to find a house, we had a party. The
situation changed also because the priest left and another one from Lecco
took his place… and he was more open-minded; I started immediately to
work with him in order to inform people about the war going on between
Serbs and Croats… we had some conferences to explain what was happening
and why people from [those] countries were arriving… people at
Balabio started to understand and it became a town with a very high
immigration density. [Eduard B.]
Other interviewees left Kosovo with the intention of reaching their family
in Germany, but European immigration laws forced them to stay in Italy,
where they had to find work:
Ornela: The decision to come to Italy was obligatory, we used it as
a passageway to Germany… yes, we wanted to go to
Germany, but without passport you can’t cross the frontier…
we were even willing to get there as clandestine, but they
offered us decent life conditions here and so we decided to
stay.
Question: Did your husband find work immediately?
Ornela: My husband did, after ten days.
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