This story first appeared in "The Global Ambassador," an undergraduate-led publication of the Keough School of Global Affairs.
Approaching Rome’s Fiumicino Airport after an eight-hour flight, I felt a sense of despair. From one window, I could see the central Italian coast and the snow-capped Apennine Mountains in the distance. From the other, I saw the Tyrrhenian Sea, less blue than I expected although it was the middle of January. I was embarking on a semester studying abroad through the Rome International Scholars Program, taking classes at an Italian university, doing an independent research project, and working a part-time internship at a think tank. However, at that point, I simply did not want to go to Italy again. My Italian professors, seeing my potential in studying Italian, encouraged me to apply during my sophomore year, but a year and a half after the fact, I started having doubts about the forthcoming experience. It was too late to change my mind, so I reflected on the reasons why I had reservations about my semester in Rome.
That previous summer, I had lived in Milan for a summer already through the Serving (in) Europe program, where I worked with asylum-seekers and assisted other marginalized groups. During my time in Milan, I was shocked at how the people around me viewed the question of identity. To the Milanese, one’s identity is based on one’s place of birth as well as by blood. Over the years, many southern Italians have moved to Milan and other cities in northern Italy for better economic opportunities, but they are not regarded as Milanese due to their place of birth. My interactions with second-generation immigrants revealed that despite growing up surrounded by Italian culture, people without Italian blood were not considered proper Italians and lack citizenship.
This narrow concept of belonging was at odds with what I experienced growing up in the United States. Despite having Asian heritage, nobody would question whether I was truly American or not, since it was common for immigrant groups to integrate into wider American culture. But in Milan, I was becoming increasingly annoyed by people questioning whether I was truly American or not. Not wanting to deal with the incessant interrogation of my identity again, I would’ve been content not to return to Italy.
The second reason for not wanting to study abroad in Rome was social. I did not want to leave my roommate on campus, and I feared that my friends on campus would move on without me. Additionally, I did not know anyone else who would be studying in Rome with me. These fears were never realized, as I managed to keep in touch with my roommate on campus and I met a wonderful group of friends during a tour of the Testaccio neighborhood of Rome during my first week there. We would end up taking numerous trips together.
When I arrived in Rome, the incessant questioning of my identity that I expected never occurred. It was a relief, but it also made me wonder how Rome and Milan can be so different. I soon realized that I was experiencing the divide between northern and southern Italy firsthand. Southern Italy has historically been less developed and more impoverished compared to northern Italy, due to years of neglect by the Italian government since the unification of the two in 1861. The different trajectories of both regions have led them to feel like completely different countries.
I began to notice that northern Italians view southern Italians (Rome being included in this South) with disdain. With southern Italy and Sicily having been controlled by various foreign powers at various points in its history, southerners were not seen as pure Italians. One person in Milan told me that all Neapolitans are basically Ethiopians. Northern Italians are always complaining about how disorganized southern Italy is. One girl lamented how buses randomly explode in Rome during the summer due to the lack of maintenance. When this happens, people automatically expect the cause to be lack of maintenance rather than a terrorist attack. Even Romans themselves lament about the city’s dysfunction. One person told me it is ridiculous that it would take at least 10 years to extend the city’s subway system by three stations, disregarding the fact that the new subway line would run under some of the most important archeological sites in Western civilization.
However, Milan was never a model of functionality during my time there. There were transportation strikes every two weeks during the summer and my travels were constantly plagued by delayed and canceled trains. When I visited southern Italy—Naples, Calabria, Puglia, and Sicily—I noticed that while it could be chaotic and disorganized at times, the people were also more laid back and enjoyed a slower pace of life. While my interactions with others in the large cities of Milan and Rome were very transactional, my interactions with people in southern Italy were much warmer. One experience struck out to me as exemplifying the paradoxes of southern Italy.
During a trip to Calabria, where we hiked from one side of the peninsula to the other, a 40-mile, three-day journey, we were immediately greeted by a disorganized state upon arrival. Transferring from a train to a bus, the bus driver initially did not let us board because he thought our tickets were fraudulent, even though I bought them on the official website of Italy’s train operator. Eventually, he relented and we embarked on a hike, where we met tons of welcoming people living in small villages. Strangers would pop out and help us. In one town, a local guided us to an agritourism place where we had fresh spaghetti and prosciutto from the farm next door. After a while, I realized that “stranger danger” did not apply here, and I could let my guard down a little. It was strange that even though the southern Italians who I interacted with lived on the cusp of economic insecurity and in the shadows of organized crime, they could still go out of their way to accommodate a group of American tourists.
Throughout my time in the region, I came to realize that Italy is not culturally unified, leading northern Italians to obsess over the notion of identity. Northern Italians are not content to be part of a unified country, especially when it is the North that finances much of the development efforts of the South. Many northern Italians want their money to stay in the region, and do not want to fund development efforts that do not benefit themselves at all.
Due to the economic and cultural differences, there have been separatist movements within different regions of Italy. Currently, the northern regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Val d’Aosta, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia have autonomous status due to their unique histories. However, the most potent separatist movement within Italy is that of Padania, which is centered on the Po Valley and comprises the Italian regions north of the Apennines. The Lega Nord political party was initially created to promote Padanian independence, and now the party, led by Matteo Salvini, is in the majority coalition of the Italian government. (Currently, the Lega Nord no longer promotes Padanian independence as part of the majority coalition.)
Because many Italians want to break away from Italy, they feel compelled to create a strong regional identity to legitimize their claims. This, in turn, sparks their us vs. them mentality, leading to an obsession with identity. The notion of identity is hyper-localized in northern Italy, which is at odds with the American notion of identity that I was used to. Through my interactions with people who live in the Milan area, I found out that even people who live in towns adjacent to Milan do not consider themselves “Milanese” – instead, they are “Monzese” (From Monza), “Sestese” (from Sesto San Giovanni), “Lecchese” (from Lecco), or “Bergamasco” (from Bergamo). Even the people who have lived in Milan for much of their lives but were not born there identify with their birthplaces or their parents’ homeland (mainly in Southern Italy). I treat my identity not as a function of my birth or race, but as a function of my culture—and growing up in the United States caused me to be acquainted with what I consider American culture.
My disparate experiences in Milan and Rome allowed me to see how different regions of Italy can be worlds together, but also worlds apart. I was able to witness the north-south divide in Italy firsthand, experiencing the effects of the efforts for the northern regions of the country to form their own identity, which was at odds with my own notion of identity. One city or region in a country does not fully capture the country in its totality. This revelation left me with a greater understanding of the difficulty in crafting sound policy that can be applied all throughout any country, and demonstrating the need for culturally specific and localized policy, to have the greatest impact in global affairs.
Originally published by at keough.nd.edu on April 07, 2025. Minor modfications by Keith Sayer on April 10, 2025.