Hello!

This Wednesday we started talking about the topic of our final project. So, new groups and new peers. I have to confess that we all had many different ideas about interesting topic to develop but then we had to choose just one. We explained to our American colleague Ashley our ideas, and voila, thanks to her opinion we made the choice. We decided to analyse the situation of pregnant women’s at work place and their rights. Even though we are quite young women, and we are not actually think about having a family (or at least this is my situation) we do agree that this is something that will surely touch our lives in a close future.
The conversation went on talking about the channels throw which communicate in order to realize, practically, our project and, actually, the wiki page, skype and the e mails have been designated!
We really had many things to talk about, and it has been a pity that our peer had to leave the conversation a little bit earlier; anyway, we went on planning the work for this week and deciding some deadlines to find the material and information.
Now, a week of research in waiting for us!

This week skype xchange has been quite difficult because of some technological problems with the pc and the microphones, so we actually waste a lot of time trying to establish a connection with our American peers! Moreover many of us, and many Americans too were absent so groups and couples were different. In my group we were 4 plus a colleague from Dickinson…what a mess! Anyway, we went on speaking about politics, candidates and who is probably going to win here and overseas. I discovered that in the USA, there are people who go to schools and Universities to explain to the students the different ideas and programs of the candidates and I do actually think that this is a very nice enterprise. I mean, schools and University should be kind of neutral but one of education’s aim should be that of create capable and careful citizens. As matter of fact, young people may not be interested in politics at all, or they can often be too lazy in order to find out helpful information which can facilitate them in deciding who to vote for. For that reason, informing boys and girls it’s a very good idea. I also asked to my peer what about Obama girls’ songs…Lol! She told me that this is not a real group but we agreed about the fact that this videos are quite funny and mocking. She also told me that she saw the videos about Berlusconi and Walter which are on our course blog. As far as our peer said, it sounds as if Berlusconi is the only Italian politician well known …What a bad image we have got around the world!!
Speaking about politics and elections, which are the outstanding topics in this period, Sarah asked us to express our ideas about immigration and consequently the relevant problem of the voting right for the immigrants! As a matter of fact, every country follows its immigration policy, and citizenship is the goal to reach which confers duties and rights among which there is also the right to vote. As far as Italy is concerned, the article 48 of our Constitution, sanctions that the persons entitled to vote are those over 18 and with Italian citizenship. Thus, the origin of all the troubles is the Suffrage-the right- to vote which generally derives from citizenship…So, the main point is how to get citizenship! European foreign residents, even though they are not Italian, can vote here in Italy, while others, non-Europeans, did not. Thus the problems deals with the foreign and extra-communitarians which are regularly established in the national territory. In fact, those people are not allowed to vote and any change in order to allow them to vote, would imply a constitutional amendment. The situation in the other European countries is quite different, in many of them, like Ireland, Swedish, Denmark, Holland, Luxemburg and others, the criteria is easier. An immigrant has got to demonstrate that he/she is living in the country, that he/she establish and after some month (6 month in Ireland) or years (3 years in Swedish) they obtain the right to vote.
But here in Italy everything’s complicated. It seems like Italy forgot its past, as a matter of fact, some time ago Italy was a country of emigrants, whereas now it has become a country of immigration. Nowadays, there are around 3 million immigrants living regularly in Italy (ISTAT 2006 estimate), making up 5% of the total population. Caritas suggest that 3.7 million migrants live in Italy but still there are many undocumented immigrants which live in very poor and often unhealthy conditions. Even though immigration is a reality here in Italy, we still haven’t got a good strategy to face this phenomena! From one point of view there is no doubt about the fact that we need immigration! Immigration brings here manpower and often, immigrants do all the jobs that Italians don’t want to do anymore, immigrants do care our elders and contribute to the increasing of births. But from another point of view, immigration raise a lot of problems about social aspect of life as economy, welfare, education, heath care, prostitution, crime and human rights.
Personally, I think that Immigration and the voting right are serious political issue in this period of election and the debate is really fervent because it touches many aspect of our social and political sphere. There is not a univocal solution to this problem, and the way is still long. Let’s hope that the commonsense and the integration would prevail!!

Last Wednesday I was not in Padua and so again no skype exchange for me. I actually went to Gorizia because a friend of mine got graduated…Lucky her!
For this reason I have nothing to write about the exchange and so I had a look at the online forum to see what’s going on there, and I found very interesting topics of conversation!
The first which attract my attention, deals with something which, to me, marks a very big gap between Italy the USA: the death penalty. Here in Italy we have got many problems like the corruption, the mafia, “le raccomandazioni”, the Church interferences but, luckily, here we don’t have the death penalty. Reading my peers comments, I saw that we do all agree about the fact that the death penalty is something awful, unjust and that goes against all the basic human rights. As far as the justice is concerned, it seems that Italy and the USA are at two extreme poles: on one hand, as Stella said, here in Italy the penalty are often inadequate and thus people do not pay for the crimes committed; on the other had, overseas, the capital penalty may kill people who are just alleged criminals. So, here in Italy everything seems to be quite free, the justice is slow and complicated. In some way you can feel free to do what you want because the worst penalty that you can get is a sentence to life imprisonment (20 or 30 years) but to tell the truth there are often discounts, reduction and if you’re really lucky even an “indultino”! Opposed is the situation in the States, where people run the risk to be killed even if the are innocent because the death penalty does not allow any afterthought.
Personally, I think that every Nation has got its big troubles and issues to face, and even if here in Italy the justice may not offer safety and protections to its citizens, I am very happy that death penalty it’s not in use. No one has got the right to decide about the life of the other people! To kill a criminal it is not a good and democratic solution at all!
Oh, I forget, we are supposed to start thinking about our final project…this means that our course is almost over…L! During this months we analysed a lot of cultural aspects and we actually found out not only differences but also similarities between us and our American peers. Now it’s time to clear up my mind and decide to concentrate on one of the aspects which has particularly struck me…The problem is to take a decision! Right now I am a little bit confused, I have such a big amount of information in my mind that I don’t know how to organize it! I hope to wake up on Monday morning with some clearer ideas about my final project…You know what!? The night is the mother of counsel!