The single biggest thing that is commanding Sicilian attention right now is not the Mafia but the landings of migrants in Lampedusa and their onward transfer to Porto Empedocle on the Sicilian mainland. Lampedusa is dubbed the hotspot by the Italian press, or, as we would say, the point of maximum pressure, even the bottleneck. No sooner are people shipped off by ferry to Porto Empedocle, than more arrive in Lampedusa; and in Porto Empedocle there is another bottleneck as there are not enough buses to take the people to the north of Italy. So not only are there more migrants than residents on Lampedusa, but, as ANSA puts it, Porto Empedocle has descended into chaos as well.
Where do the migrants go when they are bussed northwards, I wonder?
Clearly the Italian authorities are at full stretch, if not beyond it, and the Archbishop of Palermo (he is not a Cardinal, please note, though his predecessors all were) has spoken out about the Christian duty that Sicilians, and not only Sicilians, have towards migrants, essentially taking the same line as Pope Francis, which is well known.
Migration is a major issue for us Brits, as we all know, even though our small boat crisis is tiny compared to what is happening in Lampedusa, but here is a thing: the migration phenomenon has changed the political landscape of Italy. This is something that I am writing about in the second trilogy about Sicily and the Mafia.
The Church has declared that an anti-immigrant stance is in effect anti-Christian. They have found an appreciative audience for this on the Left of the political spectrum, where the former cattocomunisti (the Catholic element in the defunct PCI, the Communist Party of Italy) and the former Christian Democrat left are still influential. For the Right, the Church’s message has been a little more difficult. One element of Italy’s right, the League, which always had an anti-clerical streak, has essentially told the Pope to get lost, never a good look, and the League has been eclipsed by its rivals Brothers of Italy, which is much more respectful of the Vatican line.
For both Left and Right, the migrants are a political opportunity. Because no one at all can stop the boats, the Left can point out that the Right failed to keep its promises and cannot govern efficiently. And the Right can counter that the Left has historically encouraged lax immigration laws and that this is all their fault. As for the migrants themselves, they are a political football between Left and Right, which is presumably not what the Archbishop of Palermo (or any other humane person) wants.
In the end, a cynical person might say, the boats do not matter. The migrants are just passing through, heading north. They do not want to stop in Sicily. But the truth of the matter is that in many a major Italian city, the poorer quarters are now overwhelmingly inhabited by people from Africa and Asia, and Sicily is no exception. The centres of cities like Palermo and Agrigento have changed dramatically in the last twenty years or so, as have many quarters of Rome, such as the Esquiline, and the historic centre of much of Genoa and Naples. This represents a huge change, and one that happened without the voters being consulted. Most migrants may well pass through on their way north, but a significant number stay. Those who think migration will change Italy are a little behind with the facts; the change has already come; what hasn’t quite happened yet is people getting used to it.
As I have said before, this is a gift to the Mafia. Whichever way you look at it, the illegal landings in Lampedusa and elsewhere give everyone a visual reminder that Italy is a country that simply does not work. It’s chaos. Where the state fails, the private enterprise of the Mafia steps in. As the reputation of the state declines, tolerance of the Mafia increases. The other thing is this; as the migrants ‘claim’ quarters of Sicilian cities as their own, the dispossessed will look to whom, do you think, to assert their perceived rights? And what will happen then? one dreads to think. Gang warfare, however low level, between rival urban quarters, is not a pleasant prospect. But there is something else as well. The migrants, overwhelmingly young and male, and from countries where fighting happens a lot, many with battle experience, are prefect raw material for anyone looking to found a private army. The Wagner Group could well be the first of its kind.