'Calore umano': Why some Italian expats can't resist the pull to move back to Italy
While many Italians flee from their home country in search of a brighter future and career abroad, and then stay there for good, some make the opposite choice and decide to return, realizing they miss too much of Italy.
Roughly 120,000 Italians move abroad each year while just 68,000 return, according to Italy’s national statistic office Istat.
One of the main reasons why they come back, as suggested by a recent survey, is nostalgia for their home country.
The survey also revealed Italians living abroad realized that Italy still had a lot of opportunities in terms of jobs if you searched hard enough and a unique quality of life.
Carolina Barilone is a 35-year-old honey producer who moved back with her family from Stockholm, where she grew up and where her father owns an ice-cream shop.
She attended Swedish schools, fluently speaks four languages and worked for Ikea but in 2019, not happy with her life there, made the leap and returned to her native, remote village of San Biagio Saracinisco, south of Rome, from where her grandparents had emigrated.
She found life in Sweden was great - but not that great.
“It’s an apparently perfect country, with a high quality of life, everything works well," she says. "Trains never run late. Schools, childcare and the welfare system are very efficient, but I was starting to miss the typical ‘calore umano’ (human warmth) of Italians - the easy going relations, the friendliness of people, the laid-back vibe."
What appeared at first to be a well-functioning Swedish society lacked in her view the “cheerfulness of a stranger’s smile and the evening chats while sipping an aperitivo after work”.
The Italian warmth and friendliness is missed by many expats when they leave (Photo by Michele Canciello on Unsplash)
Barilone realized that her life was just work, and that she and her Italian husband, who struggled with Sweden’s cold weather and sunless days, spent little time with their two kids.
“The school had turned into their parents, because we worked too much, they spent 7 hours at school, and school can’t substitute a family. We had no quality time together”.
The Barilones missed not just the warm weather and typical openness of Italian people as opposed to what they deemed the ‘coldness’ of Swedes, but also a slow-pace lifestyle that only a remote rural area in deep Italy could offer them.
READ ALSO: From spritz to shakerato: Six things to drink in Italy this summer
They now live in an isolated, old restyled stone farm on a mountain top surrounded by nature and with great views of a pristine lake. The nearest village has just 300 residents, mobile phones seldom work. One of her two boys has even started working as a shepherd during weekends. The farm produces different flavored honeys and other honey-related products.
“In Italy people easily socialize, they know what hospitality is and say ‘ciao’ when they meet you in the village. Forget about that in Sweden. Italians are also very physical, they seek some kind of physical contact and use body language a lot, the Swedish only shake hands, and not always”.
Barilone says she makes less money with bees than when she worked at Ikea, but money can’t buy happiness. She loves her bucolic, unplugged rural life and has plenty of time to spend with her family - even she wakes up at dawn to tend to the bees.
Marco Pirovano, 40-years-old, a street food polenta maker in the northern city of Bergamo, also moved back home in 2011 after years abroad, nostalgic of family ties and “deep Italian bonds” .
READ ALSO: TRAVEL: Nine tips for making the most of a Rome city break
He lived on Australia’s Gold Coast and Saint Martin island in the Caribbean, where he worked as a chef. While both were paradise-like places, especially Surfers’ Paradise where he finally learned English with an Aussie accent, Pirovano disliked what he saw as “superficial” human contacts and “occasional friendships that lasted just one evening”.
“We Italians, when we hang out and see there is potential to become friends because we share the same interests, we invest in that relationship and it becomes longstanding. We nurture the bonds of friendship, in the places I’ve lived it’s all very fleeting and so-called ‘buddies’ are usually so for just one night fun, or to get drunk”, he says.
As for many Italians who have lived abroad, Pirovano also missed his family and relatives, alongside his hometown’s delicious food such as casoncelli ravioli and his beloved polenta on which he was weaned, and being able to chat in the tight ‘bergamasco’ dialect, which is comprehensible only to locals.
Italy's beautiful and lively Naples city (Photo by Danilo D'Agostino on Unsplash)
For Neapolitan energy infrastructure engineer Andrea Rodriguez, 41, the decision to move back to Naples in 2019 after a 5-year stay in Abu Dhabi all came down to realizing that Italy had many opportunities for young talent that he wanted to support.
“I never felt at home, in Abu Dhabi you’re always a resident, never a citizen. After a few years there I started seeing only the differences and making comparisons, and Italy lured me back," he said.
READ ALSO: RANKED: The 11 worst food crimes you can commit according to Italians
Back in Naples, Rodriguez launched a network to lure Italian brains from abroad, dubbed ‘Return for Future”, saying Italy’s future was in strategic green energy projects on which he now works.
For a few years he even lived in the UK but says he couldn’t stand opening the window and not being able to catch a glimpse of the sea like he does now in Naples: “That would kill any Neapolitan who is born and bred on the shore”.
Another thing which is typical of Italians abroad: both Pirovano and Rodriguez also missed watching the matches of their favorite football teams.
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Roughly 120,000 Italians move abroad each year while just 68,000 return, according to Italy’s national statistic office Istat.
One of the main reasons why they come back, as suggested by a recent survey, is nostalgia for their home country.
The survey also revealed Italians living abroad realized that Italy still had a lot of opportunities in terms of jobs if you searched hard enough and a unique quality of life.
Carolina Barilone is a 35-year-old honey producer who moved back with her family from Stockholm, where she grew up and where her father owns an ice-cream shop.
She attended Swedish schools, fluently speaks four languages and worked for Ikea but in 2019, not happy with her life there, made the leap and returned to her native, remote village of San Biagio Saracinisco, south of Rome, from where her grandparents had emigrated.
She found life in Sweden was great - but not that great.
“It’s an apparently perfect country, with a high quality of life, everything works well," she says. "Trains never run late. Schools, childcare and the welfare system are very efficient, but I was starting to miss the typical ‘calore umano’ (human warmth) of Italians - the easy going relations, the friendliness of people, the laid-back vibe."
What appeared at first to be a well-functioning Swedish society lacked in her view the “cheerfulness of a stranger’s smile and the evening chats while sipping an aperitivo after work”.
Barilone realized that her life was just work, and that she and her Italian husband, who struggled with Sweden’s cold weather and sunless days, spent little time with their two kids.
“The school had turned into their parents, because we worked too much, they spent 7 hours at school, and school can’t substitute a family. We had no quality time together”.
The Barilones missed not just the warm weather and typical openness of Italian people as opposed to what they deemed the ‘coldness’ of Swedes, but also a slow-pace lifestyle that only a remote rural area in deep Italy could offer them.
READ ALSO: From spritz to shakerato: Six things to drink in Italy this summer
They now live in an isolated, old restyled stone farm on a mountain top surrounded by nature and with great views of a pristine lake. The nearest village has just 300 residents, mobile phones seldom work. One of her two boys has even started working as a shepherd during weekends. The farm produces different flavored honeys and other honey-related products.
“In Italy people easily socialize, they know what hospitality is and say ‘ciao’ when they meet you in the village. Forget about that in Sweden. Italians are also very physical, they seek some kind of physical contact and use body language a lot, the Swedish only shake hands, and not always”.
Barilone says she makes less money with bees than when she worked at Ikea, but money can’t buy happiness. She loves her bucolic, unplugged rural life and has plenty of time to spend with her family - even she wakes up at dawn to tend to the bees.
Marco Pirovano, 40-years-old, a street food polenta maker in the northern city of Bergamo, also moved back home in 2011 after years abroad, nostalgic of family ties and “deep Italian bonds” .
READ ALSO: TRAVEL: Nine tips for making the most of a Rome city break
He lived on Australia’s Gold Coast and Saint Martin island in the Caribbean, where he worked as a chef. While both were paradise-like places, especially Surfers’ Paradise where he finally learned English with an Aussie accent, Pirovano disliked what he saw as “superficial” human contacts and “occasional friendships that lasted just one evening”.
“We Italians, when we hang out and see there is potential to become friends because we share the same interests, we invest in that relationship and it becomes longstanding. We nurture the bonds of friendship, in the places I’ve lived it’s all very fleeting and so-called ‘buddies’ are usually so for just one night fun, or to get drunk”, he says.
As for many Italians who have lived abroad, Pirovano also missed his family and relatives, alongside his hometown’s delicious food such as casoncelli ravioli and his beloved polenta on which he was weaned, and being able to chat in the tight ‘bergamasco’ dialect, which is comprehensible only to locals.
For Neapolitan energy infrastructure engineer Andrea Rodriguez, 41, the decision to move back to Naples in 2019 after a 5-year stay in Abu Dhabi all came down to realizing that Italy had many opportunities for young talent that he wanted to support.
“I never felt at home, in Abu Dhabi you’re always a resident, never a citizen. After a few years there I started seeing only the differences and making comparisons, and Italy lured me back," he said.
READ ALSO: RANKED: The 11 worst food crimes you can commit according to Italians
Back in Naples, Rodriguez launched a network to lure Italian brains from abroad, dubbed ‘Return for Future”, saying Italy’s future was in strategic green energy projects on which he now works.
For a few years he even lived in the UK but says he couldn’t stand opening the window and not being able to catch a glimpse of the sea like he does now in Naples: “That would kill any Neapolitan who is born and bred on the shore”.
Another thing which is typical of Italians abroad: both Pirovano and Rodriguez also missed watching the matches of their favorite football teams.
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