There is a scene that perfectly sums up the political moment in Italy: the party that made hostility towards immigration its main electoral platform puts two Muslim candidates on its list, receives criticism from its own voters, and then publicly announces that it is "distancing itself" from the candidates it itself chose.
This happened in VigevanoA city of 62 inhabitants in northern Italy, surrounded by factories and rice paddies, where 15% of the population is made up of foreigners, many of them Egyptians and Romanians. The League's mayoral candidate. (or Lega)Jeweler Riccardo Ghia decided to include two Muslim candidates on his list of city councilors with a stated goal: to attract votes from immigrant communities.
The reaction from the League's national leadership was immediate. The party announced that it was "distancing itself" from Vigevano's candidates. Salvini's voters didn't like it. The Muslim candidates were caught in the crossfire. And the contradiction was exposed for anyone who wanted to see. The election took place this Sunday and Monday (25).
"I was born here. I've always lived here. But I'm still a foreigner."
One of the candidates, Hagar Haggag, 20, an Italian-Egyptian, said she had received a series of insults and threats since her candidacy was announced, attributing the reaction mainly to the fact that she wore [a specific item/material - this needs to be filled in based on context]. hijabEven so, she said she had never experienced racism within the local party branch and stated that she also ran for office to "end the left-wing cliché that Muslim women are ignorant." She is studying diplomacy and considering a political career, perhaps in Egypt.
The other candidate, Ibrahim Hussein, spokesman for the prayer hall of the local mosque, presented his candidacy “in the name of Allah” and wrote on Facebook that he chose the League because he sees it as “a real example of integration.”
On the opposite side of the political spectrum, Sabrine Hamrouni, 23, the daughter of a Tunisian who arrived in Vigevano in the 1990s to work in construction, is a candidate for the center-left. She summed up in one sentence what many second-generation immigrants feel: “I was born here. I’ve always lived here. But I’m still a foreigner.”
The contradiction that the election exposes
The Vigevano incident is not an accident. It is a symptom. Italy is preparing for national elections next year in a country that is changing faster than its political class can keep up. The electoral weight of second generations is growing. The children of the immigrants who built the industrial north of Italy are of voting age, and of running for office.
Sociologist Maurizio Ambrosini, from the State University of Milan, observed that several right-wing parties are trying to attract candidates of immigrant origin and that "many naturalized migrants tend towards the right." This is a phenomenon known in other European countries, and is now arriving in Italy.
The problem is that the League of Matteo Salvini It built its political identity precisely on the exclusion of the other. Flexibilizing this identity to gain votes is possible, but it comes at a cost. And that cost became apparent in Vigevano, where the party had to publicly distance itself from its own candidates in order not to lose the electorate it had built.
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