In the last few years a whole slice of the italian population, went from being invisible and slightly uncool, to being a dynamic nationwide movement!
A movement able to challenge current citizeship laws, challenge common stereotypes and cultural perceptions of who we are, and most importantly, able to make people feel like they’re part of an “us” instead of a “them”.
I was able to join this network born in Rome in it’s early stages, and create the milanese G2 group with some other people.
This below, is who we are and how we work.
Rete G2 - Seconde Generazioni (Rete means network in italian)
Rete G2 - Seconde Generazioni is a National organization founded by daughters and sons of immigrants and refugees born and/or raised in Italy.
Rete G2 is a network of people with different backgrounds and professional skills, whose origins are from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.
Each one of the members of this network defines himself/herself not as an immigrant but as an italian kid of an immigrant, even though by law they are not recognised italian citizenship.
Those who were born on italian soil have the chance to obtain citizeship when they reach 18 years of age, until then they are considered as nationals of their country of origin.
Such a group decided to work together on two fundamental points:
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Italian citizenship issues on denied rights to the second generation
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Identity as a form of gathering of different cultures.
Motivations:
The motivations behind the creation of the network include sharing experiences, discussing common issues and trying to find solutions to problems regarding legal status, documentation, citizenship, but also discussing cultural and ethnic self representations and how users feel about their multiple identities in everyday life.
The network has grown since it’s creation in 2005, it is now recognised by media other organizations and institutions (such as the Italian Ministry for Internal Affairs and Welfare polical parties of every side and even the italian president who recently mentioned and thanked Rete G2 for it’s extesive work on this important subject) and is involved in diverse immigration and integration debates.
The website include a blog and a forum which is quite active, and the network is also present on social networks such as Facebook, twitter, where they have more than 2,538 members.Journalist and uni students use the network as a source of information.
Finally, it is important to point out that the group insists on the network’s management being democratic, horizontal, leaderless, politically neutral and uses the website to enhance this thinking.
Innovation and creativity:
This is a one of a kind project (first in Italy), a grassroots initiative created to raise awareness, and draw the attention to challenges for future generations. It focuses on daughters and sons of immigrants and attempts to raise their social capital by actively using social computing, and uses the most up-to-date communication tools (wikis, blogs, social networks, etc) to reach its audience. It fights for citizenship rights and other fundamental rights and draws challenges for future generations.
It uses cultural instruments like music (compilation “Straniero a chi?” ), books, video spot, National Radio broadcasting “OndeG2”, fotoromanzo (stories told in pictures), photo exhibitions and websites etc to accompany and sustain the activity and the initiative of Rete G2 in order to obtain a maximum result and thus realize its objective and mission.
Also very important focus for Rete G2 is the work with schools, both with students and teachers alike on identity, diversity and citizenship rights.
Sustainability:
The original and horizontal way of managing the network allows the project to keep going, and promotes its sustainability. Just as an example, the Sportello Legale online (opened 1st of March 2011) which is promoted by G2 in collaboration with ASGI and Save the Children, is funded by the Department of Equal Opportunities and National Office for Racial Discrimination (UNAR) due to its positive action.
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Medhin
