My blog

What is it?

Brain drain, as per the Oxford dictionary, refers to the emigration of highly trained or qualified people from a particular country. Countries usually hurt from this phenomenon because they lose brilliant, young and talented people and sometimes they are not replaceable, which leads to a disproportionate exchange. There are many different reasons as to why brain drain occurs, such as but not limited to:

• Finding it hard to get a job in the country, thus escaping economic hardships
• Not seeing the opportunity for professional and personal growth
• Experience/Psychological reasons
• Labor laws
• Research funding
• Skills & competencies are not as valued as abroad

My major is Microbiology with a concentration in Biotechnology, so I am more interested in the scientific brain drain. I learned that in Italy it is quite difficult getting into specialized courses (STEM) such as Medicine and Engineering because there are too many candidates for a limited number of spots. Moreover, not all universities offer courses in the STEM field, and a university such as ‘University of Torino’ offers courses such as Biotechnology but they have a limited number of seats and are highly competitive. This leads to people feeling demotivated to even try to apply for the courses in Italy, and would rather leave and find a better opportunity elsewhere. Scientific researchers tend to go abroad for a variety of reasons, some of which are: scare research resources as Italy does not fund research, better economic conditions elsewhere and a better opportunity for career and professional development abroad.

Mozambique is divided into 10 provinces and 1 capital that has a provincial status. We experience what is called ‘internal brain drain’ because most of the talented youth decides to stay in the capital city because there are more opportunities, thus leading a low percentage of qualified people working in the provinces. This has affected us deeply as it is now harder to find employment in the capital, so citizens have actually started to leave to work abroad in other African countries or anywhere else in the world. This also happens because the political state of the country is not conducive for the younger generation, so in a way we escape this. On top of losing brilliant minds, we also lose taxpayers and this deeply affects our economy. Most Mozambicans go for government jobs or find jobs in the private sector and this is usually fueled by nepotism, just like in Italy. As long as one has a family member that is tied to the company, they are almost certainly guaranteed a job. In recent years, the youth have actually started to migrate to other countries for University because most of our universities are taught in Portuguese and people are wanting to learn another language.

Interestingly enough, in Mozambique, families are actually encouraging their family members to leave because they know that the government is not to be trusted and that they still have a lot of work to do – which is similar to Italy. We feel a patriotic obligation in the sense that we want to return to the country once we have gained all possible experience, in order to better our country. This is the general feeling throughout the youth.

In conclusion, I believe that brain drain is a phenomenon that almost every country goes through and that the government of said countries need to do better so that people do not find the need to leave their respective countries. On the other side of the coin, countries (such as the United States) may also experience BRAIN GAIN, in which case they welcome qualified and young people into their work environment.

Interning at Oxfam Italia has been a blast so far! My advisor is amazing and we have a very good relationship. In the beginning, I was quite unsure of what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to act in the Office and this was primarily because I only knew my advisor, but there was always two other people in the office so I felt a bit awkward. Luckily, Claudia Maffei (my advisor) and all the other colleagues quickly made me feel welcome and would even ask if I wanted to join them for lunch. Now I have met quite a few workers at Oxfam and they are all very kind and super helpful. I have always been curious about how an NGO runs and what it is like to for an NGO so when I got this opportunity to work with Oxfam, I could not let it pass me! Claudia has taught me a lot about what it means to work for an NGO and what Oxfam’s mission is. Oxfam’s main objectives are to eradicate poverty and inequality. They also place a very emphasis on education, which is the office I have been interning at.  Being in the education sector means organizing student-teacher database, preparing for teacher conferences and producing articles with summaries of the conferences. My favorite part of all this is learning about how Oxfam really cares for immigrants and tries to ensure the education of the younger generation. The general working environment at Oxfam is very pleasant; everyone is friendly to one another and there is always an interesting conversation going on. The secretary, Mara, is especially my favorite! She does not speak English so we communicate in Italian (I mostly speak Spanish), so it has been very helpful to practice my Italian with her.

Being at Oxfam has definitely turned me into a more assertive person as I am able to communicate with my advisor my needs/wants in a very respectful way. Whenever I feel that I am not being put to work or that the workload is not enough, I tell her immediately and she understands me and gives me more stuff to do. Moreover, whenever I am uncertain about a certain task, I just ask her and she always helps me. I feel that I have gone and I am still going through the stages of building an assertive character, which are ‘change, appropriateness and practice’. The ‘practice’ stage is the one that I feel I will never stop doing, because as they say, practice makes perfect!

Although almost everyone at my workplace is Italian (except for one British lady who has been in Italy for over 20 years), I never feel out of place. I get to learn more about the Italian culture because there are people from various regions of Italy working at Oxfam. They all teach me about Italian traditions, celebrations, customs and food, and this has obviously helped me in getting more comfortable in Arezzo. They help me improve my Italian and they have taught me some idiomatic expressions. The environment in itself is multicultural because I get to work on projects that include people from all over Europe and I also get to participate in awesome causes such as the Global Climate Strike, which Oxfam helps to organize. There are usually immigrants who are at Oxfam for their own personal reasons and this just goes to show how Italy is receptive to them and how much of a multicultural city Arezzo is.

Learning about the working culture  in Italy was interesting because I noticed many similarities and differences with the Mozambican constitution. The first difference I saw was with the the 4th article of the Italian Constitution, which states that every citizen should exercise a function or activity which will lead to the advancement of a society – in Mozambique, citizens work in order to provide for themselves because the cost of life is quite high. Moreover, Mozambique is more of an individualistic society, in that they do not necessarily care about the well-being of the society, but more about themselves. Finding a job in Mozambique is mostly difficult because of corruption, nepotism and the lack of vacancies. I have met people that got a job without having completed higher education (University), and this is because their uncle was the boss of the company. This discourages people with actual qualifications from even applying for these jobs, and we end up having unqualified people in very high positions. The concept of ‘undeclared’ jobs is found in Mozambique because not everyone has the opportunity to find declared jobs and usually people that do not have a degree tend to take up jobs such as house helper, security guard or cleaner. In terms of maternity leave, Italy and Mozambique are quite similar, in that the women get about 5-7 months off maternity leave, and they get paid. The labor contracts in Mozambique can start anywhere from 12 months-5 years, depending on the job and type of company. The workers protection law in Mozambique is quite ambiguous and obscure as workers can get fired without any explanation.

Overall, I must say I am very content with my internship and I am excited for the next few months!

I have been in Italy for a little over a month and it has been very interesting to learn about what makes up their culture and the type of society is in Arezzo. Although the main population is obviously Italians, I have to say I did not expect Arezzo to be as rich in multiculturalism as it is – there are A LOT of foreigners and dual citizens here. I have met American-Italians, British-Italians and I have met people that immigrated here years ago and now consider themselves Italian. This type of environment has made me realize how important it is for people from different cultures to be able to coexist in a peaceful space, without hate and judgement. If a country was perfect without people from other places, then immigration and emigration would not exist. I believe that having a multicultural mindset is so important because you learn how to live in an environment with people that think and act different from you. I think Italy has done a good job in preserving its culture, traditions and language, so I don’t believe they have suffered too deeply from cultural extinction (which is the loss of traditions, habits, culture and language).

Whenever I meet someone that is not originally from Italy here, I always ask them for their story (if they don’t mind sharing, of course). I met this Brazilian lady at the gym a few weeks ago, but she spoke Italian to me at first because she assumed I would understand. When I told her I’m from Mozambique, she quickly became excited because we spoke the same language! Speaking with her in my mother tongue made my heart so warm, and when she told me that she also suffered from culture shock and adaptation, I knew I was not alone.

I must admit that when I first arrived, I was still on the honeymoon phase. I was so eager to learn Italian, to mingle with locals and to study the culture, but then it all became very overwhelming and I would find myself getting irritated when an Italian could not articulate a single word in English, but luckily the use of lingua franca (English being the lingua franca) has allowed me to communicate with Italians, especially in larger cities. Luckily that irritable phase has passed and now I’m trying to get back on my feet and learn the basics of the language and culture. Now, I just want to embrace my surroundings and make the most of my experience here.

IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS

Italians are very expressive in their language and gestures. These are a few of the idiomatic expressions my internship advisor taught me:

• In bocca al lupo! (Into the mouth of the wolf!)  (meaning good luck)
• un coniglio (rabbit): A coward
• uno struzzo (ostrich): Someone who can eat anything and suffer no side effects has the stomaco da struzzo (stomach of an ostrich)

References:

• https://www.dummies.com/languages/italian/10-common-italian-idioms/
• https://www.theserendipityperiodical.it/2019/04/15/english-as-lingua-franca-in-post-brexit-eu/
• https://study.com/academy/lesson/cultural-assimilation-extinction-definition-examples.html