Italians are people devoted to integration
Born in Mendoza 32 years ago, Ornella Baffini grew up in a neighbourhood in downtown Buenos Aires.
A native Spanish speaker, she speaks English and Italian. Italy is in her DNA, however: her grandparents, in fact, were born in Abruzzo and then emigrated to Argentina…and Ornella decided to retrace their steps.
The difficult situation in her country was the fuse: a reality politically divided in two plagued by significant problems (inflation, corruption, constant street protests) prompted Ornella to dream of settling down in any EU state.
Her initial plans were to stay in Italy for five years, during which he counted on strengthening herself on the professional and economic front, and then return to Argentina. But fate chose to take a “different turn”.
Arriving in Italy in October 2020, she lived for a while in Turin, where she studied Civil Engineering and graduated from the master’s program; then sentimental and work reasons brought her to Calabria. Currently, she has not yet been able to obtain recognition for her degree in Economics and Management of Organizations earned in Argentina, as government authorities hinder the homologation of degrees to counteract the massive flight of students abroad. Partly for this reason, she currently works in a school as a Spanish teacher and collaborates with an architect, for whom she draws civil and building plans in Autocad. Her career path has changed but she is still satisfied with it: “I had never thought,
in fact, of a job within the School. However, School and Civil Engineering have allowed me to contribute, through the profession, to improve people’s quality of life: designing and building a house for a family, or following a public construction site, like building a road or bridge”.
The non-recognition of her degree and the pandemic situation fatigued Ornella’s first “Italian period” in no small way. Yet she never wanted to give up: socially, she confidently testifies, she never suffered any form of discrimination.
“Italians are people devoted to integration”.
And now, while she still feels very much connected to her Argentine roots, she cannot deny that she has become a bit “Italian” herself!
About her country, she misses family, friends, and food, or to put it in one word: conviviality. “In Argentina, there is mate, not only understood as a drink but as a moment of socializing. You can spend hours and hours drinking it together with another person to get to know each other and better connect”.
