Italy's Biggest Challenge in the 21st Century: Keeping Its Youth

@Telegraph.co.uk

The modern world, despite having advanced so far and fast in the last century, is still dealing with many difficult and challenging problems that seemingly don’t have any solutions. A lot of it seems to be located in the developing world: the Middle East is wrecked from continuous war, Africa and Latin America are being over taken by corruption, and many cities in Asia are trying to deal with growing environmental concerns caused by capitalism. Considering these problems, the challenges that the Western world are facing seem a bit trivial by comparison. However, the economic state of many Western countries are on the brink of collapse- and in a globalized society, that means that the collapse is threatening to tank the entire global market.

In my opinion, I believe that the economic recession of Italy is probably one of its most challenging tasks of the 21^st century. Since 2008 and the “Great Recession” (where many countries around the globe experienced an extreme financial crisis), Italy has bounded back and relapsed into economic failure two more times- once in 2011 and again in 2014. Its shrinking economy has almost wiped out any financial gain that the country has made in the last 14 years.

I consider this to be Italy’s most challenging task because of the effect that it has had on the most important piece in any society: the youth.

@Dailybeast.com

It is well known that the youth of today are the future leaders of tomorrow. More specifically, people aged 15-25 will be the minds behind future policies that will shape the direction that our society will go. The youth of today are backbone of the economy. They're primarily used to replenish the workforce as older generations become too old to work and instead settle on collecting pensions and social security from the government- which is also funded by the youth.

However, many of the youth in Italy are becoming more undereducated, more underemployed and unemployed, and more frustrated with the way that their country is going. By the end of June 2015, the youth unemployment rate in Italy was at a whopping 44.2%- making it the third highest in Europe (after Greece’s 53.2% and Spain’s 49.2%).

They’re being called “The Lost Generation”, and unfortunately for Italy, many of them are so fed up with the systems in place that they’re leaving to find work elsewhere. Like the waves of peasant farmers and manual laborers who mass immigrated into the United States in the 20^th century, the new waves of Italian emigrants are looking for better opportunities. They’re mostly jaded by the lack of progress that the country is making towards labor reform that doesn’t penalize young workers and gives more companies incentives to keep young workers on more long-term employment contracts.

The influx of youth leaving combined with the declining birth rate- which is becoming a serious problem for all European countries- is leaving Italy with an aging population that has no one to pay for it, which is quickly draining the federal budget

Italians strike against government@reuters.com

Also, the youth that are staying in Italy are causing country-wide protests against the government, and are rioting in order to have their voices heard. These protests- which are called "sciopero", which means "strike"- are also promoting anti-immigration sentiments and are contributing to rising tensions between native Italians and the influx of immigrants from war-torn countries.

I think that if Italy doesn’t fix its economic issues soon, then the Lost Generation will truly become lost forever.  With the flood of immigrants from Northern African and the Middle East, the pressure to restore their economy is only growing. There is a lot at stake if they don’t.