The drama of our graduates competing for the MiBACT competition. Their stories, their sacrifices, their hopes

Perhaps for some people the data on the employment rates of our graduates are not shocking enough: otherwise, it would not explain why this is a topic that interests the public very little and emerges very infrequently in political debate. So, if cold data are not enough, it will be useful to rummage through social media to look for the stories of the candidates who, from January 8 to 20, from all over Italy will gather in Rome for the pre-selection tests of the competition for assistants to fruition, reception and supervision announced by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage: the resulting collage is a snapshot of an Italy made up of young people who have aspirations but are not listened to, who have desires and hopes unable to find satisfaction, who make sacrifices to get by while waiting for a state job to lift an existence made up of renunciations and frustrations.

There is the story of Letizia, a mother who, from Como, has to leave for the capital with her newborn son (because she has to breastfeed him) and her father (who has to look after the child when the girl is busy with the pre-selection test). There is Elisabetta, an art historian who tried to enter the ministry more than a decade ago, failed, since that date has been working as a waitress because she necessarily had to contribute to the family income, and in this competition she sees a basis for a new start, to try to relaunch herself, to finally find the coveted job in the field for which she had studied. There is Antonio, an archaeologist who works in a cooperative, gets seven hundred euros a month, and hopes that this contest will turn his professional career around. There is Lucia, a lady in her late fifties who worked for twenty years in the private sector, in a company that recently closed, tried to open a store to help support her family with children in college, failed, and now hopes that an opportunity will come to her from this competition. There is Giulia, a very young graduate from Salento who will have to make sacrifices because she has calculated that, between the expenses for an overnight stay at a bed and breakfast, round-trip travel, and lunch and dinner (with sandwich), she will come to pay between all of one hundred and forty euros, a sum that she feels is too high for her reach (we repeat: one hundred and forty euros), but which he will nevertheless consider spending: after all, it is a matter of investing in his own future (but many, for similar amounts, will give up, because they do not feel like paying these sums for a competition where, at least on paper, there is half a chance in a hundred of being among the winners). There are many young people who will spend the night on an Intercity or even on a Flixbus, because they have no money to spend on a room, even the seediest, in the suburbs of Rome. For a great many, working in a museum, at any level, is simply “the dream of a lifetime,” and they hope to flesh out this dream with a placement in the top 1,052 spots on the final list.

Candidates waiting to enter the fair in Rome to take the pre-selections for the 2020 MiBAC competition. Ph. Recognize Me Association

The names are courtesy, but the stories are very true: all collected on the various Facebook groups where candidates exchange opinions about the competition and what’s wrong with Italy, prepare together for the pre-selection tests, and hearten each other. It is probably a mistake to think that these young people are simply looking forany fixed position in order to secure economic independence and a permanent contract. For many it will be so, just as there will be many for whom a place in a museum is the most convenient way out of an unwillingness to get involved, and there will certainly be others for whom the competition at the ministry, more simply, “marks maturity,” the abdication of rebelliousness and the desire to change things in exchange for a quiet middle-class life. But from the stories of so many participants, a different reality emerges, a reality of people who believe strongly in what they do, who hope to enter as reception assistants and then work their way up through the ministerial ranks, who cling to that competition because they think it is one of the rare opportunities to do as close to what they studied for as possible, aided by an asphyxiated labor market and a state that does little to retain its best recruits.

When it comes to migration, there is one figure that, in fact, should really scare us and that is almost never talked about: the number of Italian college graduates who leave the country each year. The figures are impressive: Istat certifies that, from 2009 to 2018, 182 thousand fellow countrymen with a university degree left Italy to move abroad. In 2018 alone, out of a total of 116,732 Italian citizens who removed themselves from the country’s civil registries, there were about 29 thousand graduates, up 6 percent from the previous year. Numbers that, since 2009, have experienced an almost constant growth, and which we are not able to fill with returning graduates: in 2018, the net balance (i.e. the difference between Italian graduates who returned and those who instead moved outside the national borders) was negative, with a loss of “qualified” population measurable at 14 thousand. Considering the last ten years, the net loss rises to about 101 thousand graduates.

The increase in the emigration of Italian citizens, Istat explains, “can be attributed in part to the difficulties of our labor market, especially for young people and women and, presumably, also to the changed attitude towards living in another country (proper of the generations born and raised in the era of globalization) that induces the most qualified young people to invest their talents more easily in foreign countries where career and salary opportunities are greater. Specific defiscalization programs, put in place by governments to encourage the return of the most qualified professionals to their homelands, are therefore not proving to be entirely sufficient to retain the young resources that make up part of the human capital essential to the country’s growth.” Put in more prosaic terms, it seems that Italy does nothing to retain its most qualified citizens and does little to persuade them to return. A situation that, moreover, has a very high economic cost, since the country invests in training skilled citizens, who will, however, go to work elsewhere: the IDOS Study and Research Center estimates, based on OECD data, that Italy invests 158,000 euros to train a three-year graduate, 170,000 for a master’s degree, and 228,000 for a PhD. Even assuming that the negative balance is composed only of three-year graduates, it means that in 2018 Italy burned through more than two billion invested in training.

What about those who, on the contrary, stay in Italy? Most of them are working, although the percentage of those employed as a proportion of the total is down from a few years ago. Research by AlmaLaurea shows that while between 2007 and 2008 more than 80 percent of graduates were working five years after receiving their degrees, in recent years the percentage has tapered off to 76.4 percent in 2018 (but in the years immediately preceding that, it also fell below 75 percent). It touches 65 percent, however, if we take into account only those who believe the degree was effective for the work they do. Humanities graduates are among those who fare the worst: they are third to last in terms of employment out of the total number of graduates at five years (worse than them are only geo-biology and law graduates) and, after psychology graduates, they are the lowest paid (1,229 euros net per month on average). But if you go deeper, the picture is even more alarming, especially if you narrow your gaze on cultural professionals. A recent survey by the Mi Riconosci collective found that 63 percent of cultural professionals earn less than 10 thousand euros a year (or less than 850 a month), and even 38 percent declare figures of less than 5 thousand euros a year. Hourly wages? Half of the professionals earn less than 8 euros per hour (12% even less than 4 euros per hour). Adding the 29% of those who earn between 8 and 12 euros per hour, we arrive at a 78% of cultural professionals who collect less than 12 euros per hour for their work.

This overview may explain why the latest competition at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage was literally stormed: 209,729 applications for 1,052 positions of enjoyment, reception and supervision assistants. That is, staff who will go into service inside a state museum or archaeological site with the purpose of guarding the halls and answering questions from the public, from the most mundane practical inquiries to curiosities about the works and artifacts. Of course, the call for applications was also open to high school graduates, but the numbers are still staggering: it means that there are two hundred applicants for every position put out to tender. Numbers that are able to give anyone a very clear idea of the hunger for work in the sector.

These are the people Italy trains and fails to give answers to. These are the young, but also the not-so-young, whom we pretend not to see. These are their difficulties, their daily routines made up of calculations to save a few pennies, of families to support, of ambitions set aside, of sacrifices gone in vain, of waiting in vain, of on-call jobs to earn a few euros, of poorly paid precariousness, of deprivation and disillusionment. If politicians cannot understand from the numbers what the tragedy they are experiencing is, then perhaps they should at least understand it from their stories.

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