Italians have a rich migrant history in Australia, as in other parts of the "new world" , enriching the cultural life of cities from Buenos Aires to New York and from Toronto to Melbourne. Indeed, Italians were for a long time Australia's largest non-English-speaking migrant group. Their role has been no less in Tasmania's migrant history, and that legacy can still be seen in parts of Hobart and Launceston.
However, in the last 20-30 years the number of Italians migrating to Tasmania has been relatively small. With Italy changing both economically and socially since the post-war days, fewer Italians have had the need to emigrate and those that have come for very different reasons to the past.
Therefore, it was very interesting to speak with Dante, who arrived in Tasmania in 2007 as a skilled migrant.
Dante's reasons were perhaps more personal than economic, but he did migrate at a time of worsening conditions in Southern Europe in particular, which would be a prelude to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Dante was a self-employed IT professional in Ravenna, in Emilia Romagna, and had been struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance for some time. On top of other pressures, he felt it was time for an "escape". His eventual escape destination of Tasmania was a matter of several happy coincidences, or perhaps it was just always meant to be ? As things turned out, Dante has never regretted his decision and has fully adapted to life in Tasmania.
Music Credit :
"Bushwick Tarantella" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
