Francesca Esposito, 29 and exquisitely educated, helped win millions of euros in false disability and other lawsuits for her employer, a major Italian state agency. But one day last fall she quit, fed up with how surreal and ultimately sad it is to be young in Italy today.
It galled her that even with her competence and fluency in five languages, it was nearly impossible to land a paying job. Working as an unpaid trainee lawyer was bad enough, she thought, but doing it at Italyâ??s social security administration seemed too much. She not only worked for free on behalf of the nationâ??s elderly, who have generally crowded out the young for jobs, but her efforts there did not even apply to her own pension.
â??It was absurd,â?? said Ms. Esposito, a strong-willed woman with a healthy sense of outrage.
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Giuliano Amato, an economist and former Italian prime minister, was even more blunt. â??By now, only a few people refuse to understand that youth protests arenâ??t a protest against the university reform, but against a general situation in which the older generations have eaten the future of the younger ones,â?? he recently told Corriere della Sera, Italyâ??s largest newspaper.
So, we’re being confronted with our future, what’s next?