A report presented by the Catholic charity Caritas and the Migrantes foundation on the Italian island of Sardinia pointed out that more than 51,000 foreigners live in the region. Of these, 5,500 are in school out of a student population of 200,000 on the island.
According to a new report, Sardinia has a population of more than 51,000 foreign residents, 70% of whom live in the provinces of two of the islandâs main cities, Sassari and Cagliari, according to data presented in an online seminar Monday, February 7. ). The seminar was organized by the Catholic charity Caritas and the Sardinian section of the Migrantes Foundation, in collaboration with the local journalistsâ guild and the UCSI union.
In Sardinia, as in the rest of Italy, education offers an opportunity for integration with more than 5,500 foreigners attending school out of a total student population of 200,000, according to data presented at the seminar.
The participants analyzed the data contained in the 30th report of Caritas Migrantes on immigration. Father Marco Lai, the regional representative for immigration who coordinated the seminar, said the report was important for bringing together data from the past thirty years, as well as raising awareness of the phenomenon of migration, which âhas always been part of of humanityâ.
The resident population is decreasing
In recent years, the resident population in Sardinia had decreased by 13,000 people. Webinar participants emphasized that immigration alone is no longer able to compensate for this decline.
Father Stefano Messina, who heads the regional section of Migrantes, said migrants have posed new challenges to the Church. Migrants âconfront us with new challenges, related to how we value and value different cultures,â he noted.
âThe Churchâs commitment is not only religious, but also social through the help given by ecclesiastical communities to foreigners, starting with the needy: a sensitivity which has also increasingly developed on the islandâ.
Raffaele Callia, a regional representative of Caritas who is in charge of the research service of the local section of the association, presented the latest data on the phenomenon of immigration in Italy and Sardinia.
The report found that more than 280 million people (48% women) in 2020 lived outside their country of origin. This represents an increase of 8.4 million over the previous year and represents 3.6% of the worldâs population. 93 million of those who live outside their country of origin live in Europe.
