In search of a good life in a southern European country: The new Italian migration to Athens and Valencia

The most studied mobility flows from southern Europe today are those towards other highly developed areas in the world, especially northern Europe. We do not know very much about those flows directed toward other southern European countries. The main aims of this paper are to contribute to a better understanding of these processes and to find common features between them, discussing – in a comparative perspective – some research findings related to Italians living in Athens (Greece) and Valencia (Spain). These studies have been carried out with a qualitative method combining participatory observation in virtual and real Italian communities with in-depth interviews. The main result of the comparison is that both migration flows go beyond economic mobility from Southern Europe, predominantly caused by a shortage of good jobs. Other motivations seem to be at stake in these pathways of mobility. Factors attracting Italians to these two cities, such as the cost of living, the quality of services, less taxes, the safety of public spaces, among others, are related with the better quality of life as opposed to the one related to the area of origin. Those factors do not replace the relevance of economic migration motives, but certainly put forward the complexity of these emerging intra-southern European countries migration flows, underlining the multidimensional factors pushing them.