For a few days now, on these pages, the analysis of the Bank of Italy’s report on the Sicilian economy has brought into focus a paradox which is entirely internal to the province of Messina: a city which accumulates private savings at one of the highest rates on the island, but which is unable to translate that wealth into credit for businesses, into public investments, into development. It is worth, then, taking the opportunity to broaden our gaze to the contiguous themes addressed by two other equally recent national reports, which observe the same type of disconnect from different angles and allow us to place the Messina case within a broader framework.
Already in February, Svimez released a publication entitled “One country, two emigrations”, containing an interesting fact: for every young graduate who found an additional job in the South, almost two left the area. On 30 April, Istat published the regional in-depth analysis on the 2024 population census, according to which Sicily lost almost 10 thousand residents in the previous year alone, with a record low birth rate that no other indicator can match. That is, that element of demographic erosion is returning forcefully which, on the one hand, is preventing the production of new intellectual and working energy, and on the other hand cannot be controlled (and, indeed, is aggravated) by an unstoppable flight towards the professional market of Northern Italy.
The Svimez data deserves to be studied in detail, because it tells a precise story. Between 2002 and 2024 almost a million young people under 35 left the South for the Centre-North, and this is an increasingly selective mobility; in 2002, in fact, graduates were less than a fifth of those leaving, in 2024 they were almost two thirds. In 2024 alone, 23 thousand young southern graduates left, with a negative net balance of over 17 thousand people. Added to these is a more recent and equally significant flow abroad: between 2002 and 2024, over 210 thousand young southerners left Italy, a third of whom graduated, with a new high reached in 2024.
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*Dario Latellapfull professor of Commercial Law, Department of Law of the University of Messina