The Growing Challenge of Migrants at the Italian Border: A Report from Ventimiglia

Reserved for subscribers

REPORTING. The Italian border town welcomes a continuous flow of men and women ready to do anything to reach other European countries via France.

Par Quentin Raverdyspecial envoy to Ventimiglia (Italy)

LFriday in Ventimiglia is market day. In this Italian city close to Menton, French is the dominant language between the stalls. “We almost only meet cross-border commuters, so much so that we can’t even park,” grumbles a local retiree. With the French, it’s “I love you, me neither,” he admits. “We certainly have a lot of exchanges and tourists, but it is also because of you that we have to wrestle with all these migrants”, launches the sixty-year-old before resuming, without resentment, the course of his walk.

Before 2015, “everything was rather simple”, recalls Cristian Papini, local manager of the Caritas association, the Italian Catholic Relief Service: “People then arrived in Ventimiglia by the last train and left by the first of…