Foreigners and emotional relations with the welcoming community

It is estimated that in 2016 there were about 5,4 million foreigners in Italy, including those with regular residence permits, and about 22% comes from Africa. A lot is written about foreigners present in Italy but it is more difficult to know something about their lives in the community that welcomes them; hence the goal of this research was to interview a sample of foreigners from different African countries, present in some municipalities in northern Italy. There have been many difficulties in finding people to interview, so this work can be considered only exploratory. A brief questionnaire wad administered to a non probabilistic sample of 60 foreigners: 50,0% are students and only 10,0% are unemployed. The three main reasons that led them to our country are study reasons (51.7%), the fact that they know someone (26.7%) or because they came to know that Italy is a country that welcomes foreigners (16.7%). 65.0% feel welcome in the community in which they live and to support integration 25.0% believes that the first step should be taken by foreigners while for 61.7% there should be a mutual approach. On the other hand, only 35.0% of respondents share the desire to integrate. The factor analysis applied to 17 bipolar scale referring to the perception of Italians by foreigners, brought out a very positive profiles. There are extracted five factors, with 71,6% of observed variability. The first factor suggests a fully positive and reassuring representation of Italians: it is the factor of goodness. The second is a factor associated with human warmth. The third is the factor of industriousness, the fourth of the personal dimension, and finally the factor of beauty.