CASTEL VOLTURNO, Italy, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Residents of one of Italy's largest communities of African migrants are mostly unaffected by the day-to-day changes in the country's controversial and high-profile policies aimed at curbing new migrant arrivals.
The country's new hardline policies on refugees and other migrants have been in the spotlight since the government was installed on June 1. Within a few days of assuming power, government officials began turning away rescue ships with hundreds of refugees aboard if they were from other countries, while accepting Italian ships.
Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini promised to expel as many as half a million migrants already in the country, and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte began a campaign -- at meetings of the European Council, the Group of Seven summit, and in bilateral meetings with heads of government -- to pressure other states to do more to help pay for and process new arrivals.
According to the polling firm Opinioni, public opinion has moved in step with the government's high-profile moves: As of July 1, 46 percent of Italians now say Italy should do more to strengthen border controls to keep more migrants out. The number was 34 percent a year earlier.
In Castel Volturno, located on the coastline between Rome and Naples, the day-to-day developments, however, don't have much of an impact.
The city is the only one in Italy where migrants outnumber native Italians -- estimates are that there are 20,000 to 30,000 Africans in the area, compared to around 15,000 Italians -- and the migrant residents have deep roots, with a second and sometimes third generation born there to African parents.
"There is no other city that has the same role as Castel Volturno, and so I speak with the voice of experience," said Antonio Casale, director of Centro Fernandes, a cultural organization that helps migrants with a host of issues, ranging from medical visits and language courses to advice on how to navigate the Italian bureaucracy.
"I think the Italians hostile to migrants think the way they do because of fear," Casale, who has been at the facility since 1996, told Xinhua. "The headlines don't mean much here. We are taking a long-term view and working to be a counter-balance that helps the migrants."
But the situation in Castel Volturno is far from perfect.
Many of the buildings in the city are crumbling, with squatters living in their hollowed-out shells. The roads full of potholes and lined with illegally dumped garbage. The surrounding land is poisoned by toxic dumping, and many of the men who would have once worked in agriculture get involved in drug running. Police report periodic clashes between the Africans and the Italians in the community.
"The life here can be very difficult," Eric Andrus, a 33-year-old whose father is from Sierra Leone and mother is from Ghana, said in an interview. "Living conditions can be hard, and there is a lot of racism."
Andrus came to Europe at the age of 16 with dreams of playing professional football, starting out in Lyon, France, then heading to Turin, Milan, and Naples in Italy. He now works for Centro Fernandes, where he is one of the contact people for migrant residents of Castel Volturno in need of help.
"You can see almost anything when you get a call to help someone," Andrus said. "It can be in the middle of the night, and sometimes it's very difficult. But try to stay motivated by telling myself it is much better that people have someone to help them."
Andrus said he hasn't seen any change in the on-the-ground situation there in recent weeks.
According to Sergio Nazzaro, a well-known writer who lived several years in the area, the experiences reported by Casale and Andrus are no surprise.
"There is a 40-year history of migrants in Castel Volturno," Nazzaro told Xinhua. "It's an ugly idea, but these are people who have been rejected by society. Castel Volturno represents a very imperfect situation, but it's still significant there is a community where some people are helping, regardless of what is happening in other areas."
