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Immigration and high youth unemployment have been dominant issues as the vote approaches, the BBC's James Reynolds reports. The atmosphere has been angry and divisive.

SESTO SAN GIOVANNI, Italy — The leaders of this blue-collar town marked an anti-migrant milestone with a pistachio layer cake this week. To commemorate what they said was the 200th migrant expelled from their town, they wrote the number on top with green frosting.

As Italians vote in national elections Sunday, many of them share the migration-skeptic swagger of the right-wing leaders of Sesto San Giovanni. Italy is struggling to accommodate the more than 620,000 migrants who have arrived on its shores since 2013, and a new sentiment is gaining force: Boot them all out.

Ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose center-right coalition appears to have the best shot at victory Sunday, has promise to defuse what he called a “social bomb ready to explode in Italy” by deporting 600,000 people. His coalition partners, including a group descended from the remnants of the Fascist Party, are even more vociferous toward the migrants, most of whom are from sub-Saharan Africa.

Italy’s choice Sunday could ripple throughout Europe because the country is the continent’s main migrant gateway.

“We did the same as Giuliani did in New York City in the days of zero tolerance,” said Claudio D’Amico, a member of the far-right Northern League party who is in charge of security issues in the city government. “If you want to turn Italy into Afghanistan, then we have a problem.”
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“Some people would prefer to pray on the Koran, a religion where women have fewer rights than men. Where they preach hate from mosques. I don’t want that,” said Northern League leader Matteo Salvini at his final rally in a residential area of Milan on Friday. “We need to defend our borders and our workers.”

Even the ruling center-left Democratic Party moved sharply against migrants following the local elections last year, when it was booted out of city halls across the country by leaders like Di Stefano. Interior Minister Marco Minniti brokered a deal with local Libyan leaders to slow the people-smuggling trade that was sending thousands northward toward Italy every week.

Refugees in Sesto San Giovanni say they have noticed the tougher climate in Italy. While he waited for a bus recently, Issa Diagouraga, 26, a refugee from Mali, said that national police in three squad cars stopped to watch him.

“They don’t stare at others the way they stare at me,” Diagouraga said. “It’s like they wanted me to feel the difference between being an Italian and a foreigner.”

Other refugees said they feared the outcome of the elections.

“They’re talking very badly about immigrants, and they say that if they win, a lot of things will change for us. They’re using immigrants to win more votes,” said Lamin Jarju, 19, a refugee from Gambia.

But they both said they hadn’t noticed any specific changes from the new approach by the mayor’s office, an account echoed by others who work with migrants and refugees in the area.

City leaders acknowledge their model would be difficult to implement on a national level because the migrants who they say have left Sesto San Giovanni have presumably simply gone next door to Milan, where officials are more welcoming.

Matthew works out of our Amherst, Massachusetts bunker we fondly call “Ice Station Zebra.” He founded MSC nearly twenty years ago and has built it into one of the leading strategic media firms for candidates, initiatives, unions, causes, foundations, and progressive organizations in the United States.

Under Matthew’s leadership, MSC has won campaigns in more than 35 states, and has received over 110 national advertising and communications awards. Prior to founding the firm, Matthew authored and then updated the original series of campaign “how to” manuals for the DNC, served as Deputy Campaign Manager for Walter Mondale for President, and published the Polling Report. Campaigns & Elections Magazine dubbed him a “Media Wizard” for his work on winning campaigns during the 1994 elections – that, as you might remember, were not so kind to some Democrats who did not have the good fortune of working with Matthew. Since then, he has continued to innovate and lead the firm in developing and applying new, cutting-edge media solutions to help our clients win.

Matthew MacWilliams is founder of MacWilliams Sanders, a political communications firms, and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he is writing his dissertation about authoritarianism.

Europe’s Political Riddle: What Happened to the Moderate Left?
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Pivotal votes in Italy and Germany this weekend spotlight a fact central to the continent’s political upheavals: the shriveling of the moderate left, which helped build modern Europe.

Italy’s center-left Democratic Party is expected to lose national elections there on Sunday, leaving no center-left governments in any of Europe’s larger countries.

Meanwhile, the rank-and-file of Germany’s Social Democrats will decide whether to join a conservative-led coalition or face snap polls that could further erode their weakened standing.

Each party has suffered from recent leadership problems. But more worryingly for both, sagging support for the center-left is a long-term trend in much of Europe, as politics has become more fragmented and populist movements have gained traction.

European voters are steadily turning against established political parties, especially in the aftermath of recent economic and migration crises. But the center-left has seen deeper losses than mainstream conservatives.

Organized labor, a traditional base for the center-left, has shrunk, as the traditional blue-collar “proletariat” has given way to a more diffuse “precariat” of people in low-paid or insecure jobs. And issues such as immigration have driven a wedge between two previous pillars of support—socially conservative working-class voters and educated progressives.

For decades after World War II, Europe’s democracies were dominated by center-right parties, often based in churches, and center-left parties based in organized labor. Their quest for wide electorates encouraged ideological moderation. Conservatives accepted strong social safety nets; the center-left accepted capitalism.

The old parties’ grip weakened as European societies became more complex. Smaller rivals grew, from environmentalists to nativists. A turning point came in 1990s, when the end of the Cold War and globalization pushed parts of the center-left to embrace freer markets and smaller government. That won them new middle-class supporters, but alienated voters who valued social protections against disruptions from trade and migration.

Antiestablishment populists are benefiting the most as the bonds between Europe’s working class and its left-wing parties dissolve. In Europe’s string of elections in 2017, long-powerful center-left parties collapsed in countries such as France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, while populists advanced.

The U.K. proved an exception: The Labour Party gained ground—while still losing to Conservatives—partly because leader Jeremy Corbyn mobilized some of the economic discontent among young voters that radical-left populists have tapped elsewhere.

“Social-democratic parties are sticking stubbornly to their economic narrative, while their core voters have cultural angst related to migration,” said British political scientist Matthew Goodwin.

In Europe mainstream parties adopted the rhetoric and promoted the measures of the right-wing, anti-immigration parties. Where democratic politics was functioning effectively and two or more alternative parties existed to the Islamist or nationalist party, their vote hit a ceiling of about 20 percent. The protest parties broke through that ceiling only when no other effective alternative existed to the party or coalition in power, as was the case in Algeria, Austria, and, in considerable measure, Italy.

Information med anledning av boende i husvagn
Kompletterande information och sakupplysningar med anledning av en tidningsartikel ”Så kallt att det inte går att sova” i Sydsvenskan den 2 mars.

När Migrationsverket började sända nyanlända till Staffanstorp utan att först kontrollera med kommunen om det fanns något boende, fick några ensamma, vuxna, män bo i husvagn. För närvarande bor sex personer i husvagnar. Dessa husvagnar är vinterbonade. Det har dock funnits tillfällen då temperaturen under kortare perioder understigit vad som är acceptabelt. Det har då uppmätts temperaturer kring 15°C.
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En anledning till att temperaturen sjunkit så lågt vid vissa tillfällen är att matlagning förekommit i själva husvagnarna (brödrostar, vattenkokare med mera) och säkringarna utlöst på grund av överbelastning. Mat ska lagas i den särskilda köksvagn som finns i anslutning till husvagnarna, vilket också tydligt har kommunicerats till de boende.
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Det har också rapporterats problem med det gemensamma köket. Detta har bland annat sin grund i att en vattenledning frusit sönder som en följd av att dörren till köksvagnen blåst sönder, då den inte stängts som den borde av de som bor där, trots upprepade tillsägelser om att dörrar måste stängas. Detta har lett till omfattande skador på dörren och till att kopparrör och kranar frusit sönder. I köket har också flera spisplattor satts på och sedan låtits vara på, trots att ingen varit där och spisvred har tagits sönder. En omfattande oordning har uppmärksammats, med sopor som inte kastats i sopkärlen och disk som inte diskas.

Fastighetsbolaget är och har varit på plats minst en gång per vecka, ibland två till tre gånger per vecka. De boende har ett journummer att ringa om bekymmer uppstår.
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Enbart två av de sex personerna som bor i husvagnarna har accepterat att skriva under kontrakt och därmed betala hyra. Den 21 november och den 22 februari har det funnits tider bokade för kontraktsskrivning, men de boende har av olika anledningar vägrat att skriva under. Det innebär att vissa av de boende som bott sedan hösten inte betalat någonting alls i hyra hittills. Hyran är satt till 1 800 kronor per månad. Den hyresnivån ryms inom ramen för den ersättning som de boende får. Etableringsersättningen från Försäkringskassan uppgår till 6 700 kronor per månad för en vuxen nyanländ.

I fyra av sex fall förekommer det alltså i juridisk mening inget hyresförhållande, vilket är oacceptabelt. Därför kommer dessa fyra personer i nästkommande vecka, för sista gången, på nytt beredas möjlighet att teckna hyresavtal.

Stefan Löfven har struntat i frågan om var flyktingarna ska bo. När kommunerna i dag börjar vräka nyanlända från sina bostäder kan han inte blunda längre.

Svenska politiker kunde länge bedriva en generös flyktingpolitik utan att behöva tänka på bostadsfrågan. Det fanns ju alltid tomma miljonprogramslägenheter man kunde stoppa in dem i. På så vis fick exempelvis 1990-talets många flyktingar från Balkan tak över huvudet.

Sedan många år råder det brist på billiga bostäder i Sverige. Men politikerna har fortsatt att driva migrationspolitiken som vore den frikopplad från bostadspolitiken. Det enda egentliga steg som regeringen Löfven har tagit för att försöka förbättra situationen är att tvinga kommunerna att ta emot nyanlända. Bosättningslagen, som trädde i kraft den 1 mars 2016, omfattar dock bara en mindre del av gruppen.

Regeringen måste ta sitt ansvar och rikta de bostadspolitiska satsningarna mot dem som inte klarar att skaffa tak över huvudet på egen hand - nyanlända eller ej.