Kato

Lost in translation

Meet Kato, a young woman who moved to Italy when she was a teenager. Her experience as a foreigner deeply influenced her career choices and not only. Learning Italian language was the key to helping her cope with her experience as a migrant. However, not all migrants receive the appropriate support that they need in order to do so.

FOREIGNNESS AS A SHAPING EXPERIENCE

I’ve realised that being a foreigner has influenced almost all the choices I’ve made in my life. This is something I’ve come to understand over time, because before it wasn’t so clear to me that there was this characteristic of mine, shared with so many other people, which, in a rather natural way, was able to determine my interests as well as my life choices. Among these choices are, for example, my work path, and in particular choosing to work in an international context. When you’re used to thinking interculturally, you find it really important to work with people who have different local experiences from you. This makes my work, and not only my work, much more interesting and enriching.

Having the right resources

A resource that has been radically positive for me, for the path that led me here but also for my integration in Palermo, in Italy and Europe – because even though I do not yet have European citizenship I absolutely feel like a European citizen – well, a very important resource has been the programme improvised by my middle school teachers to teach me Italian. Another luck factor for me – because either you are lucky or you have to have economic and human resources – was my mother and her place of work. My mother was in fact working at a teacher’s house, so when I moved to Italy I went to live with the two of them – with what later became an aunt. The fact this woman was a teacher and a keen reader created a positive learning environment around me; and it was certainly instrumental in my learning Italian.