Italians throw party to welcome migrants in Milan, with brass band and pasta

More than 1,000 Italians on Tuesday threw a block party featuring a pasta lunch, a brass band and crafts to welcome some 80 migrants to the neighbourhood in Milan, contrasting with rising anti-migrant tensions throughout the country including a protest at the barracks the night before.

Shouts of welcome went up as a small contingent of about 30 migrants came out of a recently repurposed army barracks for what was billed as the first welcome party of its kind in Italy.

“I feel happy,” said 22-year-old Zakaria Abdellahi from Ethiopia, who arrived in Italy three months ago with his wife. “I feel like I am famous. Everywhere I look, they are taking pictures. I think I am Obama.”

The previous night the mood outside the barracks had been less welcoming. About 200 people belonging to a right-wing party and an extremist movement protested, carrying banners that read “Italians first.” Migrants peeked uneasily from the barracks’ windows overlooking the piazza, before closing the shade.

It was the third such protest in recent days, with anti-migrant campaigners pledging more. Tensions over migrants have been rising in Italy amid persistent arrivals creating a crunch in the housing system in the months since Rome has stepped up its border controls under pressure from European neighbors.

Organisers of Tuesday’s welcome event said that politicians on the right have been using the crisis in arrivals to stir up anti-migrant sentiment, leveraging Italy’s economic stagnation to create uncertainty and fear. They decided on the welcome party after the city’s plans to open the barracks to migrants became a political flashpoint, hoping that familiarity with the newcomers would help ease residents’ reservations.