When Mr. Philips first announced, there were no topics that quickly popped into my head. Therefore, I began to look at what was going on in the world. One of the first things that fell into my path was the European Migrant Crisis. I decided that this would be what I would do my project on, so I began to look deeper into the matter. Many of the articles that I looked through where about Syrian and other Muslim refugees entering into Europe and the trouble that this was causing. Although this is a valid topic, and there were some good articles on the subject, many of the articles seemed untrustworthy. Many of them were very biased with intolerance and hatred for Muslims, which left me wondering just how truthful they were. Just when I thought I would have to find a new topic, I discovered an interesting video by Vice News called “The Mafia and a Nigerian Gang Are Targeting Refugees in Sicily.” This video became the foundation for the rest of my research. Firstly, it was nice because it gave me the name of at least one actual gang composed of Nigerian immigrants that were constructing a criminal enterprise within a country that was not their home. If I were to compare it the US, it would be like saying MS 13 is the problem instead of calling all South and Central American immigrants “a lot of bad hombres”. In addition, the video was interesting because it focuses on a new group. When people talk about the Migrant Crisis in Europe they usually focus on the Muslim immigrants from countries within the Middle East. For example, one country that continuously came up was Syria. Instead, this article focused on migrants from Africa. This resonated with me because I traveled to Paris a few years ago, and I noticed that most of the street vendors where African. Though to be honest, I preferred the African vendors and hawkers to the Parisian ones. The Africans were nicer and more willing to speak to you in English for some strange reason.
Now I had a country, a topic, and a hypothesis, that the influx of illegal migrants into Italy would cause a rise in crime. It was very difficult to find any further information on the topic. The databases that I looked through like GALE had few articles on the subject and even fewer that were up to date. As such, I had to turn to the internet, where I found three of four good articles that gave me the majority of information. One reason is that it was so hard to find information on this topic, is that there is very little is known about it. Among what is known about it, most of that information is in Italian. The other thing I noticed is there is not nearly as much information out there about crime in Italy, especially when you compare it to the vast amount of information out there about crime in the United States. This might just be because I am not the best researcher, or because most of the credible and recent data is in Italian, but I have a suspicion it may be due to how much revenue is generated from tourism in Italy. One thing that I did find that was very surprising during my research was how much Italy has done to crack down on their traditional criminals and the mafia. They have done a great job of putting mafia bosses behind bars, and removing their influence from the Italy’s government. This is actually causing the overall crime rate in Italy to fall, which made it even more difficult to discover the impact of migrants on Italy’s crime rate. Either way with the articles that I had found I was able to write my paper and presentation.
Now I had a country, a topic, and a hypothesis, that the influx of illegal migrants into Italy would cause a rise in crime. It was very difficult to find any further information on the topic. The databases that I looked through like GALE had few articles on the subject and even fewer that were up to date. As such, I had to turn to the internet, where I found three of four good articles that gave me the majority of information. One reason is that it was so hard to find information on this topic, is that there is very little is known about it. Among what is known about it, most of that information is in Italian. The other thing I noticed is there is not nearly as much information out there about crime in Italy, especially when you compare it to the vast amount of information out there about crime in the United States. This might just be because I am not the best researcher, or because most of the credible and recent data is in Italian, but I have a suspicion it may be due to how much revenue is generated from tourism in Italy. One thing that I did find that was very surprising during my research was how much Italy has done to crack down on their traditional criminals and the mafia. They have done a great job of putting mafia bosses behind bars, and removing their influence from the Italy’s government. This is actually causing the overall crime rate in Italy to fall, which made it even more difficult to discover the impact of migrants on Italy’s crime rate. Either way with the articles that I had found I was able to write my paper and presentation.
Header and video borrowed from Vice News
https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/kzgnxy/the-mafia-and-a-nigerian-gang-are-targeting-refugees-in-sicily
https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/kzgnxy/the-mafia-and-a-nigerian-gang-are-targeting-refugees-in-sicily