“Migration is a decision often based on false expectations: many migrants leave their home without a concrete project of precise idea of the socioeconomic and political situation of their country of destination,” said Aware Migrants.
I found this to be true in my six months getting to know immigrants in Palermo. They do no research beforehand, they sell their family farms and buy false papers to get to Sicily. They think the streets are paved with gold. They have seen television ads where cats eat meat out of crystal stems.They watch "Beautiful", the Italian title for the dubbed American soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, and think everybody is rich. They are shocked to find Palermo dirtier than the north African towns they just left. Shocked they have to squat in abandoned buildings, too embarrassed to tell those back home there is no work, that they were a fool to leave, that they squandered the family fortunes when they sold the family farm. They lie to the people back home to save face, they take pictures of themselves in front of someone else's beautiful car and send that back home. So then more come, risking their lives to do so.