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It used to be that Italians did not look far from home when choosing a spouse. But new statistics show that they are increasingly marrying foreigners, with about one in 10 choosing a non-Italian spouse in what researchers call a "rapidly evolving phenomenon."
Italian men and women alike have a penchant for Germans, the most popular foreign partners for both sexes, followed by the French. But similarities end there.
After the Germans and the French, Italian men most often chose Romanian and Polish spouses, while Italian women married Moroccans and Tunisians, according to Eurispes, an Italian research institute.
In addition, far more Italian men than women married foreigners. In 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 250,974 marriages were contracted in Italy, Eurispes said. Of these, about 21,000 involved Italian men with foreign brides, while about 4,800 involved Italian women with foreign husbands. In 1992, fewer than 10,000 mixed couples went to the altar.
What such statistics do not show are the difficulties faced by mixed couples in a country where immigration is relatively recent.
"It hasn't been easy," said Maria Chiara Barabino, 34, who met her future husband, Hazem Osman, when she went scuba diving in the Red Sea in 2000. They were married three years later and now live in Milan with their 2- year-old son, Andrea-Abdallah, and 2- month-old daughter, Nadine.
The decision to marry was not taken lightly by Barabino, who is Catholic, and Osman, an Egyptian biochemist who is Muslim. Employment and relocation issues aside, they faced opposition from both of their families, Barabino said, and had to grapple with cultural and religious considerations.
"In hindsight, I'm glad we had difficulties, because they forced us to really look at ourselves," she said in a telephone interview.
International marriages are a relatively new phenomenon here. Until a generation ago. Italians rarely wed outside their home regions. Marriages between southern and northern Italians began to proliferate only after southerners migrated to work in the factory- rich northern regions.
"A Venetian marrying a Sicilian, or a Milanese marrying someone from Calabria, was practically unheard of before the economic boom in the 1960s and 1970s, but as the internal population shifted, it was natural marriages would form," said Mara Tognetti, who teaches immigration policy at Bicocca University in Milan.
The current trend is similar, with international marriages keeping pace with the waves of immigration into Italy, experts say.
"The statistics reflect cultural shifts, and delineate a very complex situation," said Luca di Sciullo, one of the authors of an annual report on immigration issued by two organizations, Caritas and Migrantes, that track Italy's immigrant trends.
A sharp increase migration from eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain explains why women from Poland, Romania, Albania and Russia, here to take jobs as domestic workers, have been catching the eyes of Italian men.
While Italian men are marrying foreign women who are "culturally and geographically" close to them, Tognetti said, Italian women are more likely to marry outside their own culture, especially with men from North Africa who have poured into Italy seeking employment.
"They are making a very deliberate choice to distance themselves from what is familiar," Tognetti said. "It is a strong statement."
In many cases, the men are Muslim. It is these interfaith unions that have captured the media spotlight, in part because the Vatican, which still holds sway in this largely Catholic country, strongly discourages them.
A 2004 document issued by the Vatican suggests that "marriage between Catholics and non-Christian migrants" should be "discouraged" and calls for "particularly careful and in-depth preparation" for marriage when one of the spouses is Muslim so that both fiancés understand the "profound cultural and religions differences, they will have to face."
The diocese of Milan has operated a program for interfaith couples since 1998, when the phenomenon was recognized as significantly increasing, said its director, Barbara Ghiringhelli, a professor of sociology specializing in immigrant issues at the Free University of Languages and Communications in Milan.
As immigration in Italy is still a first- generation phenomenon, the cultural differences tend to be more deeply rooted, she said, while the problems faced by the couples range from the bureaucratic to the personal "because the families of both partners are often against these unions."
More than 1,000 couples have gone through the program, and many continue to meet periodically to share experiences as their relationships develop and metamorphose with the arrival of children (Catholicism and Islam both ask that children be raised in the parent's faith).
"It was extremely useful as a sounding board to share our thoughts and share experiences," said Barabino, who attended with Osman.
Once-a-week Arabic-language classes for women help bridge the gap that often exists between them and their in-laws. "And culture is transmitted with the language," said Jolanda Guardi, a professor of Arabic at the University of Milan who teaches the course.
Experts agree that the difficulties now faced by mixed couples are likely to diminish as the second generation of immigrants grows up and marries.
But until then, the first wave of unions should ideally be observed, Monsignor Giuseppe Anfossi, president of the Italian church's Commission on the Family, wrote recently, "not only as a cultural laboratory that brings together different worlds, but also as an authentic dialogue among religions."
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