Scampia, the satellite town in the north of Naples, gets a lot of political visitors these days. Giuseppe Conte, former prime minister and incumbent leader of the left-wing populist Five Star Movement, was there last Saturday. In Scampia he started his national tour in defense of the citizen money. Conte’s government introduced the basic income in March 2019 and celebrated it as a milestone in the eradication of poverty, especially in the economically disadvantaged south. The new right-wing coalition under Giorgia Meloni wants to abolish citizen income because it tempts people of working age to do nothing instead of looking for a job, according to the Prime Minister’s office. In Scampia, where around a third of all households receive a basic income, Conte warned of nationwide protests by the marginalized people should the Meloni government implement its plan for social indifference.
A few days before Conte, Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi was in Scampia for the inauguration of the new campus of the University of Naples “Federico II”. Italy’s reigning beauty queen, Zeudi Di Palma, attended the inauguration ceremony as a kind of patron saint. “Miss Italia” is twenty years old, comes from Scampia herself and is studying sociology there. In the future, however, she will still have to take the metro to the university in the old town, because the new campus belongs to the medical faculty and not to the social sciences faculty, where Di Palma is studying. The university will bring “light and hope” to Scampia, said “Miss Italia” with a sash and crown. Mayor Manfredi nodded to this.