625 Living and working in Italy. What are my chances?

Hi everybody,
My dream is to move out to Italy from London. I wandered if anybody could enlighten me on the possibilties of doing this. What do I require to live and work in Italy? Do I require a work permit? Is teaching English as a foreign language the best route into Italy? Can anybody help?

Cari Saluti
Sam :confused:

Category
General chat about Italy

Need a bit more info really. What job do you do in UK? What aspect of Italy attracts you? Maybe that would give us some idea as to what you're after. Do you have a dependant family? etc. If you don't , I'd say just go and see what happens. What's the worst that could happen?

Maria Lucia

I would say, get yourself a book on living and working in Italy, (there are many) which in itself will raise lots of questions and then come back and post these precise questions on the forum.

You will find there are a lot of us who have the same dream of which some have achieved it and some haven't, but we will all try and help with questions as and when possible. Best of luck.

Jan

Hi,
Thanks for your swift reply. I have just got out several books from the library about living and working in Italy I will get back to you as soon as I have read them.

Cari Saluti
Sam :)

Hi Sammy

I'm assuming that you are British, in which case you don't need any sort of work permit. The only thing I needed was my codice fiscale (tax code which is very easy to get from any angenzie delle entrate when you arrive) and a passport. It really depends on how much money you have whether you should just turn up and find a job! In the UK anyone could pretty much turn up in any big city and fairly easily pick up a job in a bar, pub, restaurant, temping etc. It's different here. Restaurants, bars etc are often family affairs and IMO you do have to have know people to get yourself one of those jobs. However having said that I don't really have experience in the big cities here so there are possibly a lot more opportunities there.

The TEFL route could be an idea but any jobs I've seen advertised do ask for a TEFL qualification and at least one year's experience (try [url]www.tefl.com[/url] for more info - they can also send a daily job vacancy list to your e-mail). Again it could be different if you're actually here. Look at the forums on [url]www.eslcafe.com[/url] - they give a fairly realistic view of what it's like to be TEFL teacher (not necessarily good!).

Depends where you want to live too - I speak fluent Italian but don't live near any big cities and have found it hard to get a job (eventually got a temp contract). I still probably wouldn't have anything if I didn't speak Italian.

I put another (lengthy!) reply onto another thread to Raina about looking for work here - have a look at that.

I think you should really be aware that the job situation here is not great - unemployment is high. Try and time it right too - ie in the run up to Christmas there are not going to be many jobs on offer, likewise the summer. If you want a summer job they started advertising in the local papers here around March (be aware though seasonal jobs are long hours and hard work).

Another idea - if you don't have fluent Italian why not come out here for a language course for a month or so - they run them in most major cities. They'll probably help you to find reasonably priced accommodation too and then you can try and find the job while you're doing that.

A bit of a ramble but hope it's helped (and not discouraged!) :)

As Italy is an european country you don't need any kind of permits to work there.

I had thought about moving to Italy with my fiance and I had got in touch with this english scholl in turin: [url]http://www.shenker.com/job.php[/url]
they were prepared to offer him a job as an english teacher although he didn't speak any italian.
I believe they have schools in other locations as well.

Good luck!