Description of the integration initiative implemented
The interviewee arrived in Italy in order to pursue her university studies, i.e. PhD. Besides, having settled in Italy, she has actively participated in social and cultural life of the Country.

Personal story
The interviewee was born in Tunis and arrived in Italy at the age of 21 with a student visa in order to pursue a PhD in Computer science at the Polytechnic University of Milan. Currently, she lives in Milan and has Italian-Tunisian citizenship being married to an Italian citizen. Accordingly, her choice to stay in Italy is permanent as she has built a career and made a family here.
In Tunisia, she graduated in Computer science. The decision to leave for Italy was made after examining the possibility of going to other countries, such as France and Canada, being these linked with Tunisia by international academic relationships.
The preparations for reaching Italy were simple: after registering for the PhD entrance exam, she was granted a short-stay exam visa. Once she passed the entrance exam, she returned to Tunisia for a few weeks so as to apply for a student visa.
The interviewee already knew Italy as she had visited the Country during a holiday, wherefrom her decision to come to Milan. Accordingly, the first impact with Italian society and culture was not traumatic: she was a person who had travelled a lot, and the first thing she did upon her arrival was taking care of bureaucratic issues regarding her stay in Italy.
As for the relationship between her culture of origin and her acquired Italian culture, our interviewee stated that she had learnt a lot about the latter, especially about the Lombard culture being she based in Lombardy region since years now: this one, according to her, would be grounded in an entrepreneurial working style, which is different from the Tunisian one.
On the subject of women’s education in Tunisia after the revolution, she states it was a widespread phenomenon, and so was migration for study. The Tunisian cultural context had a great influence on her personal and professional choices and fulfilment, given that Tunisia in the 1980s had promoted the importance of women’s education as a tool for their emancipation, hence international mobility for women used to be seen as a privileged pathway in this sense.
The choice to move to Italy has positively impacted her professional and working opportunities; to the contrary, she has noted some gaps in the Italian society in terms of gender freedom, namely: in Tunisia, the role of working women has a positive and essential meaning, whereas a working woman, even a mother, is almost “blamed” as a such in Italy.
As far as discrimination for being a woman and/or foreigner is concerned, she made observations regarding gender discrimination that she defined as "positive", namely: girls, especially if “beautiful and nice”, are emphasised by this aspect of their being female, which is not the case for males. This kind of perceptions are automatically framed in terms of a sexual connotation, which altogether implies a more favourable situation for them: it could be said that beautiful girls are facilitated by their beauty, for instance at university. This could be then read as a "positive", but not correct gender discrimination.

Analysis of the initiative and individual story
As emerged from her story, the pathways to success undertaken by our interviewee met no obstacles that would have depended on her gender or cultural identity. The professional paths undertaken both in Tunisia and Italy enabled her to reach a satisfactory situation which has allowed her to achieve all her goals.

Results and Impact
The choice to move to Italy has positively impacted both professional and working opportunities of the interviewee. The PhD made it possible for her to achieve the goals of a migratory project based on the importance for a woman to work: to boot, her goals were achievable thanks to the support of her family, and to a favourable cultural climate she has found in Italy.