"In Italy, there is really a panic," said Anna Triandafyllidou, a migration expert with the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy.
"It's a huge sea-change, when you consider that just seven years ago German workers were being sent to work in Spain's then booming economy," Thomas Liebig, a migration expert with the OECD, told Die Zeit, referring to the time, not all that long ago, when it was Germany which was considered to be the sick man of Europe.
Shoshona Fine, migration expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, told VICE News that the case was a reflection of a climate in Italy where immigration has become highly politicized, leading to extraordinary measures being taken in the name of defending the nation.
Almost 70% of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants are highly qualified, often with university degrees, says Klaus Bade, a migration expert.
Of all the high-flying expats with British passports your correspondent asks, only one Danny Sriskandarajah, a migration expert based in South Africa—has had any contact with local embassies or with UKTI, Britain's trade-promotion body.
Back in Sindhekela for the first time in three years, Mr. Ratha went from being a migration expert to mere migrant again, with the attendant tensions.
"It's hypocritical," says Seline Trevisanut, an Italian migration expert at the University of Cagliari.
In 2003, when David Fitzgerald, a migration expert at the University of California, San Diego, came to Arandas, he found that the wage disparity with the United States had narrowed: migrants in the north were collecting 3.7 times what they could earn at home.
And migration expert or not, Rosi certainly hopes his film will continue to inspire more of the latter.
"I'm not a migration expert," he sighs, settling for a table two metres from the sunbather.
