Jacqueline Matwick and her family moved to Turin, Italy, seeking citizenship by descent.
Courtesy of Jacqueline Matwick
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jacqueline Matwick, 38, who moved from Arizona to Turin, Italy, with her family in 2024. Matwick was anticipating receiving citizenship by descent through her husband, but the Italian government changed the requirements after they moved, and the Matwicks no longer qualified. The following has been edited for length and clarity.We were in New York for a long time. I was there eight years, my husband was there seven, and our oldest child was born there.We were new parents in New York City, and childcare was insane — it's expensive everywhere, but in New York City, it's insanely expensive, and housing's really expensive. So you end up with almost a second rent payment just for childcare in New York. It was really hard to make that work.We thought, "Where can we make our lives work as parents in a way that feels comfortable for us?"We decided to move in with my in-laws in Arizona in 2020, when our daughter was a year and a half old. We thought maybe the Phoenix suburbs would offer us more affordability — we were thinking we were going to stay in Phoenix and buy a house, but the housing prices had shot up. So we were facing these same financial struggles in New York and in Arizona. It just felt like the math wasn't really working anywhere.That was the pivotal moment that sent me looking abroad.
