Italian Migration Research Articles

The Recent Italian Response to Migration: Everything must Change so that Everything can Stay the Same?

Abstract In 2022, more than 100,000 migrants reached Italy, almost a 60% rise compared with the previous year. In response to such a massive increase in the number of arrivals, in 2023, Italy undertook a wealth of initiatives in the field of migration management. On the one side, the Government enacted several decree-laws addressing a wide range of migration-related issues. On the other side, the Prime Minister concluded a bilateral Protocol with Albania to establish two detention centres on Albanian territory, placed under Italian jurisdiction and financed by Italy, for the processing of international protection applications as well as for carrying out return operations for those who do not qualify. This contribution takes stock of the recent developments of the Italian practice related to the control of migration flows, assessing the main initiatives undertaken by the Government in 2023 from an international law standpoint, with a view to verifying if a real shift in Italian migration policy has been enacted. It is submitted that, despite some significant novelty in the practice concerning bilateral cooperation with third States, Italy’s overall approach seems to be characterised by a questionable continuity with the past.

Are Labour Markets Inclusive for Ukrainian War Migrants? Perspectives From Polish and Italian Migration Infrastructure Actors

Are Labour Markets Inclusive for Ukrainian War Migrants? Perspectives From Polish and Italian Migration Infrastructure Actors

The external dimension of Italian migration policy in the wider Mediterranean

ABSTRACT This article provides the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the external dimension of Italy’s migration policy (EXMIPO) in the broader Mediterranean, over the past three decades. Building on an original dataset spanning over 30 years and 125 instruments, it investigates how and to what extent Italy cooperated with countries of origin and transit in the management of migration flows. The article argues that the external dimension of Italy’s migration policy is far richer than initially expected. From the immediate neighbourhood, Italy’s EXMIPO has gradually extended well beyond its geographical borders. If initially, it relied on a strategy of issue-linkage between quotas and return agreements, this gradually faded away in favour of more informal tools. While governments’ political ideology did not play a key role in defining the direction of Italy’s EXMIPO tools, we find that the evolving dynamics of migratory flows, and the pursuit of flexible tools to promptly address rising numbers, were crucial aspects behind the country’s external migration policy.

Neighbourliness in concrete: modern construction, ethnic labour and the architectures of New York Italians

‘Neighbourliness in concrete’ assesses the intertwined histories of modern construction and Italian migration in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Through the analysis of architecture, construction, and union journals of the period along with the voices of social reformers, ministers, and other intellectuals, the article contends that the adoption of concrete construction did not follow an uncontested technical revolution, as it is often discussed, but was critically mediated by labour debates, social clashes, and ethnic conflicts decisively involving Italian migrant workers, who constituted a majority amongst concrete labourers at the time in New York City. The article situates these debates in relation to the definition of these migrants as ‘neighbours’ — linking negotiations amongst trades and ethnicities in the construction site to contemporaneous discussions on collective housing models in the American metropolis. It explores how new forms of ‘neighbourliness’ defined in these two sites were simultaneously framed by industrialisation, capitalism, nationalism, and migration throughout this formative period for both the Italian and American republics. Coming fundamentally from the south of their country, Italian migrant workers struggled to identify (and be recognised) as both members of the new Italian nation and as American citizens and, rather than easily fitting in any of the ‘imagined communities’ defined for the two republics, they constituted themselves as a material one. Modern architecture, the article concludes, was both dependent on and the catalyst for negotiations of neighbourliness in concrete.

Beyond borders: exploring the impact of Italian migration control policies on Mediterranean smuggling dynamics and migrant journeys

AbstractIn recent years, the Mediterranean crossings have reconfirmed their status as the most perilous routes for migrants attempting to reach European shores, with a significantly high number of deaths. In response, the Italian government has implemented various strategies aimed at reducing the number of landings and controlling irregular migration. This research evaluates the impact of these measures on the dynamics of migrant smuggling, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It examines the effectiveness of these measures and their influence on the adaptation of routes, methods, and organization of criminal groups involved in smuggling. The study emphasizes that while the measures to curb irregular immigration have had a limited direct impact on overall migratory flows and primary routes, they have indirectly influenced smugglers’ strategies. The study is grounded in empirical data sourced from interviews with expert witnesses and judicial investigations conducted by Italian prosecutors, with a comprehensive analysis of quantitative data. The findings aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of irregular migration in the Mediterranean and the impacts of policy interventions.

Angelenos? What’s That? Young Italians in Los Angeles in the Fiction of John Fante, Andrea De Carlo, and Chiara Barzini

ABSTRACT In the complex and varied history of Italian migration to the United States, the Californian experience has stood out for the original dynamics of its mobility, especially in relation to the transit of Italians to Los Angeles. This article investigates three descriptions of the Italian experience in Los Angeles in different moments in the city’s history as provided by three authors who embody different transnational Italian perspectives, namely John Fante’s Ask the Dust (1939), Andrea De Carlo’s Treno di panna (1983) and Chiara Barzini’s Things that Happened before the Earthquake (2017). This article explores how these representations of the Los Angeles experience have contributed to broadening the representation of Italian youth abroad. At the same time, my analysis identifies how the Italian experience has expanded the prism of literary interpretations of the city and deepened the knowledge of the metropolis and its dense stratification of ethnic communities and cultures.

“A Desirable Class of Homeseekers”: Colonization, Race, and Italian Migration in the Progressive Era US South

Abstract At the turn of the twentieth century in Italy and the United States, a transnational media dialogue emerged that promoted facilitated emigration policies that their supporters called colonization. Designed to permanently transfer a highly mobile population to a region with a proportionally small foreign-born population, colonization's press coverage exhibited an elite class and race consciousness that sought to remake landless Italian migrants, undesirable in other areas of the United States, into good citizens working their own farms in the American South. A close reading of articles published in Progressive Era magazines in Italian and English, and direct appeals for settlement to the Italian ambassador in Washington, demonstrate how proposals to colonize Italians in the American South shaped the debate over desirability in a period grappling with policy solutions, both in Italy and the United States, to an emerging immigration problem. Race and the immigration problem intersected powerfully in the Progressive Era South in unusual ways as colonizationists adopted their own definitions of racial desirability that centered white southerners’ economic needs. When historians take distribution policy as seriously as Progressives did, the public debate over desirability that drove turn-of-the-century restrictionism becomes more complicated and the significance of the regional setting more pronounced.

Essenziali, eppure invisibili

This article explores how the pandemic has intertwined with immigration issues and the essential labour provided by irregular workers, often referred to as ‘invisible’ workers. It investigates the role the pandemic has played in influencing the approval of regularisation for workers in the agricultural and domestic sectors, and in directing the development of labour migration policies from 2020 to the present. Through an analysis of official documents and semi-structured interviews gathered between 2020 and 2023, the article connects the factors and dynamics of the emergency period with established trends in Italian migration governance, in order to shed light on both the opportunities seized and missed in the regularisation of migrant workers.

The globalisation of Italian agriculture. Transformations of migrant labour composition in agriculture in Trentino

AbstractThe cultivation of apples is one of the principal economic activities in Trentino, which is responsible for 25% of Italian apple production and 4% of European apple production. The industry is structurally based on migrant work, especially from Eastern European countries in the EU. This model has come up against obstacles due to EU migrant workers redrawing their trajectories: They now tend to remain in their country of origin or move towards central European countries, where they find better wages and working conditions. This is also due to the inadequacy of Italian migration policies, which make it difficult for employers to recruit migrant workers. As a result, employers started to recruit refugees and asylum seekers from countries in the sub‐Saharan and Indian subcontinent who had recently arrived in Trentino. This article analyses these transformations and the trend of ‘refugeeisation’ process of the agricultural workforce, as well as the partial replacement of seasonal workers in Trentino. It then focuses on the impact of the pandemic on international recruitment and on the organisation of the migrant workforce.

Place and transmemory in California Italian American literary narratives: Dorothy Bryant's Miss Giardino

In this article, I propose to think of spaces as sites of production and manifestation of memory, which, in turn, constitutes a transnational formation, one that can hardly be discursively fixed. In particular, my analysis of Dorothy Bryant's 1978 novel Miss Giardino uncovers how transmemory, or the intergenerational transmission of memory from diasporic to ethnic subjects, complicates ideas of Italian belonging. I turn to the study of space, with an emphasis on the multiethnic neighborhood of The Mission, in the east-central part of San Francisco, to address the mediation between Italian diasporic past and interethnic present. While acknowledging that forms of inherited memory (or postmemory), such as class memory, affect the social practice of place intergenerationally, I also aim to show that in transmemory spaces are made differently meaningful. Ultimately, reframing spaces of Italian migrations through the lens of transmemory offers a way to move us forward from impasses in Transnational Italian Studies and diaspora debates that assign to memory an overly static and national paradigm.

Italian Migration Policies and Newspaper Communication: A Case Study

Communication and migrations can represent a binomial that pushes towards changes that involve manifest actions or not of individuals in societies in which the presence of multiple cultures is now a given. The theoretical starting point is the sociology of knowledge in Mannheim. This article investigates the effects on cultural changes of the communication-migration binomial, specifically on the media language and system of ideas around migrations. We will consider as “milestones” (with a before and after) the laws or agreements that marked the historical and social context of migration in Italy over the past few years. We aim to verify through the analysis of the “words” whether and how the media's language (limited to «la Repubblica») has modified the language used to represent migrations and the related contents dealing with problems of general interest connected to the phenomenon of migration.

From Ukraine to the Mediterranean: Italy and the governance of migration

ABSTRACT The Russian military invasion of Ukraine of late February 2022 caused the largest displacement of persons since the end of the Second World War, testing the European Union’s and its member states’ resilience. In an unprecedented move, the European Union adopted an exceptional measure, the Directive on Temporary Protection, a provision to cope with crises as old as the first massive inflow the EU had experienced back in 2001 during the Balkan wars. That measure has provided order to the reception of the millions of arrivals and set aside the usual controversies among member states, originating from an incomplete and unbalanced European migration and asylum system. While aligning with the position and the directions of the EU, and thanks to unprecedented bipartisan support for the reception of the Ukrainians displaced, Italy has taken the opportunity provided by the crisis to reiterate the urgency of a permanent and structured European system to cope with massive inflows. The Mediterranean stood in the background, where the resumption of inflows, partly triggered by the consequences of the conflict, challenged the renewed climate of bipartisanship. The objective of the article is to identify (dis)continuities in Italian migration policy under Mario Draghi as the Government reacted to the conflict in Ukraine, and the possible changes that could characterize the new government of Giorgia Meloni.

Franc Sturino. Forging the Chain. Italian Migration to North America, 1880-1930

Franc Sturino. Forging the Chain. Italian Migration to North America, 1880-1930

Exploring the use of WeChat for qualitative social research: The case of Italian digital diaspora in Shanghai.

The widespread use of digital communication technologies has created new opportunities for social research. In this paper, we explore the limits and potentials of using messaging and social media apps as tools for qualitative research. Building upon our research on Italian migration to Shanghai, we discuss in detail the methodological choice of using WeChat for teamwork, remote sampling strategies, and conducting interviews. The paper highlights the benefits that researchers may have from employing the same technology that the studied community uses in their daily life as a research tool, and advocates for a flexible approach to research that adapts its tools and methods to the specific requirements and characteristics of the fieldwork. In our case, this strategy allowed us to emphasize that WeChat represents a digital migratory space which played a crucial role in understanding and making of the Italian digital diaspora in China.

Sweet as She Can Be

Sweet as She Can Be

Italian Immigration in the American West: 1870–1940

Italian Immigration in the American West: 1870–1940

Museo Nazionale dell'Emigrazione Italiana (MEI)

Museo Nazionale dell'Emigrazione Italiana (MEI)

Mapping transnational lives: patterns of dislocation and reorientation in contemporary carto-graphic memoirs

ABSTRACT This article considers three recent graphic memoirs that focus on Italian transnational migration and its legacies: Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s The Inheritance, Joshua Santospirito’s Swallows (Part I), and Pia Valentini’s Ferriera. We adopt the term carto-graphic memoirs (Mitchell 2007; Norment 2012), to describe graphic novels that aim to literally and metaphorically map transnational lives, identities, and memories, through complex artistic processes of autobiographical (re)orientation, drawing, storytelling, and intellectual reflection. Dominant narratives of Italian migration redeem the struggle and shame of migration through individual success, upward mobility, and racial ‘whitening’. These three works challenge stereotypical representations of Italian migration, and Italian hyphenated identities, focusing instead on geographical, historical and autobiographical fragments that come together on the page to sketch provisional and fragile, yet emotionally and intellectually powerful patterns. Such patterns reveal histories and geographies of racism, class exploitation, violence, trauma, but also histories of physical, existential, cultural, linguistic and intellectual resistance, exchange, and creativity. Each of these memoirs locate Italian migrants and their descendants at the intersection of traumatic histories and geographies of nationalism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and class exploitation. In doing so, they provide an extraordinary opportunity to rethink the relationship between transnational histories and individual lives.

1874: Italian Migration Diplomacy in Egypt

1874: Italian Migration Diplomacy in Egypt

In Search of a Good Life in a Southern European Country: The New Italian Migration to Athens and Valencia.

One of the main migration flows from southern Europe is the so-called ‘new emigration’ from southern Europe towards other developed countries, mainly in North Europe. Nevertheless, we still don’t know very much about the internal flows in the area. The main aims of this paper are to contribute to a better understanding of these processes and to find common pathways, discussing – in a comparative perspective – the first results of two inquiries conducted on Italians living in Attica (Greece) and Valencia (Spain). The two studies have been carried out with a qualitative method mixing the techniques of participatory observation in virtual and real communities and in-depth interviews. The main result of the comparison is that both migration flows go beyond the idea of a new emigration from Southern Europe predominantly caused by a lack of good jobs. Other factors and motives seem to be at stake today in these pathways of mobility: the cost of living, the safety of public spaces, the good weather or the geographical proximity to the origin areas, among others. Those factors do not replace the relevance of economic migration motives, but certainly put forward the complexity of these emerging intra-southern European countries migration flows, underlining the multidimensional factors pushing them.