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rating – even unintentionally – the policies and propaganda of the
state and governments, these authors displayed a unilateral image
of the phenomenon. This image was fundamentally negative, since
it represented and described emigration as an act which would lead
to pain and affliction both for the migrant himself, and those who,
for various reasons, decided to stay behind and not to follow the
migratory stream.
During the second half of the twentieth century, a number of
Italian works were published in which emigration was considered
and represented as a complex question.2 Nevertheless, even in re-
cent years, emigration is very often portrayed as if only belonging
to the post-unification period (Franzina 1996: 29–30). The domi-
nant image of Italian emigration is still partly connected to this
first period, although in later times Italian emigration took on a
different character and moved in different directions.
2. Italian Emigration: the Origin of Prejudice
Any historical analysis of Italian emigration must begin with the
impressive raw statistics from the post-unification years, 1876–
1915. In a time span of forty-five years, the number of Italian emi-
grants surpassed 14 million (Favero and Tassello 1978: 19).3 Studies
of Italian emigration have generally focused on this period (at least
until the 1990s) because of the pure weight of numbers. During the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries a wide range of political tracts,
mainly of Catholic and liberal tendency, focused on the issue. These
portrayed emigration as negative and discreditable, bringing dis-
grace and ruin to those who left and to those who stayed behind.
But dominant anti-emigration propaganda and stereotypes origi-
nated in the constant but temporary migration of people within the
Italian peninsula, which dated back centuries before the unification
2 See, for instance, Cesare Pavese, 1950, La luna e i falò (The Moon and the Bonfires), Torino:
Einaudi; Giose Rimanelli, 1958, Peccato originale (Original Sin), Milano: Mondadori; Mario
Rigoni Stern, 1962, Il bosco degli Urogalli (The Forrest of the Grouses), Torino: Einaudi, and
others.
3 For comprehensive data on Italian emigration between 1876 and 1976, see Favero and Tassello
(1976: 9–64).
STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN FATHERLAND