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routes. In 1895, Giovanni Cantù, responsible for health services in
the Port of Genoa, reported to his superiors: “The Italian [mer-
chant] navy is not lacking in good ships. The thing is that a despi-
cable monopoly is created out of our emigration, and in order to
profit as much as possible from that business, lousy means of trans-
port are provided, as though the emigrants were commodities of the
lowest value.”14 Still in 1907, a lieutenant colonel navy doctor re-
ported how “the distribution and the modality of consuming meals
is particularly humiliating and unhygienic; the meals were con-
sumed in the cabins or on the deck, since the procedures did not
make provisions for refectories or any other place equipped for food
service.”15
Politicians erected legislative barriers against emigration, to the
point of creating serious problems for jurists in the field of indi-
vidual rights. Moreover, the aforementioned statements reveal not
only a deep-rooted disregard for the emigrants on the part of gov-
ernment authorities, but also their collusion with the powerful
lobby of ship owners. Although legislative decrees were in fact
promulgated in order to confront the problem of emigration (i.e.
the 1901 framework legislation), the success of those decrees often
foundered on the unwillingness of the ruling class to put them into
effect.
4. Literature of emigration
The repressive stance of the Italian institutions strengthened the
perception of emigration as a tragic event, linked to disgrace, sick-
ness, insanity and death. A large part of the anti-migratory scien-
tific publications described emigration as a particularly traumatic
and detrimental issue. Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), a leading
representative of positivist anthropology and sociology at that time,
14 Molinari 2001: 240. “La Marina italiana non è priva di buoni piroscafi. Il guaio è che della nostra
emigrazione si fa un ignobile monopolio, per trarre dal quale il maggior profitto possibile si adi-
bisce pel trasporto materiale scadente, quasicché gli emigranti fossero merce infima”.
15 Surdich 2006: 329. “Particolarmente umilianti ed antigieniche la distribuzione e le modalità della
consumazione del cibo perché i pasti venivano consumati nelle cuccette o sul ponte, dal momento
che i regolamenti non prevedevano l’allestimento di refettori o di locali attrezzati per la ristorazio-
ne”.
STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN FATHERLAND