Keeping in Touch: Migrant Workers’ Trans-Local Ties in Early Modern Italy

Abstract

By using notary deeds, judiciary documents and testaments, the paper sheds new light on the “transnationalism” and multi-locality of labour migrants in the early modern age. After discussing these notions applied to a preindustrial context, the paper explores the broader “invested space” of ordinary migrants in Rome. To do so, the paper focusses on double belonging of migrants and the condition of simultaneity: the coexistence of ties in the birthplace with local ones created in the arrival city and on the possession of goods (houses, land and vineyards) at home, even many years after migrating. In the last section, the paper provides an example of a “transnational” community in early modern Rome: that of migrants coming from the dioceses of Bergamo, Como and Milan.