The Context of Italian Migration

Abstract

For many centuries Italians have been leaving their home in search of better lives in great numbers, to the extent that some historians talk of them as ‘among the most migratory of peoples on the earth’ (Gabaccia, 2000: 1). Migration took on epic dimensions particularly after Italy became a unified country in 1861, and between 1876 and 1976 about 26 million Italians left the country (Favero and Tassello, 1978). Mass migration stopped in the 1970s, thanks to the considerable improvements in social and economic conditions, and in that same decade Italy became a country that attracted, rather than produced, migrants (Castles, 1992: 37).