Mônica Raisa Schpun, Imigração japonesa no Brasil: cinco gerações em um século / Japanese Immigration To Brazil: Five Generations In A Century, pp. 265-286

The article focuses on several aspects of the Japanese immigration to Brazil, where nowadays lives the largest Nipponese community outside of Japan. In the beginning, I report the discussions that culminated in the creation of a migratory policy to Brazil. The first Japanese arrived in 1908, but the largest number of immigrants reached Brazil between 1926 and 1941, when Japan began investing into subsidies and grants to help support the Japanese immigrants working in Brazilian agriculture. I examine first their living conditions, their forms of adaptation and their social rise in agriculture; and then I move on to the process that made the immigrants transfer to the cities. Next, I study their settling in São Paulo and their concentration in the “ethnic” neighbourhood of Liberdade. Arriving to the present day, I go through the “dekassegui” phenomenon and pose some identity questions as they are experienced by the descendants of the 4th and 5th generations.

Juan Andres Bresciano, L’immigrazione italiana in Uruguay nella più recente storiografia (1990-2005) / Italian Immigration To Uruguay According To The Most Recent Historiography(1990-2005), pp. 287-299

Since the Sixties, the Italian immigration to Uruguay has been the subject of study in the scientific-social, historiographical fields, cultivated mainly, in the research centres of the receiving society. In the beginning of the Nineties, this production increased significantly, and experienced some changes if compared to the previous period. The present article analyzes the recent historiographical works produced on the same topic, considering: (i) their relation to the academic and institutional contexts in which they were made; (ii) their theoretical and methodological contributions to the areas of thematic innovation, diversification of the historical sources, application of diverse heuristic techniques, and incorporation of new research strategies.

Arnd Schneider, Becoming a “Third Subject”: Artists of European Origin and the Appropriation of Indigenous Cultures in Argentina, pp. 301-318

At the origin of this article there is the paradox of modern day Argentinean identity: what could motivate contemporary artists in a country made up mainly by descendants of European migrants to deal with and make their own the indigenous cultures? For Argentinean artists this project does not constitute an obvious nor an evident choice. The Argentinean elite, if you except a few, like writer Ricardo Rojas, has always favoured the adoption of European cultural models and intensive immigration. Analysing interviews and artistic production of three artists (Norberto Rodríguez, Andrés Bestard, Mónica Girón), the article underscores the research for themes of “Latin-American” identity, that no longer maintain an European point of reference. The reason to justify the establishment of these new roots that bear no connections with their biological origin, but are based upon the cultural identification with indigenous cultures, must be searched in recent Argentinean history: the economic decline of the last decades, the last military dictatorship, and the new democratic openness since 1983.

Elda González Martínez, L’esperienza della diversità. Gli argentini in Spagna / Experience Of Diversity. Argentineans In Spain, pp. 319-339

At the beginning of the new millennium, Argentineans applied for passports at the Consulates of the countries their ancestors had originally come from; passports that would open them the gates of Europe. Focusing on those who chose to emigrate to Spain, this paper describes what they were looking for in the Spaniards. It also shows the gradual fading of their self-image as “Argentine-European” while a new sense of “Argentine Identity” is born.

Asunción Merino Hernando, Il processo di reinvenzione culturale a livello locale: la complessità di essere peruviano in Spagna / Re-Inventing One’s Culture At The Local Level: The Difficulty Of Being Peruvian In Spain, pp. 341-358

The Peruvian immigration to Spain has been quite notable, becoming the largest group of Latin American workers in the country during the nineties. Now, even though other groups are arriving in great numbers, surpassing them in size, however, given the Peruvians’ lengthier settlement in Spain we can analyze complex cultural processes which take place when economic and juridical problems are not so urgent. The cultural reconstruction of the environment that takes place after arriving in a new country implies, for Peruvians, to take into consideration their own geographic and social diversity, as a cultural reference in the constant effort of reinterpretation of their “Peruvianness”. This preoccupation reveals the complex and diverse range of meanings implied under the national qualification of “Peruvian”. They use it as a generic code, but it must be articulated and translated into the details of their multiple classifications; when they simply say “Peruvian” they intend a mixture of possible identities, all of them understood and legitimated under that same label.

Chiara Pagnotta, L’emigrazione ecuadoriana: un’analisi di genere / Emigration From Ecuador: A Gender Analysis, pp. 359-376

This article is the result of a fieldwork carried out in Ecuador, Italy and Spain from 2002 to 2007 and it is about the ties, the relations and the mutual influences that are developed within the contexts of the migration of Ecuadorian women. Special importance is given to gender roles and relations: how they change, persist and renew themselves during the migratory path. First I’ll point out the many current stigmas existing in Ecuador regarding women migration, and then I will analyze how they are overcame and what that means for the status and identity of women.

Leslie Nancy Hernández Nova, La traiettoria migratoria di una famiglia del “pueblo joven” Villa Maria del Triunfo: da Ayacucho alle “barriadas” di Lima, a Torino (1995-2006) / The migratory journey of a family from the “pueblo joven” Villa Maria del Trionfo: from Ayacucho to the neighbourhoods of Lima, to Turin (1995-2006), pp. 377-392

This essay examines a life story both from a personal and from a family point of view which allows us to reconstruct the events of the recent Peruvian national history and other phenomena of international character like the present day migration from Peru to Italy. In particular, it permits us to understand how the migratory trends present within the country are the same at work in international migration that in this case has connected the population of Lima’s metropolitan area to a city of Northern Italy: Turin. The essay proposes the analytical investigation of a migratory route that develops mostly along the lines of family dynamics. The “active agent” of migration, in our case Natalia, establishes a critical rapport with her own migratory experience. Natalia is inclined not to reduce the years spent as an immigrant to a simple economic formula of family savings; but discovers in it an experience of personal maturation that has brought about a change of mentality, with the acquiring of new values she would like to pass on to her family and her community of origin.

Sara R. Farris, Le donne nei processi di integrazione. I risultati della ricerca in Italia / The woman and the integration process. The results of a study conducted in Italy, pp. 393-410

In different contexts of immigration and in different stages of international migration movements, women proved to play their own specific role that led, even in Italy, to the development of a specific field of empirical and theoretical inquiry and to the production of a huge amount of literature, that, nevertheless, remains mainly chaotic. In particular, what has not been sufficiently focused upon is the fact that each stage of the so called process of integration, as well as each indicator that provides the key for the reading of the processes, has its own originality and autonomy when viewed from the gender standpoint. Starting from this fact, the literature on female immigration that has been accumulated in the last years will be studied in order to answer the following questions: are there significant differences between women and men in the process of integration, namely, in everything that involves the process of entry, the relation with society as a whole, and the inclusion within the different levels of social structure? In other words, is integration in the field of employment different for women than it is for men? Do the demands and uses of social services, the intra- and inter-community relations, show significant differences between the genders? To what extent are redefinition of identity, negotiation between the culture of origin and the new life-style, and educational patterns proposed to second generations readable from the gender point of view? The aim of this essay, therefore, is to reconstruct the state of the art for what concerns the principal theoretical and empirical results on integration processes of immigrant women in Italy and to attempt to provide an answer to the above questions.

Lorenzo Luatti, I centri interculturali in Italia: ruolo, azioni, prospettive. Alcune riflessioni a partire da una ricerca empirica / Intercultural centres in Italy: role, activities, future. Some observations about a field research, pp. 411-428

This paper examines the profile of Italian Intercultural Centres (Centri Interculturali): public or private structures that have been operating throughout the country for the last ten years. Their aim is to promote the social and cultural integration of migrants, and to protect their rights and diversity in terms of culture. The work carried out by Intercultural Centres is aimed at renewing public services, especially educational ones, giving them an intercultural profile, accessible to all. The first part analyzes the essential characteristics of an Intercultural Centre, the variety of existing models, the different networks of Intercultural Centres that have been set up in various regions and cities as well as nationally. The second part demonstrates the main results of a national research carried out regarding the work, personnel and beneficiaries of Intercultural Centres. The results from this research show the strengths and the weaknesses of the work carried out by Intercultural Centres in the last decade and as well as the priorities that need to be pursued for the coming years.

Renzo Rabboni, «Venite e l’America rimedia a tutto!». Memorie del viaggio (1903-1904) di un emigrante mantovano / «Just come, and America will fix everything!». Memories of the Journey (1903-1904) of an immigrant from Mantua, pp. 429-453

The witness we publish here is the journal of his trip to America of Giuseppe Negri from Felonica (the last strip of the Mantua province wedged between the provinces of Ferrara and Rovigo), who on April 13th 1903 sailed from Genoa to New York following the example of other countrymen of his, he remained in the New World – between New York and Newburg – for less than a year, until on February 16th 1904, when after a prolonged period of unemployment, he decided not without regret, to return to his country.

Alessandro Bergamaschi, Dinamiche migratorie ed identità nazionale nel Giappone contemporaneo / Migratory trends and national identity in contemporary Japan, pp. 455-474

The aim of this work is to show the relation between dynamics of migration and national identity as they are present today in Japan. Japan offers an environment that apparently seems to diverge from the rest of developed economies, due to the little presence of foreign people (1,5% of total population). The reason is that in Japan coming in contact with “diversity” has great impact on an extremely structured national-identity sentiment, that in the course of time has built rigorous ethnical boundaries; a situation where the blood ties (race) became coincident with socio-cultural expressions (ethnicity). However the ethnic homogeneity myth does not stand up to facts. Restricting the analysis to the contemporary era, it emerges that Japan has always been affected by human mobility phenomena, both immigration and emigration, with their classical social repercussions. Today the typical socio-economic needs that Japan shares with the rest of the industrialized world force it, although with extreme reluctance, to face the necessity of reviewing its traditional modality of interacting with no-national people.

Matteo Sanfilippo, Un’occasione mancata? A proposito di un libro di David A. Gerber sulle lettere degli emigranti / A Missed Chance? A Book About the Letters from Migrants by David A. Gerber, pp. 475-488